Current mood:	content
Current music:	Nickel Creek - Smoothie Song

The Fair
Today, the house went to The Puyallup Fair (henceforth known as The Fair, because I can't spell Puyallup :-p). We went in three cars: Nate, Bethany, and Myself in the Westfalia; Kyle and Adam in K's Civic; and Sean and Amanda in their car (never saw it). Though Nate and Bethany joked about how inefficient it was to bring three cars on the way down, because of the various activity levels of all of us, it ended up working perfectly. This was my first time at The Fair (though I have been to the one in Monroe a few times), and it was quite the enjoyable fair experience.

We started with the aminals (as Bethany called them), which included the obvious Horses (draft and microbrew), Cows (free samples!), and Chickens (booooring). Additionally, we saw rabbits! Who knew there were so many different types of rabbits! Everything from 18 day old lops to rabbits so fat they served as their own headrest. Also, the rabbits seems to be generally mellow, despite the huge numbers of people wandering about. Also, it appears that 4H is a friendly organization, and many rabbits from each category received blue ribbons, which I've always associated with winning, so yay for lots of winners.

Then we moved on to crafts. Despite some scary collections (DBZ action figures, Pokemon memoribilia, Hello Kitty), and some prerequisite ones (Barbie, GI joe, PEZ!, Mickey Mouse), there were also some neat ones (Matching ties and watches, all the original Hardy Boys novels, NW minor league baseball). Also, there were legos (I was pleased to see that the one with the most "guns" had won a ribbon), woodworking (the patience I will never have, perhaps), and a huge N gage modular railroad set (different people had made different sections, there was a _huge_ army base one). Got to watch some entertaining infomercial-booths (vacuum attachments, super-chamois, knifes, hydro-massage (that girl had _no_ idea I was staring at her ass... j/k), as well as be amazed by some of the more self-explanatory sales (sewing machines today... God forbid some fractal programmer ever attend a fair, we'd have textile mandlebrots in minutes!).

Then, food. BWAHAHAHA, fair food is a delicatessen of a very plebeian bent. You really have to be in the right frame of mind, otherwise a onion burger with curly fries, fatty scones with jam, fudge, taffy, and root beer floats just doesn't sound like refined eating. Trust me. These fair people have been at it for years, I'm sure they've got the formula for fair food down by now. I mean, cultural heritage. I think I said it best: "On the way home, I had this great dichotomy between 'unghhhh' and 'aaaahhh'. "

Finally, laughing at the impossibility of fair games, watching the end of a very-much-better-than-vancouver-street-hack juggling show, complete with elvis drummer, and bidding Nate and Bethany a fun time at Bill Cosby... Adam, Kyle and I decided we'd done all we'd come there for, and left. To save us from Kyle's choice of Country radio, Adam stuck in Nickel Creek. Though this was a band I'd never heard of, I was a fan almost immediately. It was a perfect ending to our Fair day, with their light and harmonious guitar work, and some interesting lyrics (though nothing too heavy) as well.

Got back, played some three-man cribbage (eeked out a victory over Adam, though his hand-average was 0.2 higher than mine over 10 hands, I counted before him on the last hand, and that was all I needed), and then discussed politics, philosophy, people, and other pertinent points. Though I should relate the line that had us all rolling for about a minute:

Bethany: "Yeah, good time *blah blah* but there were so many republicans."
Zack: *stage whisper* "4 - H."
Bethany: "well, yeah..."
Zack: "Behind every rabbit you saw today was a successful republican"



I'm gonna miss every last one of my friends here, and I can only hope that I've brought them some joy by my time here... or at least some good cooking every once in a while.