The Chicago stories will continue shortly. In the meantime, he's some new stuff from me. Oh. Yay. Soak in the drama.

---

It happens every year. Late summer. The TV is all boring on every single channel. Saw this already. *flip* This sucks. *flip* Don't care. *flip* Rerun. *flip* Boring. *flip* Boring. *flip* Booooring.*flip* ...And then *ping* the US Open gets me jacked up. I start watching a match here and there, and then I'll finally see a great match and I'll be sucked in for the remainder of the tourney. This year is no different. Pete Sampras has had a few outstanding matches to get to the quarterfinals of the tournament. Likewise, Andy Roddick has played in some crazy intense matches to get to the quarters. Both of their matches have had lots of emotion, ups and downs, backs and forthes (what?), and the crowd... it's just been insane. Amazing stuff. Come over to our house any night during the last 2 weeks of the open, and Lindsay and I will be either watching a match or flipping back and forth between the match and another show, intently keeping an eye on the score.

Tonight: Andy Roddick and Pete Sampras against each other. We are so watching the whole thing.

---

Whew boy. Lindsay and I took a vacation day Friday, giving us a four day weekend to do... whatever. Unfortunately, I was having some rather annoying and pretty intense side effects from the Allegra D, that I was taking, so I wasn't in the party-people kind of mood. The Allegra D was: not letting me sleep soundly or sleep in. I'd wake up every 30 minutes. Whenever I'd breath deep, I'd feel like I was leaping out of my own body and it would jolt me awake. Then I'd wake up around 8 and be wide awake. While awake, I was shaky. That's annoying. I also had a majorly diminished appetite. I'd be kind of hungry, eat 3 bites of food then be totally stuffed. Or I'd be kind of hungry, but absolutely nothing would sound good. Fun times, there.

On Sunday, Lindsay, Kate (of the K&K Connection) and I all went to the Minnesota State Fair. I had been told it's a great time. I was threatened with caning and possible dirty dirty looks that I really should go. So, finally, after 2+ years of ignoring the Minnesota State Fair, I did go. You know what? The State Fair was a state fair. Plain and simple. I can't put it any better than that. It was big, it was hot, it was crowded as hell, there was meat, glorious meat! all over the place and it had unhealthy food stand after unhealthy food stand that I didn't want any part of. I'm such a bitch sometimes, aren't I?

To take the crowd from annoying to annoying in a fun way, we played "spot the mullet", which I easily won, 2.5 to 0 to 0. I spotted 2 mullets, one was a 2 pointer, the other a half pointer. The 2 pointer would have been a 5 in many circles, but, what can I say -- I run with the tough kids. I was disappointed with the lack of Minnesota Mullets, though. Maybe we should go to a State Fair in the South next year. We'd all need calculators.

One of the redeeming features of the fair was the Fine Art. There is certainly some very nice photography and painting going on in MN. Lindsay made me promise her that I'd enter some of my photography for the State Fair Fine Art exhibit next year. I'm thinking of putting together a series. Maybe a few from my Signs Series or Warehouse District Series or something like that. I'll try to display them in an interesting way or make a painting of them or something. I'm still pretty fuzzy on that right now.

Anyway, the main reason I went along to the fair was: I wanted to take photos. I find myself doing things (like going to a state fair) that I'd normally not do, because I don't want to miss out on potentially cool photos for my little not-too-horribly-popular-website.

Speaking of potentially good photo opportunities, tomorrow after work, Lins and I are going to Boone, Iowa to visit my family and to check out Pufferbilly Days. Whew, doggies. Pufferbilly Days. A celebration of... that's right... trains. Yee Haw!

First off, I'm very excited to see my family, especially my little 3 year old nephew -- he's the cutest and sweetest little guy, and I haven't seen him since the Monster Mash, I think. That's insane. I miss the little guy so much. I don't really get to see any of my immediate family very much, either, so it will be nice to see them, too. Hopefully, with all the festivities, there won't be too much of the sitting-around-watching-golf/football-on-tv thing going on.

Second, we'll be juuust 45 minutes from Des Moines, or, more precisely, Tursi's Latin King. Oh. My. God. It's this Italian joint in a seedy-ish neighborhood near the Iowa State Fairgrounds (look! a fair theme!). If you're ever in Des Moines, it's on East University by the giant Moo Cow. Trust me. Good food overall. Plus, they have, by far, the best tiramisu Lins and I have ever had. Ever. Yum. We miss it. Oh, boy do we ever miss it. Perfect texture, perfect sweetness and, well, a just plain perfect dessert.

Our search for an equivalent tiramisu has drove us to near madness -- so mad that we're now running a stupid little tiramisu project website. We try different places' tiramisu and grade them on a scale of 1-10, 1 being crap on a plate and 10 being Latin King. Before we dig in, I take a photo with my handy Fuji digital camera, for posterity. We haven't had a tremendous amount of luck in the Twin Cities so far. The best we've found in the cities is at Highland (or Edina) Grill. 8/10, but consistently 8/10 good. Yummy chocolate chips give it a nice texture. If they'd put a few laces of caramel in it, we'd be talking a solid 9/10, folks. We have a couple places up our sleeve to try, yet, so all hope is not lost.

We're not sure when yet, but while we're in Boone, we might try to jump down to Des Moines (lunch on Saturday?) and grab us some tiramisu heaven.

I was talking about going to Boone, wasn't I? Right. Back into the numbers...

Third, when I was growing up Pufferbilly Days was a huge deal. There's a parade on Saturday morning that thousands upon thousands of people come to Boone to see. Des Moines' CBS station aired it for many years, too. I'm not sure if that was just in Boone or what, but still.

Actually, I've been in the parade a few times, too. When I was a kid: as a crayola crayon one year and in my aunt and uncle's pool/hottub business' float in a hottub another year. Then, when I was 16 and working a hellacious job at a grocery store, I was in the parade as Twinkie the Kid, big foam yellow outfit and all, pelting the crowd with twinkies and candy and stuff. Good times. It's a blast to push a grocery cart down bumpy city streets for 4 miles while sweating inside an already stinky foam outfit and having absolutely zero peripheral vision. You should try it sometime.

So, to continue my third point, Pufferbilly Days will be going on, which will give me an excuse to wander the streets of Boone in search of photographic gold. There's lots of crazy old people, which is a plus -- I can always use more pictures of the crazy old. Plus the whole thing is a festival based on trains. So, yeah, there could be some interesting things to look at and take photos of, to say the least.

Alright. That's all I've got for now. Thanks for reading,
Eric