The Ohio State Fair

Unlike the zoo, San Diego's summer fair is not world famous. Or state famous. Or generally famous. The Ohio State Fair, on the other hand, is pretty famous and gigantic. I was told that at one point this state fair claimed to be the largest in the world, and after today it's not hard for me to believe that. Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of pictures from today, so I'll include some pictures from the zoo . . .

(From left to right) Monte, Eoin, and Dave, right before we went to the horse show.Clydesdale and Shire horse judging. Right before this group was the draft pony group, and things got a little crazy when the two lead horses of one carriage group panicked and reared. Perhaps they didn't like large screaming crowds and being dressed in metal for sport . . . ? Just saying.

The best picture of me at the zoo . . .

. . . and the best picture of Monte while at the zoo. It always happens that way.

Columbus Zoo

On Thursday we went to the Columbus zoo . . . and being a little bit of a zoo snob (San Diego has a World Famous zoo :) I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised. Actually more than pleasantly surprised, this zoo was awesome! Here are the highlights . . .

A giant bull moose! Last time I came to this zoo I really, really wanted to see the moose, but there wasn't even one to be seen. This time we saw this guy and his 3 female friends. As a little side note the Columbus Zoo has a fantastic North America area with, of course, North American animals.

The Flying Foxes are waking up. The wing span is unbelievable!



An Emerald Starling just hanging out. The aviaries are pretty neat here, they're smaller but have a great selection of sparkly, colorful birds.

A bored gorilla.

Anza Borrego 1-1-09 055

Anza Borrego 1-1-09 055
Originally uploaded by paranoiabound

just trying this out to see if it works . . . . Monte!

Pictures to go with the stories . . .

Pizza finally done right. Whole wheat dough with mozzarella, avocado and heirloom tomatoes.

My chocolate chip banana bread I made a couple days ago. . . almost all gone now.

The nameless cat cracks me up. She sees the dark spot in the middle of my collapsable laundry basket (just a rivet) and can't quite figure out how she can get to it.
I don't remember if I told you that I recently made this double strand, high end diamond necklace for a customer. Even though they're relatively tiny, you're looking at about 40 carats of light high end industrial canary diamonds. I had to give them a test drive before giving them back :).

So that's about it for pictures now . . . I'll try to keep up in the future :).

Look what I Got!

Cake Adventure

Today has been exhausting. Work was slow, I had to go to two grocery stores before I could relax at home, and instead of actually relaxing, I decided to make a cake that I had been meaning to tackle. This is a Blackout cake without the frosting (since I'm the only one here to eat this I have to have some sort of constraint). It's sort of like a chocolate cake with coffee in the cake batter and pudding as the filler. I cheated and instead of making my own pudding I bought some super decadent Belgian chocolate pudding. It's also supposed to be FOUR layers, but I opted for just two right now. Thank god I have people coming over tomorrow to eat some of this.

Del Mar Fair continued . . .

So it looks like I can only post a certain number of pictures per entry. This is part two of the previous post, read the first one first if you haven't done so already!!!This was, by far, the most incredible entry we saw in the Gem and Mineral jewelry portion. The picture can't quite caption the staggering color change this opal has, but it was so gorgeous I swear that I saw it from across the room!

Now for the strange entries . . . and there were quite a few of them. Most don't need explanation, maybe except this one. This collection was titled "Trench Art" and was made up of items made from "war trash". This is a letter opener with bullet for a handle.A years worth of collie fur picked up by a brush and collected by the owner.

A collection of teeth necklaces from Borneo. From the top, porpoise, pig and dog. I think the sign says it all. Is there an award for the creepiest entry? Because if there was, it would be a tight race between cat whiskers and this entry . . .This is a chain mail (like armour) bikini. What makes this super creepy is that I know the guy who makes these. He used to come into the store and only show the youngest girls photos of his weird metal bikinis. To seal the deal, he had a super crazy eye. So, there you go. A full day at the fair, complete with fried food, awesome gardens, cat whiskers and metal bikinis.