If only every weekend were a 3-Day weekend! I could list the stuff that I did but how boring is that? Instead I will regale you with the scaryness that is Viva Vienna.

Every year my home town (Vienna) has it's annual Memorial Day weekend Town Festival. Growing up I almost never got a chance to go since I always had out of town soccer tournaments. It is, however, a Vienna institution, much like the Vienna Inn where you can get crappy service and good chili dogs and where I have only been once. Anyway, even though Vienna has grown and is just down the street from one of the busiest and most traffic choked areas of the entire DC area (Tyson's corner), Viva Vienna remains the sort of small town festival you might see off route 29 somewhere between 66 and Charlottesville. There are booths selling cheap sunglasses, balloons everywhere, ridiculously overpriced hotdogs and funnel cake, a ferris wheel and a terrible band on a makeshift stage. And there are of course way too many people that I only half remember from my childhood.

Luckily, I only ran into a couple people that I knew, but I knew there were more everywhere lurking and waiting to jump from behind say the huge bright red caboose (another Vienna institution I never really paid any attention to) and begin talking animatedly at me while I attempt my best impression of knowing exactly who they are and what they are talking about. As I have mentioned before, my memory for people I've known in the past is not very good. One contributing factor is the close family resemblance between my Mom, my sisters, and I, so it seems that all of their friends who I have met maybe once can recognize me instantly. Once I went to visit an old highschool friend of my mom's who lives in Adelaide, Australia. I'd never met this woman before in my life but she instantly knew me from about 200 yards away almost as soon as I'd stepped off the train from Melbourne. I'm surprised I don't have more nightmares about this.

On the whole, I'm glad we stayed to hang around Viva Vienna but I was also relieved to leave, and I was very glad that I did not see one clown.