WARNING: long post ahead

So here's what I should be doing today:

1. Laundry---a serious pile is amassing, and I couldn't find several things I wanted to wear this week, so this tops the list.
2. Housekeeping---I am going to have out of town guests for Music Fest & I need to move some furniture around & probably should clean out the guest room closet as well.
3. Civil Rights Museum tour---for a class, not for my own edification. I've been several times & it's always a depressing experience.
4. Homework---yeah, my final exams start this week. This does not sound fun.
5. Gardening---who knew the grass could grow so much in a week?
6. Bathing the dog---I may do this to escape the house since it's so beautiful outside.

And here's what I want to be doing:

1. Grocery shopping---although I usually hate it, it sounds better than a lot of the stuff above.
2. Learning to golf---I got these clubs last year and have only used them in the back yard, which doesn't work well (the dog tries to play fetch with my short-distance substitute golf balls, made of styrofoam-type stuff).
3. Playing tennis on a non-ghetto court somewhere.
4. Blogging---apparently, since that's what I'm doing to procrastinate.

*** Yesterday was quite a long and eventful day. ML & I ventured into Clarksdale, MS to visit the Juke Joint Festival for the very first time. Its slogan is "half blues festival, half family fair" and I think they struck the balance quite nicely. It was so relaxing to go somewhere and have people say hello---mostly black people who live there I think---not treating us like whitefolks in town for slummin'. There were more bikers than I'd have expected, but perhaps they like the blues more than I'd previously suspected. Speaking of bikers, on our way home there were more bikers chatting us up from the next lane while we were stopped at an insurance checkpoint (what a scam for the highway patrol---driving w/out insurance is a $1500 fine!). What surprised us, though, was that these guys were kinda cute in a non-biker way. But it put us on a Giggle Loop for the rest of the night because it was just so bizarre to have some guy beeping his tiny Honda horn at you from 3 feet over, saying: "Hey, where are y'all headed? Can we follow you back to Memphis?" It's like being hit on by a rodeo clown.

Some old fat dudes also talked to us at Ground Zero---which, although they were like 3's or something, was still flattering until we looked around us at who they had to choose from. The club itself was pretty cool and a very good replica, but blown up because it was the size of 6 juke joints put together, plus it had high ceilngs (for the acousicts) and TV's, which you never would have found in a real juke joint (except a 3" black & white in the kitchen). It also had a nice long bar with stools, hard to find in juke joints, and a working light over the pool table. They did a good job recreating atmosphere with the strings of lights, folding tables, vinyl tablecloths, & mismatched chairs and pared-down stage but it didn't quite pass as an original juke. Of course, some of those we didn't want to go into as they were too tiny & cramped.

It's funny when I go places with ML because although we have equal disdain for people, she is much nicer to them in general. I will cut you off at "hello" if I don't know you. (I'm sure that limits my friendships severely, but not in cases like this.) But I thought they were nice enough until one of them said his nickname was "The Snake Doctor," which made me not want to talk to him anymore. Turns out it's because he works with oil pipelines, but who knew?

We did check out the racing pigs (which was hella cute), but missed monkeys riding shelties (which might have been very disturbing, in a way). We didn't make it into the Delta Blues Museum because it was another $7 fee on top of the $10 wristband charge, which wasn't expensive but we were disinclined to pay twice. We did get to see some of the films at Delta Cinema (which smelled very musty, and I think the odor rubbed off on us) but left after the sound got too loud and the charm of sitting in a dank theatre finally wore off. After watching world-famous Richard Johnston perform (I suppose he's living in Clarksdale now, which was news to me) we headed back up Highway 61 to Tunica, where ML not only came out ahead on the blackjack tables but got us 2 seafood buffets comped to boot. What a woman! We at crab legs, catfish, & sushi until our bellies were bloated, then headed back up to Memphis. I think that was one of the best expereiences at the casinos I've ever had---watching James Brown back in '98 still being the best, and seeing Morris Day & The Time being second best. I was well-near exhausted when we returned.