A Fair Weekend
Sep. 5th, 2006 02:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
daidoji_giseiAs I thought, I didn't get nearly as much done as I wanted this weekend. I got my package mailed before the post office closed on Saturday, and I got most of my kitchen cleaned (and my I'm-too-lazy-to-look-up-the-recipe version of chicken with 40 cloves of garlic is simmering away in my crock pot), and I got laundry done. Could have been better, could have been worse.
While out running around Saturday afternoon I found myself making a quick browse through the bookshelves of a local thrift store, where I found a book titled The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg. I had never heard of Moe Berg before, but the back of the book informed me that he spoke a dozen languages, was a catcher in major league baseball in the 20s and 30s, and a spy for the OSS during WWII. Of course I had to buy it. I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but after I got home I was flipping through the pages and found this paragraph:
An American missionary named Horace Wilson introduced baseball to Japan in 1872. Influential daimyo (feudal lords) decided that baseball was an American martial art and urged young Japanese boys to develop the American spirit by playing it. The spirit of kendo prevailed, though, with Japanese players attacking baseball like stoic gentlemen warriors, practicing year-round through driving rain and bitter cold, prizing the man who fielded ground balls until his hands bled and treating the umpires with exaggerated obeisance no matter how dreadful their decisions. The game quickly became very popular in Japan.
I can hardly wait to read the rest of it.
Sunday Genevieve, Pam and I got to the state fair, though not without a certain amount of drama. With one thing and another we had put off establishing when we were going and how we were going to get there until Saturday night, at which point a thrilling game of phone tag ensued. It was thrilling because last week Pam had moved into the house she and her SO had just bought, and she didn't have a phone yet. Eventually we got everything sorted out and Genevieve picked me up at my place at noon and we went to get Pam at her job and then we were off to the fair.
After getting in and obtaining a map we started to wander. The only things we were sure we wanted to do was see the quilt show and eat funnel cakes, and since we had five hours at our disposal we weren't in any hurry. We decided to go through a building that had an art show, the food competition exhibits, and knitted and crocheted items. Apparently one of the food categories this year was Spam and there was--I kid you not--a plate of nori rolls made with Spam centers. The three of us just stood silently in front of the case, gazing on this new frontier in fusion cooking. Then we fled to look at the yarn stuff. While looking at the various knitted and crocheted items we started comparing them to the various things we had made in the past year, and eventually we decided that next year we should enter stuff in the fair.
After that we were getting hungry, so we walked up the hill to where the main concentration of food vendors were. G and P are both vegetarians, so they wanted deep-fried cheese on a stick. I found a nearby corn-dog stand that sold not regular corn dogs, but jumbo corn dogs and was thus able to produce a deep-fried meal that was twice as long as theirs. After that we went through the Animal Birthing Pavilion which had sheep with really cute lambs, baby pigs you could pet and an incubating station with several trays of just-out-of-the-shell chicks. It also had some just-hatched Japanese quail chicks, which where about half the size of the chicks. So cute!
The UNL technology display building had a lot of stuff we didn't pay attention to and a 3-d movie loop we did stop for. The movie loop had part of lecture on meat quality which featured a floating, rotating cow skeleton, followed by the life cycle of the lady bug, followed by a night flight through a computer-generated city-scape. Very cool.
At this point we still hadn't found the quilts and we were starting to feel ever-so-slightly irritated. But I caught sight of a Cabela's sign, so we went in to see if they had any good displays of camping equipment. This turned out to one of the funnest parts of the day, because they had a set-up for a game called Mallard Mania. You had a giant picture screen that had real-looking landscapes with ducks flying across, and rifles with laser beams, and the object was to shoot as many ducks as possible. There were three laser-rifles available, so we could all shoot at once. So, it was three women--two of them pacifist vegetarians--versus a horde of ducks. The ducks didn't stand a chance. Not only did we rack up more ducks than the three guys ahead of us, we got into the top-ten score list. As we walked away I told G and P that we probably could have gotten more except that I kept finding myself following the ducks as they fell, still shooting. I guess I was afraid they were faking it or something.
After that it was off to the Small Animal Exhibit, where there were more colors and shapes of rabbit than I had ever dreamed of and we got to pet the world's softest bunnies. They were amazing--if I had one of those rabbits as pet I would never let it go, I'd just spend my days with a rabbit in my hand. Then we decided it was time for funnel cake. P and G shared a powdered sugar cake, but I am an adamant cinnamon-sugar woman so I had one to myself. So good! So bad for you! We finished our treat, washed our hands of sugar and grease and continued our quest for quilts.
