We arrived at our park-and-ride location and waited less than 5 minutes before we caught the first bus to the fair.
Our first stop was the pet center, where we saw and petted some interesting dogs. As usual, Robert made a friend for life out of one dog, a Boston Terrier accompanied by an owner with major Resting Bitch Face. But when Robert started scratching her dog, she started laughing with glee as her dog lolled and squirmed in bliss. Later I asked Robert how he knew where to scratch and he said that he'd noticed the dog trying to scratch itself on its back under the collar.
Outside we watched a dog agility show. The agility show was cool because they demonstrated dogs at different levels of skill running the course and showed us some different training techniques they use. We saw everything from puppies to retired dogs. The two young Golden Retrievers were hilarious because after doing the two initial jumps, instead of continuing around the circle of the course, they both jumped over the rope defining the ring into the bleachers to greet all the humans. We had the opportunity to meet the dogs after the show, and a friendly English Springer Spaniel took a special liking to me and covered my chin and neck in dog kisses. (Wearing that bacon grease as aftershave really paid off!)
Next we visited the butterfly room that consisted mostly of blue morphos and some species with "owl" in the name. The butterflies liked landing on people--we saw a few kids with shirts covered front and back with dozens of butterflies. It was also kind of sad, though, because we saw more than a few dead butterflies where they'd been crushed by people's feet.
I had heard someone on the bus talking about the prize-winning giant pumpkin so we headed to the agriculture building to check it out. And indeed, there were some very large vegetables there, as well as a wide selection of more normal-sized vegetables and all other kinds of things that grew in the ground. I wish I'd taken a photo of the Grand Champion Christmas tree (Norway spruce)--it was stunning! I could expand my ornament collection threefold if I had a tree like that. It was not astonishingly huge or anything (though it was good sized)--it was the fact that it was so dense with absolutely perfect branchlets for holding ornaments.
For lunch I had a small hamburger and a vegan cinnamon oatmeal scone (purchased from different vendors). It was such a beautiful day. Sunny but not very warm (75 F at the peak) and with a cool breeze. We found a nice area with picnic tables not far from the main food area to sit and have our lunch.
Then we headed to the barn for the Open rabbit show, which started at noon (otherwise it would have been our first stop!). Unlike the previous week, when the 4H rabbit show was held, the room was not split between rabbits and birds (except for a small corner with maybe half a dozen cages of even-more-ill-tempered-than-usual greylag geese, a couple pigeons, and a couple ducks). This meant that they were able to create nice wide aisles between the cages, whereas it's usually only as wide as two people standing shoulder to shoulder (or one stroller, wheelchair, or mechanized scooter). Not all of the rabbits had arrived yet, but there were still plenty to look at and an awesome amount of room to maneuver for photographing them. After I was done photographing, I spent some extra time soaking up the mini rexes with my eyes. (I had gotten lucky earlier that one of the owners was there with his mini rex out of the cage, so I did get to pet one, even though they didn't have any rabbits out for visitors to interact with as happens with the 4H show.)
It's interesting that the breeds in the two rabbit shows were not the same, although obviously there was a lot of overlap. For example, the 4H show didn't have any harlequins (the stripey rabbits) and the Open show didn't have any French lops (the huge lops) or Flemish giants. But between the two shows, we saw a good variety and large number of buns.
Our last stop was the natural resources area where we spent some time looking at a bunch of North American ducks in eclipse plumage in this reedy artificial pond they set up. At first glance, it was like, OK, that's a lot of mallards. But as we watched, other species started to pop out at us. They probably had 10 different species in there. Let's see if I can remember: mallard, black duck, shoveler, canvasback, scaup, ring-necked duck, coot, wigeon, green-winged teal, wood duck, possibly a pintail (will need to check my photo against the book)...so yes, at least 10 species.
We headed back to the bus stop and waited about 5 minutes before our bus came to take us back to the park-and-ride lot. I cannot express how great the timing of this worked out for us.
On the way home, we stopped at the store and bought some ice cream to enjoy in the air-conditioned comfort of our apartment. But by the time we got home and the ice cream had frozen up enough to eat, it was dinner time, so turkey sandwich then ice cream. And a LOT of lazing around for the rest of the evening.
Lying in bed waiting to fall asleep, I kept seeing rabbits in increasingly strange circumstances. First they were in cages or on tables (like at the 4H show), then sitting on the counter of various food vendor tents, running on the dog agility course, etc. I kept laughing, then telling Robert what I was seeing. I eventually fell asleep, and the process was much more entertaining than counting sheep.
"Purple Prep Simplicity"--Saturday, 9/3/16
Jeans, purple gingham, pearls. I do not go so far as girly pink bedspreads or Jack Rogers sandals but otherwise, a good attempt. Nicely prepped up, Reverse Inspiration player!
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| From @preppyoutfits on Twitter (via Pinterest) |
I was initially going to wear this to work for casual Friday. It's pushing the limits of what I find to be acceptable summer casual Friday wear (which can be more casual than other times of the year), but I've already seen people wearing some crazy things. Perhaps the most amusing was a woman on my floor (an HR employee, I think) wearing a pair of leopard print flip flops like I wear in the shower. I'm wearing actual shoes so I'm doing OK here. But on Friday I went to see bunnies instead, so the outfit moved to Saturday. That works too.
Light purple gingham button up shirt (thrifted, Kohls), $1.50/wear
Skinny jeans (JCP), $0.71/wear
Purple flats (thrifted, Target), $1.75/wear
Double strand pearls (Macy's), $4.06/wear
Outfit total: $8.02/wear
Not everyone flops around on a Saturday afternoon in fur like this lovely French lop and her friend.
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