It's 2012, so I'm thinking that if the world is going to be ending soon, I should probably get back to leaving my legacy for the ant people to read after we're all decimated.
Anyway, to my readers from last year, I apologize for my rather lackluster conclusion to last year's blog - I know I kind of faded off mid-August (okay, mid-June) and you never heard from me again, but this year I can definitely say that I'm a changed woman. I'm a Mrs., after all! Well, maybe I'll still be the same old flake I've always been, but at least I come with more jewelry this time around.
The good thing is, that with a year's experience under my belt, gardening this year should be a piece of cake. I've learned a few things the hard way, but was able to rake in heaps of vegetables despite the complications.
August of last year was so busy that I never had time to blog; don't get me wrong, I desperately wanted to tell you all about my conclusion to the summer, but weddings don't plan themselves, and thus, I was swept up into floral arrangements and found myself looking at the calendar and it was June 2012. The end of August, naturally, brought the most surreal of experiences of my life thusfar - the pinnacle of culture, the climax of my lifetime achievements. Yes, I experienced the great, great, Great Minnesota Get-Together. The Minnesota State Fair.
I was called up by a friend of mine who is from Minnesota, who informed me that I couldn't very well live more than a year in the Land of 10,000 Lakes without attending at least one Fair. So I agreed to accompany her to the Fair, because she baited me with promises of things like Wine Ice-Cream and people-watching like I'd never seen before. We hopped on a bus, and the next thing I knew, I was being swept up into the crowds, thrusting forward into a land of bizarre foods, strange fanny-packs and fake roads. Yes, there are many deep-fat-fried delicacies, most of which are on sticks, but this is something that I was completely prepared for - it was the menagerie within the Fair that I was most unprepared for.
I guess I should preface this story with the show that I watched a few days before my excursion to the Fair. It was a special on the local news, which I was initially not paying much attention to. The newscaster was talking about the Fair, and how that very day they were exhibiting the pigs, which caught my attention, because, well, who doesn't love a pig? There was a boy, maybe 9 years-old, being interviewed for the program, and he was bragging about his pig, Gilbert, and how he was going to win the blue ribbon. As the newscaster interviewed him, the pigs paraded in the background, showing off their grace, their strength, and best of all - the cajones on these pigs! I have never seen something so obscene on the early morning news. I hate to go into too much more detail, but it was like two fleshy water-balloons bouncing around, it was horrific! I felt like any place that had pig testicles that enormous and on display was certainly someplace I had to be.
We paid our admission, entered the grounds, and were shuttled through the crowd into a huge barn, where I ran into some friends from work. On a side note, I never really believed in the whole, "It's a small world" thing until I moved out here. There was an awful lot of commotion going on in the center of the barn, and there was stadium seating around the area, where people had all gathered to watch something clearly captivating. I stood on the risers, and to my horror, there, in the middle of hundreds of people, on closed-circuit television monitoring, people pressed against the fence, was a cow, GIVING BIRTH.
Now, I'm all for a good time. I really am. I've made fun times out of a trip to Shop-Rite. But something tells me that this cow was not having a good time, and that something was the blood-curdling squeals she let out on regular intervals. And as if that wasn't enough, her bulging, dripping rear-end was swinging to and fro with little calf hooves protruding, while young children sat with their faces literally centimeters away from the orifice. My friends and I dubbed this the "Splash Zone," and tried to stay far away. People began cheering when they saw that the little calf was progressing into the world of public humiliation and spectacle, and the cow continued to groan. Finally, the baby calf slid onto the ground, rolled around in the hay a few times, and everybody went on their way after a few hoots and clinks of glasses. It was, in my opinion, the strangest experience of my life. Imagine if human people had to go through such an ordeal? It would be called TLC and it would be on my TiVo.
The remainder of the Fair included a rodeo, some deep-fat-fried Hot Dish on a stick (which is a casserole, for those of my East Coast fans), and deep-fat-fried pickles. I don't know where those pickles have been all my life, but I'll tell you where they'll be for the rest of it, and that's in my mouth. If you'll notice in this story, I've intentionally capitalized the "F" in Fair, because it is, in my opinion, the best place that I have ever been. Happy, fat, crazy people all standing around eating fried foods and watching animals in various states of sexual reproductivity, that's my idea of a banner day.
