So I spent the weekend in Louisville, a 5 day weekend at that. Growing up in Louisville you become fairly accustomed to all the hopplah around the Kentucky Derby. Locally it turns into a 2 week long even known as the Kentucky Derby Festival. It kicks off with a fireworks display known as Thunder Over Louisville. (Don’t laugh, its the largest fireworks display in the world, preceded all day long by the largest air show in the world) and carries on through street festivals, parades, and all sorts of local entertainment until Derby Day on the first saturday of May.
A lot of people back west were like “Oh yeah, that Derby, that horse race. Is that really that big of deal?” I think it’s fairly hard to comprehend just how big of a deal it is unless you live here. Bear in mind we are talking about a sporting even that is celebrating its 136th year today. How many sporting events do you know of that started in 1875? The city really goes all out for it, given what a tourist event it is. The airport, which is quite large for one of its size due to it also being the UPS air hub of the world, had every single spare piece of tarmac housing a sleeping private jet thrusday night when I landed. Girls in dresses and derby hats were handing out Burbon Balls to you as you came down the terminal, and they had a blue grass band in the atrium of the airport. The car services were even bringing in cars and drives from Cinci, Nashville, Atlanta and Indianapolis.
The first part of my trip was fairly uneventful, I got back to my dads place thursday night and just hung out with the family until they all crashed shortly after I arrived, given it was 11pm local time. That left me with little to do other than surf the web and harass my friends back west for entertainment. I also checked out the Star Craft 2 beta for mac 
Friday I was able to get my grimy paws back on my car, which my Dad’s wife is driving currently. (In return he pays the car payments on it and I dont have to worry about storing it out in SF.) I went and caught up with a few friends I haven’t seen in ages, as well as hit both malls. I realized that 10 years later, and 2 years since I last visited either mall, I still park in automatically in the same out of the way but surprisingly convenient secret places you only know about if you work there… weird. I also stopped in the Apple store had them swap out my 3GS. It recently began to get some weird white spots on the backlight and also drained the battery more than was normal, so I went ahead and had them give me a new one, just before they closed the place down early for the iPad 3G launch. (Which I am thoroughly U-turning on and now plan to get quite soon!)
Saturday was rather eventful, for the obvious reasons. I went to the Derby with my dad. He managed to get his hands on some clubhouse “walk-around” tickets. Basically they give you access to both the ground level as well as all of the upper club house interiors and the outside boxes. In other words you can go everywhere but the Turf Club and Millionaires Row, more or less. Definitely a nice thing given the off and on drizzling rain all day. He had some friends who had several boxes in an area together, so we just hung around with them up there with some decent views of the track. While it rained lightly off an on all day under a constant cloud cover, just as they were walking the horses into the starting gate and the traditional “My Old Kentucky Home” was being to be sung, during the opening phrase “the sun shines bright on my old Kentucky home” the clouds break and the sun comes out in full foce, I shit you not. It was quite a sight. Once that race we over, we decided to not stick around for the final two and got out of there before 150,000 other people decided to leave with us. On a fun side note, my friend Lamont managed to hit the trifecta (picking the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place horses) and for a $12 bet raked in 2200 and some change.. lucky bastard.
Sunday was a fairly uneventful day, I spent it at the house with my family with a small outdoor cookout for my birthday, while a month and a half early it was as close as my family was going to get to celebrating it with me since I wouldn’t be home in june. It was fun, and I got to play with my moms iPad! 
Afterwards I dug through 4 boxes in storage in the garage and inventoried a ton of my old books, DVDs and video games into my Delicious Library 2 catalog. This software is the absolute best and great for keeping tabs on al my media I have scattered between ATL, Lou. and home in SF. (You can see my published collection at www.sargonas.com/DeliciousLibrary) I also came across a few other surprises, like my year books, and prom photos, and other potentially embarrassing things we wont discuss
Monday I spent most of the entire day with my laptop and an old copy of Dune I dug up from storage in a hammock under the deck, aside from lunch with my mom. Just the very exact sunny afternoon I needed out of a vacation. Hearing some of the neighbors mowing the yards though, and the smell of lawnmower exhaust made me miss doing yard work. Come to think of it now its been nearly three years since I have been able to do any, and I think I genuinely miss it! I’m about to head out to dinner with my sister and dad for some delicious Steak. Tomorrow at noon I catch a flight out of here, and its back to SF. I’m kind of looking forward to it, being gone from work for so long makes me rather neurotic, I also miss my time zone. My body still functions on PST which makes it terribly difficult to wake up at 8am here (5 my time) and I’m not tired until around 2am or later, long after everyone I know is ready to call it a night hours before and I’m left to entertain myself.
