A good save, lessons learned, & the wonders of the state fair

So, today's post is about some interesting things I've learned lately. It might be a little longer and more photo-laden than usual, but there's a reason, so bear with me! Or don't, if you don't want to. :-)

A little more than a week ago, before the kids

went back to school, we went to the state fair. Well, to be clear, Lloyd and I went to the state fair, before the kids went back to school and we lost our dogsitters. I'm sure I mentioned that last year, we took all three kids to the state fair, and our excursion lasted about an hour, not

counting drive time. Anna was marginally interested, but the boys moped and bitched and

moaned so much that I was sick to my stomach

pretty quickly, so I insisted on a rapid exit.

We learn from our mistakes. This year, the two of us had a wonderful date-day to the fair to look

at all the wonderful things they have at state fairs... funky kids' artwork (the artwork is funky,

not the kids - as far as I know), prize-winning produce, free trees (we got a redwood) and cows. That kind of stuff.

Well, the first lesson we learned this year is to get there early. We had a vet appointment for the doggies in the morning and just took our time meandering down to Sac for the fair, getting there somewhere around 2 in the afternoon. After spending a few minutes visiting with Carole and her GORGEOUS babies, who were in CA visiting from their home in Australia, Lloyd and

I headed off into the first complex of buildings near the entrance of the fair, where the kids' artwork was displayed and some of the year's theme displays were. It's a little circle of about 6

fairly small buildings, not big expo halls or anything. When we looked up, we'd been there for nearly 3 hours, and had only made it through 4 of those small buildings. Eeek!! The fair closes at 10, but some exhibits close at sundown, so you do the math.

Next year, we devote a whole day to the fair and arrive early. Check.

I was really almost stunned by the quality of the artwork on display in the kids' building though. I think that's where we spent the most time during those initial hours, looking at every last piece. And I'm not an art person, seriously. There are lots of friends and relatives out there who

can testify to that. But, this was really good stuff, so I took lots of photos, mainly to show Anna. She has quite a bit of artistic talent herself, and I wanted her to see what kinds of things other

kids her age were doing and winning prizes for at the fair.

The first things to really get my attention were "the cube things," as I am calling

them. What the hell was the assignment here? "Make a big ceramic cube, with feet, lots of 3D sculpture on top and 3 sides, and

one side must have a framed photo." I swear to you, that's about as close as I can figure it out!! Do any of YOU know what the hell these would be called? All I know is that they're majorly cool shit.

All the ceramics were majorly cool, like Mr. Turtle up there at the top, and Mr. Dumpty over here.

I'll sprinkle in some of the other cool pictures I took in

a little bit...but we're coming to the "good save" part of the story.

The next lesson that I learned is to never, ever, ever sit and delete huge bunches of photos off my camera while I'm out someplace, like, say, the state fair.

While I thought I was deleting photos in batches by date, like "12/25/08," I somehow managed to delete

every single picture I'd take up to that point at the fair. All the cube things, all the artwork, everything. Oh, and of course I didn't figure that out until I was at home, trying to retrieve the pictures for a blog post. Needless to say - not pleased.

Thanks to Daddy's suggestion, I finally quit pouting about it, and went searching on the internet for some sort of app that might be able to find the pictures buried amongst the flotsam and

metadata on the card. I'll be damned, but it worked.

The first program I tried was called Easeus. This one found a ton of pictures on the card, but it found all the older files, all the ones I really had wanted to delete, and none of the fair photos. The next app I came across is called ZAR, or Zero Assumption Recovery. It took forever, bringing up a screen very much like a defrag map, and busily working away until it actually found all 681 files on the card. I mean, it found stuff I had deleted months ago!

So, ZAR has my strong endorsement. I can't say it was perfect, because it

did bring some photos up with a huge gray section, like this one, that was supposed to be of Lloyd "licking" a giant lollypop on the Big Rock Candy Mountain. I'm not complaining at all though, because I thought all these pictures were goners!

I'm going to be kind to those of you who don't want to sift through all my lame photos to get to the end of the post...I'll limit myself to just a few

more! ;-)

SO, photo fiascos aside, the fair was a blast. There was so much there that

I would have loved to do that we just didn't have a lot of time for, and some things that would have bored Lloyd to tears that I would have loved to do. They had a farm section with produce growing taller than my head and I could have spent forever wandering through!

Also of note was the 9/11 Memorial. Several

pieces of steel from the towers were brought to Sacramento as part of a traveling memorial exhibit, and seeing them was powerful. These are BIG pieces of solid metal, and they're twisted, bent, folded and crushed like tissue paper!

Amazing. The memorial plaza also includes a huge

photo exhibit, replica of the towers and a campanile (bell tower) that rings on the hour.

The only thing I didn't get to see enough of at the

fair were the animals. We saw lots, true, including a calf who'd been born just that morning and tiny little piggies who were only a day old, and bunnies, and birds and chinchillas, and all manner of strange chickens. But, I'm a dork about wanting to walk around in the big livestock barns and look at all the cows and all the sheep and things like that.

When it was time for food, I scored and Lloyd struck out. He got very brave and decided to try the fair's newest specialty - the "zucchini weenie." This is a rather large zuke, hollowed out, with a hotdog stuck inside, a stick inserted, and then dipped in corndog batter and deep-fried. I shit you not. Unfortunately, he was very much not impressed. Bummer, really. There were all kinds of deep-fried weirdnesses to try and I almost did...but I got smart and stuck to the tried and

true goodies.

I found the tacos. Hallelujah, I found the tacos. Those of you who have been to the Alameda County Fair with me know about the tacos. They're legendary, and I have to have them. They're made from some very floppy corn tortillas, filled with stuff I can't identify (and don't want to) and wrapped in paper that they stick to. They fall apart and make a giant greasy mess and I love them madly. I have been known to go to the fair just to get the tacos.

And funnel cakes. :-) It was worth it. It was, in all, a way-too-long day for me in my current state, but I really had the most fun I've had in forever. I can't get away with doing too much, and I suffered for this one, as I mentioned in a previous post.

But I really had fun.

Well now, after boring you all to death with all of this, and making myself crave tacos, I think I'm

done. I've got a few more neato pictures to stick here at the end for those who are interested...