My mother is coming out this year, and I am insisting on taking her to the Great Minnesota Hoe-Down, or whatever they call it. I can't wait to see the look on her face when we get to the Swine Pavilion.
August of last year was so busy that I never had time to blog; don't get me wrong, I desperately wanted to tell you all about my conclusion to the summer, but weddings don't plan themselves, and thus, I was swept up into floral arrangements and found myself looking at the calendar and it was June 2012. The end of August, naturally, brought the most surreal of experiences of my life thusfar - the pinnacle of culture, the climax of my lifetime achievements. Yes, I experienced the great, great, Great Minnesota Get-Together. The Minnesota State Fair.
I was called up by a friend of mine who is from Minnesota, who informed me that I couldn't very well live more than a year in the Land of 10,000 Lakes without attending at least one Fair. So I agreed to accompany her to the Fair, because she baited me with promises of things like Wine Ice-Cream and people-watching like I'd never seen before. We hopped on a bus, and the next thing I knew, I was being swept up into the crowds, thrusting forward into a land of bizarre foods, strange fanny-packs and fake roads. Yes, there are many deep-fat-fried delicacies, most of which are on sticks, but this is something that I was completely prepared for - it was the menagerie within the Fair that I was most unprepared for.
I guess I should preface this story with the show that I watched a few days before my excursion to the Fair. It was a special on the local news, which I was initially not paying much attention to. The newscaster was talking about the Fair, and how that very day they were exhibiting the pigs, which caught my attention, because, well, who doesn't love a pig? There was a boy, maybe 9 years-old, being interviewed for the program, and he was bragging about his pig, Gilbert, and how he was going to win the blue ribbon. As the newscaster interviewed him, the pigs paraded in the background, showing off their grace, their strength, and best of all - the cajones on these pigs! I have never seen something so obscene on the early morning news. I hate to go into too much more detail, but it was like two fleshy water-balloons bouncing around, it was horrific! I felt like any place that had pig testicles that enormous and on display was certainly someplace I had to be.
We paid our admission, entered the grounds, and were shuttled through the crowd into a huge barn, where I ran into some friends from work. On a side note, I never really believed in the whole, "It's a small world" thing until I moved out here. There was an awful lot of commotion going on in the center of the barn, and there was stadium seating around the area, where people had all gathered to watch something clearly captivating. I stood on the risers, and to my horror, there, in the middle of hundreds of people, on closed-circuit television monitoring, people pressed against the fence, was a cow, GIVING BIRTH.
Now, I'm all for a good time. I really am. I've made fun times out of a trip to Shop-Rite. But something tells me that this cow was not having a good time, and that something was the blood-curdling squeals she let out on regular intervals. And as if that wasn't enough, her bulging, dripping rear-end was swinging to and fro with little calf hooves protruding, while young children sat with their faces literally centimeters away from the orifice. My friends and I dubbed this the "Splash Zone," and tried to stay far away. People began cheering when they saw that the little calf was progressing into the world of public humiliation and spectacle, and the cow continued to groan. Finally, the baby calf slid onto the ground, rolled around in the hay a few times, and everybody went on their way after a few hoots and clinks of glasses. It was, in my opinion, the strangest experience of my life. Imagine if human people had to go through such an ordeal? It would be called TLC and it would be on my TiVo.
The remainder of the Fair included a rodeo, some deep-fat-fried Hot Dish on a stick (which is a casserole, for those of my East Coast fans), and deep-fat-fried pickles. I don't know where those pickles have been all my life, but I'll tell you where they'll be for the rest of it, and that's in my mouth. If you'll notice in this story, I've intentionally capitalized the "F" in Fair, because it is, in my opinion, the best place that I have ever been. Happy, fat, crazy people all standing around eating fried foods and watching animals in various states of sexual reproductivity, that's my idea of a banner day.
My mother is coming out this year, and I am insisting on taking her to the Great Minnesota Hoe-Down, or whatever they call it. I can't wait to see the look on her face when we get to the Swine Pavilion.
