The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

Last Saturday - July 13th - was National French Fry Day. It also happened to be National Embrace Your Geekiness Day. Therefore, if I ever get my own holiday, I will re- quest that it be celebrated on July 13th, because anyone who knows me knows that if there's one thing I love more than French fries, it's embracing my geekiness.

You can bet that I (along with my cousin, who is still visiting and is also a proud geek) celebrated with all our might. We swung by the Burger Hut in Milton- Freewater for lunch, which included (actually, in my case, consisted of) French fries. And, while attending a bluegrass jam on Jasper Mountain that night, we found a lonely-looking over- look and bellowed with all our might:

Oh, dear, where can thematter be

When it's converted toenergy

There is a slight loss ofparity

Johnny's so long at thefair.

Because it's hard to stop at one nerdy lyric make- over, I sang another one about Martin Luther and his 95 theses against papal indulgences to the tune of "Supercalifragilistic-expiali- docious". Oh yeah.

While my cousin and I were in Milton-Freewater that morning, we stopped at Three Divas Beads and each purchased supplies for a necklace. I spent the rest of my free time that day beading and re-beading until

- finally - I had achieved the desired result: a goldtone leaf dangling from a chain of sodalite beads interspersed with blue-glazed porcelain flowers. It's not going to win any contests, but it didn't turn out half bad.

Enamored with my semisuccess, I started fantasiz- ing about making a little pin money in the jewelry business. The next morn- ing, I immediately found a Stauer catalog lying around and proceeded to tear out a few pages containing es- pecially inspiring examples of beadwork. I then went onto the Internet and came up with some free instructional PDFs. All of this was organized in clear page protectors and stashed in a notebook.

Then my little brother walked into the room and saw me studying the jewelry design homepage.

"You kicked me off the computer just so you could do this?" he spat.

"Oh, and what were you going to do, watch back epi- sodes of NCIS?"

"I've been working all morning. You owe me a turn. Go play with your beads."

He actually had been working all morning, but I lacked the resources to do anything jewelry-related. I tossed the idea notebook into a random box and spent the rest of the day reading cheap suspense novels, staring at walls, and wishing that I had a couple strands of beads at my disposal.

Hoo boy - the sooner I can head back into Milton- Freewater, the happier I'll be.

P.S: If you have the op- portunity to attend Mule Mania this weekend, do so at all costs. It's a ton of fun. I went last year and, well, let's just say I won't forget it anytime soon. But that's a story for another dayhellip;