While making a late night Ben & Jerry‘s run to 7-11 about an hour ago my eyes were met with an amazing site – carnival rides lighting up Morgan Hill’s night sky!I had no idea there was a carnival in town, so followed the flashing lights, sound of laughter, and smell of cotton candy down another block and over to St. Catherine’s church (across the street from City Hall on Peak Ave.)

It truns out they’ve been planning their annual Family Fall Fun Festival for months now and I simply hadn’t got the word.  Luckily, it will be running all weekend, so there’s still time to stop by and enjoy all the carnival goodness: rides, games, and food of every fattening variety.

Hours:

Saturday – September 19th – 10 am to 10 pm

Sunday – September 20th – 12 pm to 5 pm

Although FourWayFree is based in Southern California, their concert next Saturday (January 31st) at the Ann Sobrato Arts center will be a bit of a homecoming: bassist Berle Dixon and guitarist Jeff Nunes used to own and operate the Music Tree in downtown Morgan Hill.

According to Peggy Zagelow, who gave me the heads up on this show, “[t]heir musical style is sort of like Dave Matthews, John Mayer, Ben Harper, primarily acoustic with added complexity of sax/flute/etc and a fun, upbeat style.”

The concert starts at 7pm and costs $15 – with a local young classic rock cover band opening. The venue is Ann Sobrato Arts center – on the grounds of Sobrato High School – a very nice auditorium with great seats that all have a view of the stage. There is an orchestra pit where people can dance without blocking the view for others. All ages are welcome, the under-18 cost is $9.

You can buy tickets either through Ticketmaster or in person at the Music Tree in Morgan Hill or the box office at Sobrato High School (Tues/Thurs 2-4pm).

Check them out yourself at CDBaby (click on “play all songs” to get a great overview), at their MySpace page, or on iTunes.

It seems one of my roommates is finally ready to make the leap out into the “real world” and find his own place to live.  I’m pretty excited for him and we discussed the idea of a farewell party of sorts.  Since he’ll most likely be leaving March 1st and we’re both movie junkies it didn’t take long for the discussion to morph from “farewell party” to “Oscars party ideas” (in case you’re not up on your award show dates, the 81st Annual Academy Awards will be held on February 22nd).

We pulled some great concepts from Celebrations.com: invitations shaped like ‘Oscar” himself (itself?), Oscars Karaoke (only movie songs allowed), and even an Oscars drinking game for his college buddies (drink when any of the dozens of award show cliches occur).  It’s been a lot of fun (and manageable on a tight budget).  But it leads me to wonder what parties will be missing.  Do you have your polans for Oscar night, yet?  Feel like sharing?

Every Tuesday night one of my roommates goes to the movies at the Cinelux movie theater in Tennant Station along with another client and one of my co-workers.  They go on Tuesday to take advantage of the $5.00 Terrific Tuesdays pricing.  Since Special Engagements ar enot included in this discount pricing they always check the website to make sure their film of choice is available.

Yesterday they went to see Defiance and only noticed after the film that they were actually charged the full $7.50 for their tickets.  When my coworker realized this he spoke to the Assistant Manager and informed him that the film was not marked on the website as a Special Engagement.  Without batting an eye the Assistant manager apologized, informed him that they’d had problems with their “website guy” and handed over four free passes for a future film.  Now that is customer service.  Not only that, but they then got the problem fixed in less than 24 hours as the website now correctly lists the status of this film.

Sure, my coworker was recognized as being a weekly regular, so this may well have contributed to the theater’s generosity, but it’s still a perfect example of what cutomer service really means and I wanted to take a moment to applaud their efforts.

Wow, I almost missed the 19th Annual Taste of Morgan Hill festival! In my defense, there has been almost no promotion of the event other than the hanging of (dateless) banners throughout downtown. Even the Morgan Hill Times has only run two small blurbs about it – one calling for volunteers back on September 8th and a second on Friday with a grand total of two sentences and under a similarly sized blurb about the downtown merchants being upset over the vacancies in city-owned buildings.

But, enough kvetching.  It’s time to get excited!

The annual Taste of Morgan Hill celebration will be held in downtown Morgan Hill on Monterey between Dunne and Main this weekend – September 27th & 28th from 10am to 6pm. Live music and entertainment will be available on two separate stages and will include JJ Hawg, Shane Dwight, the Hot Rods Band, Usual Suspects, Fast Lane Band, magic by Pete Gradowski and performances from the United Martial Arts Academy, Dance Unlimited and more!

Food and drink should be abundantly available as usual – after all the intended purpose is to showcase the abundant harvests we have here in Morgan Hill.  There will also be a classic car show and South Valley Quilt Association will be holding their Harvest Quilt & Fiber Arts Show at the Morgan Hill Community & Cultural Center (17000 Monterey Road).  A Taste of Morgan hill is sponsored by the Morgan Hill Chamber of Commerce.