Niska-Day Photos

With getting sick, I forgot all about my Niska-Day photos.

We had the debut of an actual float this year, courtesy of Price Chopper. The crowd cheered for Cookie Monster, and Cute W also cheered for Price Chopper, yelling, “Where’s Shop-Rite now, huh? Where’s their float!?!”

We happily accepted Shop-Rite water bottles later. And who donated the bananas? I lost track.

There were some extraordinarily cute animals in the petting zoo area.

M’s friends’ moms headed to the free pony rides on auto-pilot before the girls stopped, each declaring that she was not interested in riding a pony anymore. They are grown-up 4th graders now, after all. The next day’s paper featured a 13-year-old who did ride a pony. I don’t know man: those ponies were little.

Here’s an old friend of ours, Merdwyn the Mediocre. He saw M’s tragically un-twisted and deflated balloon and fixed it right up.

Then he graciously ignored one of M’s friends, who kept calling him Santa Claus instead of Merdwyn. That was a near-magical feat. Myself, I had to struggle not to slap her. Although, of course, I was already nauseated and feverish at the time.

Here’s M and her friend walking to go get caricatures with Phil Singer (they were adorable, by the way). M’s in full Niskayuna regalia. Only moments before they’d had their arms slung around each other’s shoulders. Alas, I missed it.

Still sweet, though.