It must be fall!

As the title says, it must be fall. The Santa Cruz county fair is in town, and we went to check it out this week. Please bear with me for these fuzzy camera-phone pictures. I was too lazy to bring my actual camera.

We checked out the pig races…

My daughter, also a ham.

Devon, climbing a wall

Waiting, um, patiently for his funnel cake.

All right!

Note that this particular place also had the very horrifying ‘deep fried twinkie’. As an homage to Doonesbury and the Krispy Kreme blogging, I thought I would go ahead and try one of these things and report on it to my readers. I did this, you understand, at great personal risk… I live only 20 minutes from the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, where a person can procure one of these things year-round. In the interest of science, though, I got one. The first bite was pretty unremarkable – they coat the thing in funnel cake so it basically tasted like a sorta thick funnel cake. But then, I got to the filling. I just have to say… the filling in a twinkie, heated up, has a particularly notable mouth feel. It’s all drippy and syrupy and warm and sugary and… ew. Just gross. I give it a strong 2 out of 10. Perhaps next time I’ll try the deep-fried Snicker bar instead. Or maybe I’ll just give it a pass…

This weekend at Victoria’s game I managed to finish one of the books I was reading… Gil’s All-Fright Diner. For those of us who are steeped in the somewhat geeky role playing/horror/sci fi world, this is a must read. A laugh-out-loud book. In fact, I feel I should offer my sincerest apologies to the people at Victoria’s football game. I swear I wasn’t laughing because our team threw an interception. Even if your only exposure to vampires and werewolves is old reruns of Buffy, I’m betting you’ll love this book.

In other horror news, look what I found outside of my grocery store:

No, those are not Sugar Pie Pumpkins. They are not. They are jack-o-lantern pumpkins and it’s just the middle of September. Fortunately, I did not encounter Jolly old Saint Nick near the display, although I’m sure he’ll be there sometime next week.