Wednesday, July 28, 2004
The Girl w/ Combination Skin
Last night I went to the county fair with co-workers B and P. I'd never been to a county fair before, despite growing up in a rural area. The house my parents built is relatively isolated - and, unfortunately, is growing less so every year. Our nearest neighbor (my mother's youngest older brother and his family) had chickens and turkeys in a pen between our houses at one point, and he had two ponies, as well. The next nearest neighbor had dairy cows, and his pastureland borders on my parents' front yard, a picturesque rustic barbed wire fence separating the two properties. During summers when we were kids, playing outside often included sessions of mooing at cows (sometimes they'd moo back, which was the whole point, of course) as well as occasional calls over to the neighbor to let him know a cow or two had gotten out and was wandering down our driveway.
The farms were around us, we didn't live on one, and the only thing I recall doing through 4-H is growing a garden at the bottom of the backyard one summer. I won a blue ribbon. I remember that the extension agent was highly appreciative of my squash and cucumbers.
There are rides and concessions and contests and animals at the fair. B and P were really into the concessions as certain foods are only available during the fair - like elephant ears and pineapple whip ice cream cones - and each had her favorites (not to mention the list of things P was supposed to pick up for her family). The corn dogs were excellent, I must say. We checked out the 4-H displays and the different contests. (I began to suspect that my blue-ribbon garden was not such a big deal, after all. Goodness knows the gardens I've planted since then have only yielded excellent tomatoes - it's hard not to have good tomatoes in this part of Indiana. Eggplant were puny and downright obstinate two years in a row. It's easy to lose heart.) The tractor parade was something my dad would have loved. The horses were beautiful; there was one named Shadowfax.
The evening was interesting; I learned more about my co-workers, and I saw a different side of this area. I'm a little disappointed that we didn't go look at the chickens and rabbits.
The night before last, someone's dart game drastically improved while someone else's drastically unimproved. The first win was a bit of a shock. The third really built up my - er, someone's confidence, even with the other someone's nicotine-withdrawal excuse.
Writing? Oh, I'm Eberronning - so much so that I'm having weird dreams starring friends and acquaintances I haven't thought of in years. Apparently since we last spoke, many of them have taken up residence in an Eberronesque world. At least one of them is a changeling now.
The farms were around us, we didn't live on one, and the only thing I recall doing through 4-H is growing a garden at the bottom of the backyard one summer. I won a blue ribbon. I remember that the extension agent was highly appreciative of my squash and cucumbers.
There are rides and concessions and contests and animals at the fair. B and P were really into the concessions as certain foods are only available during the fair - like elephant ears and pineapple whip ice cream cones - and each had her favorites (not to mention the list of things P was supposed to pick up for her family). The corn dogs were excellent, I must say. We checked out the 4-H displays and the different contests. (I began to suspect that my blue-ribbon garden was not such a big deal, after all. Goodness knows the gardens I've planted since then have only yielded excellent tomatoes - it's hard not to have good tomatoes in this part of Indiana. Eggplant were puny and downright obstinate two years in a row. It's easy to lose heart.) The tractor parade was something my dad would have loved. The horses were beautiful; there was one named Shadowfax.
The evening was interesting; I learned more about my co-workers, and I saw a different side of this area. I'm a little disappointed that we didn't go look at the chickens and rabbits.
The night before last, someone's dart game drastically improved while someone else's drastically unimproved. The first win was a bit of a shock. The third really built up my - er, someone's confidence, even with the other someone's nicotine-withdrawal excuse.
Writing? Oh, I'm Eberronning - so much so that I'm having weird dreams starring friends and acquaintances I haven't thought of in years. Apparently since we last spoke, many of them have taken up residence in an Eberronesque world. At least one of them is a changeling now.
