Back from the RenFaire

Hi all,

This past weekend found us down in Kansas City for several events:

1. The 3rd Annual Kansas City Chocolate Festival: A charity event held at the Overland Park Convention Center, it featured free samples (including not one but two separate chocolate fountain stations), and cooking demonstrations.

2. This year's KC Renaissance Festival: Where Lauren and I found out that our favorite bagpipe/world music band Tartanic is not, to quote Monty Python, "bleedin' demised" like the infamous parrot. We were afraid that the band had gone their separate ways after an announcement on their old website earlier in the year, but when we got to the fair, we rejoiced to discover that the group survived a partial break-up and is continuing its mix of on-stage comedy and traditional pipes and Middle Eastern drumming at venues nationwide. And that kicked off a fun Sunday of shopping, light noshing, and later, a great dinner (we once again did Korean at Cho Ga) afterwards.

3. We also celebrated Lauren's birthday (she's 29 again, seriously!). Lauren and her friend Jenny both celebrate their September birthdays with a dinner and gift exchange, and we decided that instead of their meeting up in St. Joseph, MO as usual, we would head down to KC and combine it with the RenFest and Chocolate Festival gatherings.

4. And I got my phone fixed ... my poor Treo needed a new faceplace, so I grabbed one off of eBay and took it down to a Sprint store in KC to have it replaced. Unfortunately, in the process of replacing the faceplace (which required some internal work), the tech managed to damage the internal camera (which is why we don't have good pics from the chocolate festival). However, the tech was able to replace the camera with a better camera from a newer model Treo, so all was set right on Sunday.