A mere stone's throw from the Middling City in any direction and about a half hour drive leads to agrarian sights and sounds - bonus photo destinations, distractions, passing narratives.
Yesterday Kennedy and I made my second, his first, foray to that excellent garden joint in the suburbs and had to pass the backside of the Erie County Fairgrounds where Yours Truly spotted a black goat being groomed for, assumedly, his chance for the blue ribbon.
Speaking of blue ribbons and such Sparky and I bought some Mega Gazillions tix and never even checked the numbers.
At the garden spot picked up more perennials, as is my wont, including doppelganger coneflowers (piggy-backed flowers, very surreal) and some scrubby, intriguing alpine plants that have morphed over eons into tough little flora that can make it amongst the mountain winds, sun, and goats.

Sidebar: As I have been editing and making & doing since the earliest hours of this day I have been e-educating myself with both quick perusals of my favoured online periodicals (NYT, Paper, mediabistro) and Flashback Alternatives.
Flashback Alternatives, if You are of same sonic inclinations, is an aural treat that can be streamed on oso many levels via different players for so many differing situs, and it makes YT pleased that coming of age happened in the fine and odd-sounding 80s. They are now playing, for example, one of those lush Smiths tunes that when you hear it once again you want to just go out and dance, eschewing, of course, most of the attendant wardrobe.
Those were odd, sartorial times.
To say the least.
I am thinking specifically of the very complicated Z.Cavaricci khakis, pointed elf shoes from TO, gloves, assymetrical hair.

This past Friday YT was on the monitor/audience-facing side of karaoke things as Jana has some sort of report to report for the MCNews about such matters.
Her and I went to Garden Park something-something where YT was determined to sing the best works of Seger.
Which I did.
With aplomb, YT might Perfectly add.
Jana does a subtle v. of that Tracy Chapman number, Give Me One Reason. Which she saw fit to trot out at the next joint, King's Court.
Although it was not Seger, Simon's Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover (it also being on the S's page, dig) was performed by YT, dedicated to Jana of course.
At that Garden Place there was some background dancing, some round-the-tables dancing. At King's Court there was a smattering of dance, some frightening (this in finger-arching-in-air quotes) artichoke dip, and a plethora of donuts (YT does not touch deep-fried molecules), and R&B tunes.
Saturday included me and Sparky location scouting for some dance spots and landing in Jesse's El Diablo Muy Authentico Gin Mille where we could not dance on the checkerboard floor as a duet from Chicago did a complex act with keyboard, costumes, stuffed animals, shadow puppets, and false eyelashes.
It was kind of like something you could see at the fair, or in a talent show, or on the stage of the Pyramid in the Shiney Apple.

Shining, staged Love.