Finding Fun on a Friday Night

So I was going to post this earlier this week, but with all the studying for my Ab/Pelvis test and my inherent laziness this past weekend, it's being posted today. Friday's fun-finding adventure all started when I decided to open up the local paper in my attempts to put off studying. In it there was an ad for "Festival of Seasons" a local Christmas craft fair/fundraiser for Milligan College. I know, you're thinking, "ooh a craft fair" but you have to understand that this was not just any craft fair. Not only were there going to be all kinds of useless baubles and trinkets and other things to satiate our materialistic society, on Friday night there was to be live jazz music and free coffee and desserts.
Convinced that this was better than doing the usual Friday-night study routine, I recruited two of my classmates, Hannah and Kyoo (pronounced Kee-O), to come with me. Armed with our $5 admission fee and loan money in pocket, the three of us not-dressed-in-scrubs dazzling divas set off on a shopping adventure. We should have known things would get interesting when the lady at the door turned out to be one of our standardized patients. Trying to refrain from asking her questions such as, "So how does that make you feel?" and from listening to her lungs we just paid our admission fee and received our tickets. She kindly directed us upstairs where room upon room of creative flair awaited our book-sore eyes. We immediately realized that the upscale prices of this craft fair were not in line with our poor med student budget. So we contented ourselves to "oohing" and "aahhing" over the ret patent purses, flamboyant jewelry and sampling the delectable culinary masterpieces that graced the Christmas gift baskets for a low $29.99. Kyoo and I even ran into some of the distinguished members of the "Red-Hat" club. I'm determined to join this club when I get older (thanks, Lindsey for your inspiration that day in Charleston). Basically, it allows an older female to wear outrageous jewelry, big gaudy hats, and act in an ecentric manner. I hope you don't have to be married to join or else my idea of the accompanying fluffy white cat and hardwood floor apartment won't fit the picture.
Shopping sprees always lead to hungry bellies as well as hungry wallets, so we went for coffee and desserts. I must say the selection was quite interesting. Hannah went for the "Blueberry Crisp" coffee while I opted for the "Butterfinger Delight" flavor (whatever happened to just plain caf and decaf?). Needless to say, Butterfingers and blueberries are meant for desserts and should not be mixed with hot beverages. Even so, we still had an enjoyable time listening to the jazz trio as Kyoo and I remenisced about the days when we had the time to participate in such ensembles. Our wallets almost stayed full until our dollar bills made a break for it when we hit the pottery room. You see, I have a fondness for homemade crafty things, a fondness usually supressed by my more rational mind telling me that it's just another knick-knack to sit on my shelf. However, when this crafty, homemade thing is not only crafty but functional, it's hard to say no to my escape-happy money. To make a long story short, three pieces of pottery went home with the three med school divas.
While I was trying to make up my indecisive mind as to which piece of pottery should grace my cabinet shelf, our comrade and uniquely dressed friend Daniel called us to see if we wanted to go to a downtown art exhibit. Unaware that Johnson City was even hip enough to have something like an art exhibit, much less a showing on a Friday night, I was eager to see what was in store. We arrived to a collection of galleries housing local artists' (ie mostly ETSU students) latest works. I must say I'm no art critic but some of the stuff on the wall was not exactly what I would call art. Example: A 4x6 picture hung in a creative matte that amounted to a picture of a gravel mud puddle outside a roadside flea market. Price? $79.00 Even better, two galleries down the street I found almost the same picture but this time for the bargain of $49 (must be some kind of mud-puddle picture trend). I would like to find out if the pictures ever sold. If so, I'm putting my entire collection of random pictures in interesting mattes and financing my med. school education selling "art." The other curious thing was that seemingly every artist was dressed in black, black shoes, black shirt, black-dyed hair. One would assume that such creative people would use that same creativity in their attire. I suppose all their inspiration is consumed in contriving new ideas for art such as taking pictures of grey mud puddles.
Overall, I have to say I was impressed that this little conservative Northeast Tennessee town could contain so much culture on a Friday night. Too bad the Anatomy Lab can't be as exciting. Maybe Kyoo, Hannah and I should have bought some of those pieces of "art."