Bloomsburg Fair = Chicken Pretzels and Huge Cows

So Sara and I went up to Bloomsburg for the annual fair they do up there. Its a pretty amazing event, with amazing people, livestock, food, I mean pretty regular state fair stuff but in coal country, the raddest place on earth.

Some highlights include:

Livestock: Holy crap I saw the largest cow I have ever seen in my entire life. I can't wait for Sara to get the picture over to me. I can't describe it anymore. You'll have to see it. Also there were giant cocks and cute bunnies. I'm pretty down with the livestock thing, except the size of the utters kind of upset me, since you know that was all kinds of hormone induced. I was definitely afraid of being shat on in the cow pen. And the horse show, for crying out loud young girls, stop putting glitter on your horse, its fuckin trashy. Also, it smelled, so bad. SO BAD.

People: I love you guys from the coal region. You did not disappoint.

Food: I still did not try the chicken pretzels, but I was tempted to this time. Last time not so much. I got some great chee fries, dollar ice cream, and a 2 for a dollar hot dog that was definitely only worth a dollar. It basically tasted like bologna. But man, you can't beat fair food. It actually seemed this time like there was more food than actual stuff to buy.

We saw a sideshow, which could have been cooler if it didn't seem like it was run by a bunch of kids. if they had really tried to sell it I think it could have been a lot better. They had the oldest working munchkin from the wizard of oz there, and man that guy was really creepy looking. They had a spider lady, a snake lady, a headless woman, but it was more of corniness than actual entertainment. You can get away with doing really corny shit if you just put a little OOMPH into it, and this really didn't have it. It kind of ran like a bad talent show. Now they said that they are trying to keep alive the traditions of the day back before we had YouTube and could watch all of it online, but honestly, they could have spiced it up, and with all the money they make, I think they could also have gotten better spider lady costumes.

Long story short we got exhausted even though we tried not to, ended up at the Silver Spur in Mt. Carmel, where we thought there would be karaoke, but no luck. We ended up talking to a really great older man at the bar for a few hours. Alex, I think his name was. He chatted it up with us about everything from the bail out to comic book movies. There is nothing better for the soul than some good wisdom and conversation with a stranger from Mt. Carmel. We thank him for a great time at the bar.

Our room at the Pine Burr Inn (classic 1970s decor Inn) was pretty awesome. It had plastic couches. They overcharged me. I have to call them about that tomorrow.

The next morning we went to get blastin blueberry pancakes at our favorite spot to eat up there, Yanni's. The horrifying thing about being there was the lack of customers due to the smoking ban and financial crisis. Honestly, I won't talk politics here, but fuck it was scary.

The drive home was the most horrifying drive I had ever been on, ever (with a sober person). The highway looked like a lake. And to top it all off, when we got back to Sara's, her street was blocked off because of a block party, that had been rescheduled from another time due to rain, but failed to tell anyone else about when it had been rescheduled to.

It was an exhausting, fun, disappointing, happy, long weekend. Cheers.

You can see pictures by clicking anywhere on this long sentence.

Ok, here is the cow.

Sea Creatures are Really Really Cool.

From http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-94406:

Nerding Out in NYC

Another adventure occurred last weekend. Mike, my partner in adventuring, and I camped out in NYC with Kathy and a few of her friends to get into the Nintendo Power 20th anniversary party. The magazine told us that the first 400 people in line with an issue of Nintendo Power would get in for free, but they lied about that. I think they basically let in as many people as that place could handle at once. I went mostly because I saw it as a perfect opportunity to battle some kids inside Nintendo World in Pokemon Battle Revolution, and Mike wanted to just get some free stuff. You know, nerds.

The camping out overnight was completely unnecessary, but super fun. I got to finally trade some Pokemon with people (I am now the proud owner of a Munchlax), battled some people (got the shit kicked out of my team), drank a bit, saw the sunrise, met some people from Florida, and saw some cute kids in costumes. I honestly had a good time, and embarrassingly enough it made me feel a little younger than I actually am for once. Once we finally got inside in the morning we got a shopping bag of free stuff (a wiimote keychain that I owned at one point, some gay trading cards for three games, plain stylus's, just, nothing good) and walked around a bit looking at the games they had to play. I headed straight for Pokemon central, only to find that THE WII THAT HAD POKEMON BATTLE REVOLUTION ON IT HAD BEEN REMOVED AND NO POKEMON GAMES WERE BEING PLAYED. My heart was broken. I turned on my DS a few times to see if anyone was battling or something just to see if there were some rouge trainers, but no luck. At that point I completely gave up on the event, and decided to stand with the goods and wait for Mike to finish having a good time.

There was some free food there which was kinda rad, rice krispy treats and cheese sammiches and french toast sticks and stuff, and at one point when I was getting very irritated Mike brought me a bag of sour patch kids, and man, just sometimes a guy can do a thing that doesn't seem to be that big of a deal but really is.. so there you have your "i love mike" moment of this adventure. Eventually he realized there was nothing much to do around the place, so we headed out the door. THAT is when I saw Mr. Zack Morris himself, the kids from the Wizards of Waverly Place (sans Selena Gomez, but fuck her, she sucks), COREY IN THE HOUSE (meant to be read loudly) and the kids from Run's House. and the mom. You can see them in the pictures. I really wanted to try to stay to get my picture taken with them or something, but they were taking pictures with "special" children and what not so I figured they would not be even trying to think about taking a picture with a 28 year old woman-child so.. we left.

The funniest part of this whole adventure was the walk back to the train station. We looked homeless. I'm not kidding. We were smelly, wet, ugly, fuck, you ever see those couples in train stations with backpacks and they look like they haven't showered in weeks and they're tired and you just don't even want to look at them because you know they need money? Yeah, that was us. We got so many looks. As tired and miserable as I was, that really entertained me. Oh, and there was a street fair there which was cool cause Mike bought me a parasol on the way back which I got to use the next day at the Septemberfest (uneventful).

The train ride home was half cute because there were brown toddlers in front of me and an annoying cunt behind me talking on the phone, not in a polite tone of voice way but in a FUCK EVERYONE ELSE ON THIS TRAIN IM TALKING TO MY BEST FRIEND CINDI (i dont really know what the girls name she was talking to was) voice. It was horrible. Mike and I talked a lot of shit out loud, maybe she heard us, maybe she didn't, but if I wasn't so tired I probably would have done something else. Actually, I probably wouldn't have. I don't really know. Maybe.

So you can see pictures from the night here, they're not very interesting save for the pics of the kids in mario costumes (I thought the really small kids sitting in NYC playing DS were really adorable), the buizel costume (eerily I found this kind of sexy) and the celebrities. The first picture is of me and mike on the train, because we waited a good hour and a half for one. They almost made us take the train to Trenton and then back up to NYC. They didn't though. Some ladies were really angry about that. Eh, public transit.

People in Japan don't have to deal with that kind of shit, unless someone kills themselves on the train tracks.

So, in other news, Japanese classes have started again for me and I'm having a good time.

In sadder news, we are currently mourning the passing of one of our furry family members, Jordan the hamster. She had some kind of skin infection that was obviously putting her in a lot of misery and pain, so the decision was made to put her down. Send Mike your love, because he was a great hammy daddy, and he loved her so much.

J-Money, you were the cutest hamster we had ever seen. love.