Oktoberfest

This weekend was Illinois Wesleyan's Homecoming, so I went over for the festivities. We didn't go to the game, and I never made it to the local yarn stores, but there was still plenty of fun.

I got up nice and early Friday morning, so I could get there in time for a "Back to School" talk by Dr. Stephen Ondra, one of Barack Obama's health care advisers. While the "Audacity" sock hasn't gotten to meet its candidate yet, I put some rows in during the lecture, so that's sort of a brush with fame by proxy. Not a bad start.


On Saturday the campus hosted an art fair, but somehow I didn't get any pictures. We managed to get through without buying anything, but saw some neat stuff. Paintings, drawings, and photography seemed to be the most popular, but there was also some pretty impressive papercraft that left me glad I'd spent all my cash at the farmers' market.

And what do you do on a Saturday night in a tiny Midwestern town? Oktoberfest!

Yes, the Medici restaurant in Normal held its first-ever Oktoberfest last night. No, I don't know why a restaurant with an Italian name celebrates Oktoberfest. But they had pretzels.


And beer that was bigger than my sock.


And a somewhat unusual oom-pah band. Not a grey-haired old guy to be seen in this crowd. They only knew about four songs, none of them the traditional favorites one might expect, like the chicken dance, the "Hogan's Heroes" music, or "Country Roads." But they did a pretty oom-pah-ish version of Brahms' Lullaby. And the really big beers were cheap.

Since it's just the first weekend of the month, perhaps we can count on other restaurants to do Oktoberfests later. Maybe something Mexican?