Bountiful

PICKIN' AND GRINNIN': Harvest time for a pair of our biggest spaghetti squash today!

Annabelle and CJ each found one they thought was the biggest of the 10 or so that are growing in our side yard.

Annabelle's little bundle of squashy joy weighed in at a whopping 8 pounds and 10.8 ounces. CJ's was 5 pounds 5 ounces - still a pretty darn big one.

We baked it up for dinner and served it with spaghetti sauce that I'd had cooking for 10 hours. Delicious!

FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS: The kids had mostly fun at a big rock show on Friday night. It was held at the Showare Center, south of us, in Kent. 

Even though I bought them seats in the last row, as you can see from this shot by CJ pre-concert, it's a pretty intimate venue.

I'll have him tell you more about the experience. 

Last year, veteran hard rock act Shinedown released Attention Attention, their sixth album. Attention Attention is a (loose) concept album about an unnamed character who, stuck in a negative mental state, gradually works their way to become a more positive, healthy, person. To support the album, Shinedown embarked on the Attention Attention Tour, with the bands Broken Hands, Dinosaur Pile-Up, and Badflower as opening acts for the current (as of the time of writing) leg of the tour.

The three opening acts all played relatively (and mercifully, in the case of Badflower) sets, so they barely got to display their discographies to the crowd. In my opinion, Broken Hands and Dinosaur Pile-Up were rather forgettable, save for the former's thick British accent (which displayed heavily in his singing).

Badflower, the third opener, notably has a (minor) rock radio hit in "Ghost". Unfortunately, the two adjectives I would use to best describe Badflower's performance at the show are "shrill" and "emo" (both of which are attributes I almost always dislike). Badflower's singer began their set by informing us about his... self-gratification practices (needless to say, very TMI), after which the band lumbered through their setlist, ending with their hit "Ghost".

Shinedown, the headliner, began their set at approximately 9:30 P.M, opening with the song "Devil" from Attention Attention. This was followed by "Diamond Eyes", a song the band recorded for the soundtrack of the 2010 film The Expendables (though did not appear in the film's theatrical version). The rest of the setlist featured songs from across their discography (in particular Amaryllis and Attention Attention). Overall, Shinedown's stage presence was very theatrical, with lead singer Brent Smith often asking concertgoers to participate in various activities he listed (such as shaking hands to the people sitting in the seats next to them).After playing their biggest hit "Second Chance" (surprisingly early in their setlist, might I add), the band performed a cover of "Numb" by Linkin Park, followed by an off-key cover of "Black Hole Sun" by Soundgarden. This, in turn, was followed by a mostly-acoustic cover of Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Simple Man". After the covers were over, Shinedown played "Get Up" (the big single from Attention Attention), followed by the title track from The Sound of Madness, and concluded with the song "Brilliant".

Overall, Shinedown played a decent, entertaining show.

You can see a low quality cell phone video CJ shot at this link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IJsm5N2gPAf1LMkVT4du5Lxe4QgGL6aZ/view?usp=sharing
The video even includes some fairly cringe-worthy singing by the audience. :)

SUMMER SUPPER: This past Saturday night was another Teen Feed for us. We chose what seemed like a nice summertime menu, with barbecue pork and chicken sliders, corn on the cob, homemade coleslaw, and watermelon pizza for dessert.

As usual, Annabelle made a menu poster for the diners to peruse upon entering. 

We probably only had about 30 or so people come for dinner, but BOY were they HUNGRY. My gosh, we served So. Many. Sliders. We started off by giving them two apiece. Most had one each of the pork and chicken. (I need to note that our friends Emily and Kyle smoked 15 pounds of pork for the occasion!) Two other friends brought a bunch of chicken, and I made about 10 pounds of chicken just in case (we don't ever want to be caught short at Teen Feed). Another friend even brought bbq/pulled jackfruit for the vegans. 

It is impossible to overstate how grateful many of the diners were for that dinner. They'd walk in and talk about how good it smelled, and would gratefully take their first plate and then come back for more and more and more. 

One guy was so hungry for protein, he skipped all of the rest of the offerings stuff and just asked for pairs of sliders ... Five times. Another guy took that one step further, and didn't even have buns. He just wanted platefuls of meat.

It was the first time we'd attempted corn on the cob at Teen Feed, and it was a big hit! I heard more than one diner say, "I can't remember the last time I had corn on the cob!"
We boiled it stove top, and then took ears out and dipped them in huge pans full of butter (or margarine, for the vegans). In addition to freshly ground salt and pepper, diners could also have cotija sprinkled on their corn. 

They also had fun ordering their slice of watermelon 'pizza' (a wedge of watermelon, with choices of toppings including coconut (that looked like the cheese), raisins, chocolate chips, whipped cream and more. 

All in all, it was another great Teen Feed, and we're already thinking about next month's menu.

DRAGON CAPTURE: A couple nights ago, we finally got to see the ISS fly over. It seems like it had been *so* long since we'd spied it.

It's been busy up there. A Russian cargo ship just left, and a SpaceX one, the Dragon, recently arrived. 

• Taken on July 27 by European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano, the photo above shows Dragon approaching the ISS. NASA astronauts Nick Hague and Christina Koch used the Canadarm2 to capture and dock the Dragon to the Harmony node of the Space Station.