People take pictures of the Summer

The medical testing company rejected me.

Last year bunny_hugger entered four pictures in the Calhoun County Fair, and won three ribbons. This year, observing that it didn't cost anything but photo printing costs to enter more pictures, she selected nine to submit. She brought them down to the fair herself, the Saturday when the fair opened, while I stayed home and sulked over a job I didn't get.

Wednesday during the fair's operating week we went down, together. This was the first time I'd been to the county fair --- or any fair --- since 2019. Last year I was too sick with an undiagnosed but temporary condition to go. This year all was fine except that a tiny storm cel came over the fair just as we arrived, so we had to hide out inside my car for an extra ten minutes or so before it felt sensibly dry enough to go in.

We started with looking through the photo submissions, of course, to see how her nine pictures did. We began with disappointments: her pictures of attractions like Michigan's Adventure, or of the fair's carousel the previous year, brought nothing. But it picked up as we moved on, finding a third-place ribbon she had won for a portrait photogram. And an actual ribbon, too; last year she got only small slips of colored paper for some reason. A second place for holiday photographs, for a gorgeous picture of a Christmas tree seen blurrily through an illuminated window. First place went to someone's dog in front of a Christmas tree, which she would sulk was cheating. A ... something ... for black-and-white holiday photographs; that ribbon and a second-place ribbon were twisted together, and facing away, so that it was not clear which went with which photograph, hers or the next photo over. And then her sequence of photographs --- three pictures of the pig race from last year's fair --- won a second-place. We spent a lot of time pondering things and would reason it was more probable that her ambiguous win was of a first-place ribbon. But we would not know from observation until Sunday, when we the fair was over and we would pick up her photographs to take home.

And then we were back to other fair activity. We looked around the other craft exhibitions noticing there seemed to be more photographs, and fewer things like knitted or embroidered goods, than previous years. bunny_hugger looked at hostas and it sure looked like she could enter one of her hostas --- exhibited by a representative leaf --- and show how she had a vastly more impressive leaf. (It turns out she could not enter one, not without some research work. You need to identify the cultivar of hosta, and ours are all whatever the last guy to own the house put in, almost a quarter-century ago, and good luck telling what.) Once more we thought that bunny_hugger's mother would take home ribbons, if she could be coaxed into submitting any of her knitting or other crafts. She'll never be coaxed into that, unfortunately.

Let's take a quick ride on Leviathan's queue at Canada's Wonderland, now .

I bet Oseph is annoyed someone rewrote the graffiti to be about someone else, instead.

Looking up at Leviathan's station as a train goes out. You can see the wheels underneath and on the side of the tracks here, and how close they hold the rail to keep the ride secure.

Lift hill for Leviathan with a train heading out, as another train returns. I'm not sure why the return leg is such a long decline; it suggests the ride could maybe have been a little shorter, but then how would it be three hundred feet tall?

From Leviathan's station looking out at Wonder Mountain. Beyond it is Yukon Striker, and I believe there's a train just about to dangle there. Yukon Striker isn't near Wonder Mountain; it was just a nice clear day by now.

Looking further around the park from Leviathan's station. I think the new coaster in view is a couple of coasters visually overlapping and I'd have to check a park map to be sure which is which.

Looking out on the go-kart track from the station. Also, you can see Toronto (well, Vaughan) right behind that.

Trivia: The Prussian National Assembly, which first met the 22nd of May, 1848, was the first popularly elected body in the history of Prussia. Source: 1848: The Revolutionary Tide in Europe, Peter N Stearns.

Currently Reading: All Natural Pogo, Norman Hale.