Mary Bellamy

Joey Chestnut, left, points to returning champion Takeru Kobayashi during the Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Competition Tuesday, July 4, 2006, in Coney Island, New York. Although Chestnut came close to beating the champion by eating 52 hot dogs, Kobayashi won his sixth straight title by beating his own record and eating 53 and 3/4 hot dogs.

Since my camera is currently riding around somewhere in North Dakota with Tom, I'll just have to make do with pictures of grown men gorging themselves silly in eating contests.

This weekend started off with a bang on Friday, when fellow indexer Hope rented a stretch Hummer limo (because who cares about mileage when gas is hovering near $3 a gallon?) and we hit the town for her bachelorette party. It may be the first time the Midnite Mine has ever had a limo parked out front. For some reason, three guys from the bar hopped into the limo with us, and we had trouble ditching them for a while. We finally shook them loose at Kodiak Jack's. Yes, it's true - I went to a country western bar. After an eventful ride home, I grabbed a few hours of sleep before heading off to dance rehearsal.

In the late afternoon, James called my cabin to see if I wanted to join him with some steaks at fellow blogger Super Smooth Andy-G's cabin. My parents didn't raise me to turn down a free rib eye, so I readily agreed. What followed next was several hours of orgiastic eating and, well, nothing. We met at the cabin, then decided to travel over to visit The Deekers and avail ourselves of his sauna. A mighty fine sauna it was, too, until someone threw a little too much eucalyptus on the rocks, and I had to run outside to breathe. Around that time we started firing up the grill, then stood around staring forlornly at it until we decided that rare was good enough because, dammit, we were hungry! Fully sated on steak, pie and ice cream, we went back to Andy-G's cabin. Around the same time, James and I realized that if stayed out any longer, we'd be sucked into an all-nighter. Since we're getting a little old for that, we high-tailed it out of there and back to the commune.

I awoke on Sunday and peered at my clock. It seemed to say 7:25, and I cursed getting only 6 hours of sleep. Then I realized it actually said 1:25, and spent some time trying to figure out if that was a.m. or p.m. until the realization dawned that I had just slept for 12 hours. I usually get by on about 6, so that was a good sign that the night before had wrecked me. A downpour forced the dance troupe to move our Sunday evening performance inside the Civic Center at Pioneer Park, where they had trouble figuring out the lights and sound system.

Monday was somewhat cloudy, but Amanda and I decided to brave it anyway, threw on our suits and headed for Chena Lakes. When faced with the beach full of kids or the alcohol-free but deserted beach, we made the smart choice: We took the empty beach but drank our beer regardless. The intermittent sun made me wish for a good warm day back in New England, lounging on a beach in Rhode Island. Instead, I listened to a little girl scream as she found a leech on her foot and got caught up on Amanda's life.

Today actually marks another day off for me, but I needed to catch up on some work at the office, so I popped in. I needed to get at a fast computer anyway. The new Johnny Cash album was begging to be downloaded.