The last two weekends have been glorious in their packed Saturdays. The first weekend in October, I convinced my friend Elk to come with me to Dixon's Lambtown USA. I've been intending to make the trip out to this fair for years, ever since I was dating Sweetness and driving by the billboard for it on the way to Woodland. Never was able to make it — either I'd forget the weekend and miss it, or have something else planned for that time — but this year I made a resolution to go, wrote it into my calendar, tried to talk my knitting sister into joining me. (She did not, alas.) Totally worth it: it's a small festival, something completely unlike the overcrowded chaos of fairs and festivals that you come across in the Bay Area. The entry fee was dirt cheap ($2), there was easy parking ($5, across the street, and it only took two minutes to walk from my parked car to the main entrance), and the food was actually well-priced:
This plate was $6 for the whole thing. In SF, it would have been $12, easy.
This year was the second one in which the lamb festival had joined up with a regional alpaca festival ... which meant that the whole place was heaven for a meat-eating animal-fiber-loving knitter.
They look deliciously soft and mellow.
Sheep-shearing competition. Seriously.
Holy crap a lot of sheeps.
Part of the petting zoo someone had set up in the middle of the festival. There were also ducks, and bunnies, and puppies, and kittens, and crazy chickens.
I also picked up a cheap incredible sheep skin, something I've wanted for a long time. It's kind of like this one from Ikea, but thicker and brown and so much softer than anything the Swedes can pump out of their clean lines of design. I have it draped over the back of my desk chair at the moment, and it makes me so incredibly happy, you'd probably be sick if you saw it.
I'm definitely going again next year, if at all possible.
After Lambtown I had to head down to Mountain View for my sister's birthday party, which was interesting, and slightly reminiscent of the parties I used to have at my place in high school: lots of food out for munching, people hanging around, doing their thing with music in the background. Funny.
This Saturday, my ceramics friends got together with some others for a BBQ in Golden Gate Park, oysters featured as the main dish. We got there just as a kid's party was finishing up, and they left us their awesome bounce house to jump around in for a couple hours until the rental company came by to pick it up.
I haven't been in one of these for years. Chuck and Norma had a great time.
Meat and oysters
It's Fleet Week in SF this weekend, so every once in a while there would be some awesome aerial work overhead. I'd been watching the practice runs for a couple days already from my 39th floor view at work, but it was still great to see them from the point of view of below.
Doing a loop. Hard to see the plane.
The crowd watching the Blue Angels.
After the barbecue I headed to a party at Claire's house, where about 90% of the attendees were French or fluent French speakers. Most of the time when I was part of the conversation they were polite and spoke in English, but I really had my work cut out for me when they lapsed and started going on in le français. There was a point where I was just drunk enough to be able to speak in decent sentences and participate fully in a conversation, but it's pretty obvious that my foreign-language skills are utterly un-keen. Definitely time to start practicing again, maybe take a couple refresher courses to re-instill some vocabulary in my wee brain.
On an unrelated note, I think I threw out my back, but not sure how. All I know is that I have problems picking things up off the floor, and even rolling over in bed hurts like hell. My primary care physician recommended a chiropractor that's local to me, so I may have an appointment for a session soon. Question: when the hell did I get so old? My body has betrayed me. Sob.
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