Did you know it’s Apple Blossom time? With all the banners around town, the carnival getting set up at Riverside Park and the food and entertainment booths up and running at Centennial Park, I’m guessing you know it’s here.

This will be my second Apple Blossom Festival and I’m really excited about it. You see, growing up in the suburbs on the West Side there weren’t any big community festivals when I was a kid. The closest thing to a community festival was Seafair, and I thought Seafair was pretty boring.

It wasn’t until I worked in Ellensburg three years ago that I discovered the joys of small town community festivals. The Ellensburg Rodeo is a massive event for the community about 75 miles south of Wenatchee. While I have some personal, work-related trauma connected to the Rodeo that I should have gotten over by now, I do recommend putting on your cowboy boots and spurs and heading over to my old ‘hood to check it out. Besides, from my experience, a rodeo is quite the cocktail of culture, and a little bit of culture never hurt.

I mention Apple Blossom because I’m planning out my assignments for ABF (that’s newsroom slang for Apple Blossom Festival) and I’m geekily excited about what I’m setting out to cover.

Today I’m working on finding out if there’s such a thing as parade-chair etiquette. I’m curious about what people do if someone steals their seat that has been parked along the parade route for weeks. Tomorrow I’m hoping to hop on board a float in the children’s parade to videotape the parade from a float’s point of view.

Speaking of video …

The World has a whole page dedicated to Apple Blossom stuff. My photojournalist friends here in the newsroom will also be making one video a day about an Apple Blossom event. Check out today’s video about the food fair below. You can scope out more World videos here.