How did I spend my summer vacation, all three days of it? Working.

Spent the weekend with my mom, who nominally was going along to help me run my booth selling Celtic CDs at the San Diego Highland Games. In reality, though, it was basically me working for her. She's a bit of a control freak, and the business used to be hers, so she took control the way some people take breaths.

It did lead to some occasional friction, and I'll admit I can be very testy and oversensitive at times. But she put up with me, I put up with her, and we did manage to have some fun.

We did a fairly brisk business, paying for the trip and then some. I've come to view most of these trips as public relations outings rather than profit-making ventures. We met a great many people, some of whom came to the festival specifically to buy from us.

An entertaining drive back was had, keeping my mom awake by asking her questions about Arizona history and place names (she works for the state archives and could be considered something of a subject matter expert), and her answering either truthfully or untruthfully as was her wont and me attempting to divine which stories were true and which false. She's very, very good at intermingling the two.

It was nice to get out of the Phoenix heat, but I got a nasty sunburn on my scalp for my troubles.