We went to the opening day of the Merritt fall fair today after stopping at the Saturday farmers market for corn. A bit more info here.I took a lot of pictures as usual since there's tons of items on display. I will post more pictures later but for now I made a quickie panorama of the main building's interior:
Much bigger view here.
Baked goods, bottled goods, fruits, vegetables, art, crafts, photography, flowers, forage crops, plus ( new for this year I believe ) vendors that sold purses, jewelry and leather goods. We had hot dogs (for breakfast!) and checked out all the displays and chatted with people we knew- it was a great atmosphere despite the less than great weather although I'm not complaining since we desperately need rain in these parts. My photos did really well- I was kind of shocked at how well actually even though I knew some of my best pieces were going in.
We had apple crumple with ice cream for lunch and I retook a lot of photos since I finally found a setting in the camera that got the lighting a bit better and then checked out animals on display ( too dark for picture taking ) and some of the old farm machinery. The rodeo is going on right next door and we will go to that tomorrow.
We headed up Sunshine Valley Road afterwords looking for a friend's party but weren't too sure about the location and I couldn't reach her on the phone so we took the opportunity to go for an extended drive since the rain was holding off. I got a chance to retake some neat scenics that I discovered last year and we continued down the road which we expected to loop back up to the main road but it didn't...or we missed it. I wish I had known that this road ( a forestry service track ) had been decommissioned but the sign had evidently been pulled off or blown away...it was present on the other end of the road which took us an hour to reach. The really scary bit was when we reached a large dip with a bolder at the high point and a huge bump 5 feet past that...one wheel was evidently hanging in the air while I REALLY SLOWLY drove over it- my husband was pushing against the car from the outside to keep it from tilting over!
Awful drive and then seeing the 'decommissioned' sign on the other end made me a bit bitter as we had missed the party on account of thinking this wouldn't take as long as it did. We were overjoyed to get back on the main road and high tailed it back to Merritt and stuffed ourselves on Chinese buffet at Crystal Gardens. ( They are prize donaters for the fair by the way and have a great buffet! ) Still couldn't get a hold of my friend Kathy who is celebrating her official landing in Canada. She asked me once when I was going to activate my voice mail and I asked her when she was going to learn the Canadian anthem- lol! On the subject of phones- when I got my current one ( service provided by Rogers ) it took something like 5 tries to activate the voice mail thing and then I had to change my phone number and it took a few tries again to get it going. But I had to change the number a second time after moving here because they gave me a KAMLOOPS! number and it took weeks to convince them to find me a number with the Merritt area code. I dread trying to activate the voice mail which is why I've put it off I guess.
I hate phones if the truth be told but they're handy especially in this day and age where we drive everywhere and anything could happen at any time.
Anyways, I guess the rant I was promising will wait for another day since I've got a lot of positive things going on lately!
I submitted photos and art at the fall fair in Merritt yesterday.
I wanted to last year but wasn't really ready and now that I am I realize that this will probably be the only year I do submit photos...I'm trying to turn my photography into a totally professional thing and by this time next year that's where I plan to be.
What I put in are basically favorite pictures from the last 2 years plus my 3 best panos which are labors of love...if nothing else people will hopefully get to know my work by site if not by name since the names are covered up! I believe judging was sometime this afternoon; can't remember if they show the names when the fair is open.
I've still got a ways to go to updating my stock gallery; I've been spending a lot of time updating my new site which consists of collections of images from my 'film' days, particularly the years I spent on the carnival. Those pictures are basically a catalog for ex-carnies to check out and buy prints.
The next collection will be the photos I took in China- loads of animals, flowers, macros and so forth. There are a lot of pictures in there that I'm particularly proud of but I shudder at the amount of work that's looming on my horizon...
On a totally different subject my first attempts at vegetable gardening have been quite successful. Lettuce seed I got from my friend Sally did incredibly well, a rejected tomato plant put out a dozen tomato, 7 kohlrabi also did well, and the one plant I actually bought- a grape- is doing phenomenally. I made sure the lettuce had some shade and the grape got plenty of sun...
I also baked my first ever pie yesterday ( lemon meringue ) which tasted shockingly good so I made another one today with Bavarian creme filling I bought from Cooper's. I found a u tube video that some guy had shot of his mom baking a lemon meringue pie and followed that to the letter- no, that's a lie- I used lard instead of Crisco which I know is animal fat as opposed to vegetable.
One sour note today was a clogged drain downstairs. We were worried that there might have been a clog originating from the outside because we had two days of very heavy rainfall ( unusual for Merritt ) but it turned out to be on our end...that drain must not have been cleaned in the last 2-3 years. Disgusting. I suggested to my husband that we use the shop vacuum cleaner ( a gift from the car dealership which turned out to be worth it's weight in gold today ) and with that and a screw on the end of a 5 foot wooden closet rod we got the crud out. Did I say disgusting? Oh yes, it was far beyond that...still, we managed to avoid calling a plumber for which I'm really happy. It isn't so much forking over the money for one ( which is bad enough ) but the theft of time as you wait around for them to show up.
Well, that's it for now. Next time I write it will probably be a rant about television commercials I hate...seriously, I love dissecting advertising and I've got a few choice words for some of those advertisers.
