I was anticipating missing the Sterling Fair this year, my first in a few. The Fair has been about my only opportunity to eat really, really bad-for-me food in great quantity and convincingly pass it off as family funtime. It was also my sole flirtation with gambling--I was happy to hand over much money to the token-conveyor thingy, just rolling them down their little sluce pipe into the kicking feet of the clown, hoping for many awful and cheap trinkets during my hours of standing there.
I definitely felt like it was time for a Fair. The Sterling Fair always comes the weekend after Labor Day, just as the summer heat has either been put over a barrel or is making its last heroic stand before being cut down in the first really cold morning the following week. I'm looking forward to that weekend down here in Raleigh and was subconsciously feeling like a good fair would hasten its arrival.
Well, though I could not make it to Sterling this weekend, the fair managed to find me here in Raleigh. This weekend was the third annual Raleigh Wide Open, a downtown fair and carnival that, aside from the tall buildings, is not too different than the parts of the Sterling Fair I like. Alight, there's not much "agricultural" to it; that fair is the NC State Fair in October, and it will blow the doors off of anything Sterling has ever seen. But Raleigh Wide Open had all the bad food, aimlessly wandering morons, inexplicable commercial booths, and attractions that the Sterling Fair has. RWO, though, has alcohol, which makes it much cooler (for someone like me, anyway). This year's RWO fair also had the much-anticipated opening of the new Raleigh Convention Center, which has some nice spaces and features, though I doubt it will make a big difference in how cosmopolitan Raleigh feels...
When not downtown, I've been conducting marathon tech support chat sessions with Dell to get my DVD drive replaced (it started skipping on my Michael Clayton Netflix DVD last night and never stopped after testing several other CDs; trying to break in my couch; buying new screen inserts so I can keep my windows open without the cat flopping out; catching up with my DVR recordings; NOT watching the Patriots, as they are not picked up by the local network coverage (bad news about Brady, though, huh?); etc. etc.
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Remember when Jessica and I went to our first game at Gillette in September 2001? When Bledsoe was creamed, and Brady subbed in?
Yeah, well we went back for our first regular season game together since then. We must be cursed. Or maybe Brady's contract with the devil just hit its 7 year termination?
Actually, I wasn't surprised that Brady got bunged up... I'm totally over him after that shittastic super bowl. He's so last season. Bring on the fresh meat. I just hope Cassel isn't as good as Brady was, because I really don't want to care about New England sports anymore!
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