Lara, Kylie, and I - in the lobby of Weston House in our dresses!	After several weekends of being out-of-town and perhaps out-of-state, I thought I’d just stay in town for the weekend…but of course, Savannah has its own share of busy festivities. After getting a hard-earned A on my Contemporary Art History midterm (aren’t ya proud??) I thought I’d indulge in the fun…
Lara told me on either Tuesday or Wednesday that there was going to be a Beaux Ball held by the SCAD Architecture Department at the Hyatt Hotel. I had to reprimand her about last-minute news…but I thought it’d make make her happy if I just went head and buy myself a ticket. She was.	All smiles - out back of the Hyatt Hotel (the Savannah River's right behind us - can you see it???). Even past midnight, the night weather wasn't too bad, amazingly enough.
It's probably not obvious from the picture, but the Chinese dress was a little tight (always has been, anyway) - I almost can't even sit down in it.	To my surprise, tickets were only $5 if bought beforehand…$7 at the door with costume, $8 without. Costume. I asked Lara if this was supposed to be a costume ball in April??? She said that (since this is SCAD we’re talking about) this ball was a forma/semiformal/casual/costume ball all in one … so we could pretty much do whatever we wanted. She reminded me that I had a red Chinese dress sitting in my closet collecting dust… “Go wear that!” she said.
Okay. Another unusual thing about the Beaux Ball was that it started at 10 p.m. and ended at 2 am. A four-hour ball. Lara, being one of wanting to be fashionably late, wanted to show up at 11…so that’s what we did. Dressed from earrings and barrettes in our hair down to flip flops on our feet (hey, this is SCAD we’re talking about! Hee hee), we were ready to make a statement!	Look at our beautiful feet! (That other foot belongs to Frankie, Lara and Kylie's RA, who was in the room visiting with Lara's mom)
What do you suppose Kylie is thinking??? (The 3 of us with Collin Pisarra)	To tell the truth, the ball wasn’t exactly what I expected. For one thing I thought it didn’t have a lot of “spirit” – and the fact that this was the first ball I’ve ever went to that I knew less than 5% of the people there. Pathetic for me, I know. But I did enjoy myself, laughing at the jokes with Kylie and Lara and snapping away with my digital camera. However, we left around 1 a.m. and went home.
Saturday was the Annual Sidewalk Arts Festival, something I had been looking forward to since I heard of its existence in the SCAD catalog. An event held by SCAD (of course), it’s open to all SCAD students, alumni, and prospective students. Youngsters are also encouraged to join. Whoever joins is assigned to a “block” on the sidewalks on Forysth Park (the biggest park in Savannah). I think there were over 600 “blocks” available altogether, maybe 300 to SCAD students. I was #55.	Artists hard at work at the Sidewalk Festival, with spectators all over the place. You can see Kylie working on her block - she's squatting on the right.
I think the dog had one too many Skittles (you know, "taste the rainbow"???)	I arrived at around 10:45, 15 minutes before drawing time and we all were given a free box of chalk. This is high-quality chalk I’m talking about – no cheap Crayola pastel colored chalk – but Prang brand chalk. Jumbo sized in, what, 12 brilliant colors. I couldn’t be more excited!
We started off by looking around, “peeking” at what others were going to make until the little light bulbs flashed in our heads. I had come prepared and brought my sketchbook, something I’ve kept and collected since my middle school days and I was more than happy to share what I had with Kylie and Lara. Kylie ended up using one of the greeting cards I got, as so did I (a different card design, of course) … not wanting to end up getting a lawsuit for breaking copyrights, we altered the pictures.	Here's what I ended up drawing. You can't see it from the photo, but the girl's holding a piece of paper that almost looks like a painting but it actually says "Sidewalk Arts Festival - Saturday!"
Here's Kylie in front of her drawing - the original picture was a little girl about to blow out the candles on a birthday cake.	We had about 4 hours to complete our sidewalk masterpieces but I finished pretty early. The guy who had the block next to me decided to go at great lengths and built this glass case (3-D objects are allowed, as long as it doesn’t exceed the height limit, according to the sidewalk police hee hee) and poured water with LIVE goldfish in it. I was a little miffed when he accidentally splashed water on my drawings…but I was able to fix it once the sun did its job by drying the mess up.
The judges had a couple hours to decide who would win prizes. Unfortunately, chances of winning were maybe 400 to 1 so we had to work pretty hard. I have to admit I was pretty proud of my drawing, even though I did think it was a little “simple.” May that be the reason, I didn’t win…but there’s always next year! I was invited to join Kylie, Lara, and some of their (North/South – your pick) Carolina friends to Carowinds, an amusement park similar to Six Flags in South Carolina this upcoming weekend. Alas, there’s a 15 page research paper that’s got to be typed… so looks like I’ll be staying “home” another weekend. And how was YOUR weekend??	Us three in front of the clouds mural...(Mom, that's LARA giving the peace sign - I'm still a Republican with a capital "R"!)

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