Naturally, we found them after we had given up on them entirely and begun looking for something else. They were worth it, however. The colors! The patterns! The meticulous skill in sewing! There are no words. A quarter of the way through I regretting not bringing a note book, because I knew my memory wasn't going to hold all the details of what we saw. But the seeing was wonderful so if you ever get a chance to go to a quilt show, go. Even if you think you aren't interested in quilts, they will be worth looking at.
Then we had to leave, because G had a dinner appointment and P had to go to her other job. We were tired, full of deep-fried junk food and happy. The information on how to enter items in the fair will go up on their website next July, so I hope that we will go next year as exhibitors.
While out running around Saturday afternoon I found myself making a quick browse through the bookshelves of a local thrift store, where I found a book titled The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg. I had never heard of Moe Berg before, but the back of the book informed me that he spoke a dozen languages, was a catcher in major league baseball in the 20s and 30s, and a spy for the OSS during WWII. Of course I had to buy it. I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but after I got home I was flipping through the pages and found this paragraph:
I can hardly wait to read the rest of it.
Sunday Genevieve, Pam and I got to the state fair, though not without a certain amount of drama. With one thing and another we had put off establishing when we were going and how we were going to get there until Saturday night, at which point a thrilling game of phone tag ensued. It was thrilling because last week Pam had moved into the house she and her SO had just bought, and she didn't have a phone yet. Eventually we got everything sorted out and Genevieve picked me up at my place at noon and we went to get Pam at her job and then we were off to the fair.
After getting in and obtaining a map we started to wander. The only things we were sure we wanted to do was see the quilt show and eat funnel cakes, and since we had five hours at our disposal we weren't in any hurry. We decided to go through a building that had an art show, the food competition exhibits, and knitted and crocheted items. Apparently one of the food categories this year was Spam and there was--I kid you not--a plate of nori rolls made with Spam centers. The three of us just stood silently in front of the case, gazing on this new frontier in fusion cooking. Then we fled to look at the yarn stuff. While looking at the various knitted and crocheted items we started comparing them to the various things we had made in the past year, and eventually we decided that next year we should enter stuff in the fair.
After that we were getting hungry, so we walked up the hill to where the main concentration of food vendors were. G and P are both vegetarians, so they wanted deep-fried cheese on a stick. I found a nearby corn-dog stand that sold not regular corn dogs, but jumbo corn dogs and was thus able to produce a deep-fried meal that was twice as long as theirs. After that we went through the Animal Birthing Pavilion which had sheep with really cute lambs, baby pigs you could pet and an incubating station with several trays of just-out-of-the-shell chicks. It also had some just-hatched Japanese quail chicks, which where about half the size of the chicks. So cute!
The UNL technology display building had a lot of stuff we didn't pay attention to and a 3-d movie loop we did stop for. The movie loop had part of lecture on meat quality which featured a floating, rotating cow skeleton, followed by the life cycle of the lady bug, followed by a night flight through a computer-generated city-scape. Very cool.
At this point we still hadn't found the quilts and we were starting to feel ever-so-slightly irritated. But I caught sight of a Cabela's sign, so we went in to see if they had any good displays of camping equipment. This turned out to one of the funnest parts of the day, because they had a set-up for a game called Mallard Mania. You had a giant picture screen that had real-looking landscapes with ducks flying across, and rifles with laser beams, and the object was to shoot as many ducks as possible. There were three laser-rifles available, so we could all shoot at once. So, it was three women--two of them pacifist vegetarians--versus a horde of ducks. The ducks didn't stand a chance. Not only did we rack up more ducks than the three guys ahead of us, we got into the top-ten score list. As we walked away I told G and P that we probably could have gotten more except that I kept finding myself following the ducks as they fell, still shooting. I guess I was afraid they were faking it or something.
After that it was off to the Small Animal Exhibit, where there were more colors and shapes of rabbit than I had ever dreamed of and we got to pet the world's softest bunnies. They were amazing--if I had one of those rabbits as pet I would never let it go, I'd just spend my days with a rabbit in my hand. Then we decided it was time for funnel cake. P and G shared a powdered sugar cake, but I am an adamant cinnamon-sugar woman so I had one to myself. So good! So bad for you! We finished our treat, washed our hands of sugar and grease and continued our quest for quilts.
Naturally, we found them after we had given up on them entirely and begun looking for something else. They were worth it, however. The colors! The patterns! The meticulous skill in sewing! There are no words. A quarter of the way through I regretting not bringing a note book, because I knew my memory wasn't going to hold all the details of what we saw. But the seeing was wonderful so if you ever get a chance to go to a quilt show, go. Even if you think you aren't interested in quilts, they will be worth looking at.
Then we had to leave, because G had a dinner appointment and P had to go to her other job. We were tired, full of deep-fried junk food and happy. The information on how to enter items in the fair will go up on their website next July, so I hope that we will go next year as exhibitors.
