winning good art and bad steak

I did a something! A cool something!

I won the City of Texarkana's photo contest a couple weeks ago.  I won the "community events" category and Best in Show with this photo below:

The photo is of my friend (and ren faire merchant and supporter) throwing beads in the Mardi Gras parade a couple years ago. The photo isn't the best quality, but I chose it because it features a faire person, Mardi Gras, downtown and a historical building. I guess that's what they were looking for and I won!

I didn't even know there was a real prize. I was quite content to only have my photo featured on the city's website but it turns out the prize was a staycation and free dinner at a local hotel. Woooo!! Me and the husband sent to kids to spend the night with my mom and started the evening at the TRAHC's (Texarkana Regional Arts & Humanities Council)  29th Annual Juried Exhibit Opening Reception for some art and wine.

We arrived fashionably late. Wait. Let me stop there.

Ok, what's the deal with people not dressing up for events anymore?

The public invitation stressed business attire but I guess blue jeans and Hawaiian print shirts are the thing now? Me and the husband have been to a few local events... FORMAL events where people have showed up in work uniforms, jeans and tee shirts. We once attended a formal charity banquet and I was absolutely appalled to see that my husband and I, the volunteers and one doctor were the only one's in formal attire out of about 200 people. One woman's dress was so short, she squatted down to pick something up and I could see all that she wasn't wearing under her dress. I rushed over to her to inform her and she was quite grateful for the warning. Dress appropriately to folks. No one should be able to see your cooter at a formal event.

I brought my camera but totally left the card at home so I had to use my phone to snap pics from the evening.  All of the is from artists in the region.

A middle aged purple haired pianist with an eyebrow piercing? Yes, please!

The hotel lobby ^^

After the reception we picked up booze at the liquor store, got to the hotel, checked in and headed for dinner. It was almost 9pm so the dining area wasn't very busy but there was only one server who was being ran between waiting tables and a room service. It took foreeeeeeever to get our food and drinks, we were starving and the prices were outrageous! 

Luckily dinner came with the contest winnings because we would never ever pay that much for food unless it made us poop diamonds. The food was decent but my salmon was absolutely crusted in salt that had to be scraped off to make it edible and husband's steak was super poor quality. Not worth the price at all. Snobby snob meat talk. Blah, blah, blah.

We got to the room and realized that we were too dang tired for any "special relations" so we sat on the couch and drank and watched cartoons just like we do every single night...

And it was great.