Loaded up, fun fair

Yesterday I had to meet a truck filled with supplies for my flooring job.  They off loaded three palettes of tile, thin set, grout and more.  When added to the two huge shed boxes that were already in there, my garage has suddenly become quite full.  It’s both exciting and intimidating having all the stuff there as it means the work involved with getting all of these boxes turned into home improvements is right around the corner.  I am now waiting to get an install date from Home Depot so I can plan around it accordingly.  I expect to be off from work for several days while this all goes down.

Instead of driving all the way back to the office I just worked from home the rest of the day.  On my lunch break I headed out back and knocked out another 100 reps in my 1000 pull up challenge.  At this point I only have 250 reps to go. There is some chicken footage injected in there as well.

Speaking of the chickens, they were out free ranging all afternoon.  It seems the new chicken that we have now named Lucy, due to her reddish brown color, has now more or less been accepted as one of the flock.  She was side by side with the other chickens most every time I checked on them.  Both Cindy and I are relieved.

When Cindy got home we headed over to the fair.  It seemed pretty busy for a Tuesday night.  Our first stop was for some food since we were both hungry.  We chose to get arepas from the same tiny Mexican woman that we patronized at last years fair.  Just like last year, the corn/cheese goodness of an arepa hit the spot.

We had started checking out all of the animals when we heard the announcement for the Motorcycle Maniacs show starting so we made a detour.  The show was filled with mostly low grade entertainment.  The most excitement was at the very end where they had dirt bikes circling inside one of those mesh globes which had some legitimate high risk danger.

After the show we went back to looking at chickens.  Of course this year we have an entirely different perspective and appreciation of chickens after owning them for most of the last year.  Some of the breeds were just so beautiful.  It gave Cindy and I ideas for other breeds we would like to add to the flock once the new coop arrangements are in place.

We hit the beer tent where they were selling shamrock adorned Bud Light aluminum “bottles” which were a must buy since it was St Patricks day.

Cindy then convinced me to spend $2 to see the amazing serpent woman.  The sign outside said she was a “living snake woman”, an exhibit I have seen at the fair for the last 14 years but never actually checked out first hand.  Having some beer in me made me more agreeable to seeing this “amazing” sight.

So after handing the old woman our two 1 dollar bills she poked her head around the corner of the tent to make sure the snake woman was ready for visitors which evidently she was.

The serpent lady was kept behind a fence, for our protection surely.  Both Cindy and I laughed out loud when we saw her.  It was a young woman with her head poked through a table with fake plants and a rubber snake body lying on top.  Luckily the snake woman spoke english, I asked her if she minded if I took my picture with her, which she agreed to.  I found it funny that even half snake/half human mutants have iPhones which she surely used to browse Facebook during lulls in the amazed spectators.  I wonder how much snake people earn in a night?  I emerged from the tent totally content that I got my $1 worth of entertainment.

We grabbed some other fair food as we walked around like jalapeno poppers and a soft pretzel.  We walked through the hard core carnie area which is always a bit annoying to me.  I hate being accosted to play fair games of “skill” for junk I don’t want.  It seemed like I was accosted a little less than normal, my fresh head shave and ample facial hair probably helped a bit in that regard.

So we wanted to go into the livestock area but it was closed because they were doing the pig show.  It was run in a manner very similar to a dog show except the pigs were brought out by weight class.  Each pig had a kid as it’s handler.  The kids used a little stick looking thing to try to steer the pigs around the ring but many of them were comically bad at doing so.  The pigs, who during the fair spend 99% of their time inside small holding pens, were very excited when let loose in the big judging ring.  Many of them would run around like excited dogs, it was very cute.

There was a judge that was walking around observing all of the pigs carefully.  He would then give an incredibly detailed description of the winning pigs attributes, this guy took his job quite seriously.  Cindy and I sat and watched the rest of the show which probably lasted over a half hour.  We felt both happiness watching the pigs running around acting like big fat dogs and sadness knowing the ultimate destination for most if not all of them would be on somebody’s plate.

After the pig show we went into the petting zoo area.  We got to feed all sorts of animals including a camel.  Cindy however fell in love with the goats, especially the baby goats.  Once we ran out of carrots to feed them Cindy started petting the goats and was surprised that they actually liked it.  She petted a pregnant female goat and a number of baby goats for at least 15 minutes.  It was very cute how they interacted.

Before we left we got into the large livestock area which was closed during the pig show.  We were surprised that all of the pigs were on their sides asleep, I guess the pig show must really wear them out.  There was only one pig that was standing up and awake.

Cindy knelt down and rubbed his head which you could tell he obviously liked.  He started making noises that we interpreted as approval.    He turned himself so he was right against the front of the pen so Cindy could pet him better.  It literally felt like Cindy was petting a dog.

We could hardly believe it when the pig proceeded to lay down right in front of the gate as Cindy was rubbing him.  If she stopped petting him he would stand up and make noise like he wanted her to continue, once she did he would eventually lay down again, content.  It was so cute.  Of course it broke our heart when we needed to get going as it was almost 10PM at that point.  Cindy would have adopted the pig in a heart beat.

We got home tired but content.  We had a good time, it makes it more fun since Cindy and I have such similar likes of most things as well as feelings about animals.  We will be back in 2016.