I am having my share of ups and downs.

So the nightmare finally happened.

One second I'm cheerfully rinsing shampoo out of my hair.

The next second I'm standing in three inches of liquid feces.

Only for about 0.05 seconds, though, as I magically teleported out of the tub, screaming bloody murder. There is seriously no other explanation for how quickly I exited that shower without falling and cracking my skull open.

The DDH believes that bloody-murder screams should be reserved for actual occasions of serious bodily harm (and/or sudden confrontation by axe murderers/rabid bears). I tried to explain to him that having sewage gush out at you while you are standing around naked is in fact serious bodily harm. He doesn't seem to believe me, though.

The plumber came this afternoon and temporarily fixed the problem, and will be out Wednesday to see about more permanent solutions.

Because seriously. Never again.

***

My step-sister-in-law's wedding went off without a hitch (or with only one hitch, I suppose, the intended one, ba-dum tss).

They put little fake candles on a bunch of the protruding rocks. It was beautiful.

The aisle.

Methodist weddings are apparently races--I think the ceremony took all of fifteen minutes.

Once again, the DDH and I concluded that our wedding was the best one we've been to so far. We take a certain amount of comfort in that. I was a terrible wedding planner (I get very practical and anti-sentimental and end up skipping or skimping on things I later wish had been better done), but even though I sometimes think of details I could have changed or done differently (like my dress, or our photographer), we carefully planned the actual ceremony, and we still prefer it to all the others we've seen since. Yay.

The bridesmaids had different dresses in the same color, but all had matching sparkly silver Toms shoes.

The groomsmen had black Toms.

His step-aunt and I managed to coax the DDH to dance at the reception.

I learned that doing squats on tiptoe (aka four-inch heels) really works out your quads (ow).

Cake, bouquet, champagne flutes.

I managed to have a decent time sans alcohol (a feat much more difficult to accomplish at the birthday party we went to Friday night. My social anxiety was in overtime that evening).

Groom's cake. K is a forestry major, so had a tree-shaped cake. Both this and the bride's cake were on cross-sections of trees that he...cut, I guess?

Initials carved in the bark.

We stayed up way too late cleaning everything up (I'm still tired).

The DDH saved the day by getting the wax out of the facility's carpet after the groom's drunken college friends dumped the lit memorial candle on the floor (the step-siblings-in-law's mother died of cancer several years ago; they had a memorial candle surrounded by sunflowers (her favorite) on the altar at the ceremony and at the welcome table at the reception).

We danced that traditional American folk dance, The YMCA.

Good times.

***

Sunday was Bible study and church and the semi-annual information meeting. Two different people separately are trying to get me and/or the DDH onto the Board of Directors. They'd best be careful what they wish for.

Holy Trinity Sunday banners.

We planted sunflowers in the front yard. Let's hope they grow and were not washed away by last night's storms.

We spent all evening at the mother-in-law's house, doing laundry and showering. So we and our clothes are clean, and now the plumber's come and I can wash the dishes.

How were y'all's weekends? What do you love/hate about weddings and wedding receptions?Anyone have a story to top showering in sewage? 

I am dressed (don't ask much more of me)!

I almost forgot it was Wednesday!

I officially entered the second trimester on Monday and go in for a sonogram and checkup today. The DDH wasn't going to come because I told him it was just a checkup and nothing important.

However, I was fretting about something and said something along the lines of, "Well, I'll feel better once I hear Critter's heartbeat on Wednesday" and the DDH flipped. out. "You get to hear the heartbeat? Why didn't you tell me? I thought it was just a checkup! I want to hear the heartbeat too!"

So he rearranged his work schedule, got someone to cover his afternoon docket, and plans to meet me at the doctor's. <3

Anyway! Down to business. I can tell my pants are fitting more tightly, but I still don't look pregnant at all. My skirts and dresses still fit fine, as you can see.

Tank: Old Navy; belt: Goodwill; skirt: JC Penney.

I have rediscovered my love of this skirt. I had stopped wearing it for awhile, but I don't know why. Maybe the white is getting faded? Maybe because I really have to be strict about my "no white/light colors" rule because I'm the clumsiest person alive? No idea.

But it is the most comfortable, pretty thing. I felt like a genius for pairing it with my big patent fake-leather belt I found at Goodwill. A GENIUS, I TELL YOU.

Also, the tank-top is very comfortable (and teal) but weirdly too large for me and I cannot escape sharing my bra with the world when I wear it. Oh well.

Dress: long story; belt: Goodwill.

There's that belt again! It's the same one, just the light from the window makes the buckle look silver when it's not. I was once again inordinately proud of myself for adding the belt to this dress, which I otherwise love and is a story in itself.

This dress. Oh, this dress. It's a cute style, right, simple sundress with a swooshy skirt. But look at that pattern! Not something I would have ever picked out. You may have noticed that I don't tend to wear a lot of patterns. This is because a) I freak out about the colors in the patterns going with the colors of things I wear with them, b) I'm picky and think a lot of patterns look dumb, c) I'm cautious about mixing patterns, and d) I'm a timid and conservative dresser and it's just easier to do solids. And tame colors.

ANYWAY. So why do I have this dress I wouldn't normally pick out for myself? Well. I was living in Germany. One of my housemates, who is from Pennsylvania, had gone with some of our other friends to Spain while I went to Italy with my parents and the at-that-time-DDF. She split off from our friends in Spain to meet up with an old friend in Switzerland, where she went to a giant flea market. I have no idea, really, what flea markets are like in Switzerland or even that they HAD flea markets in Switzerland, but apparently they do.

So Sarah bought this dress because she loved the pattern (the pattern I would have skipped right over). But when she got home to Germany, she discovered it didn't actually fit because she has giant bosoms. She loved the pattern so much, though, that she planned to make it into a bag. For some strange reason, she then asked me to try it on. I could just barely zip it up because a) though I don't have bosoms, I have a big ribcage and shoulders, and b) I subsisted my entire stay in Germany on a diet consisting of Speck (cured pork), potatoes, Haribo gummis, Prinzenkekse (giant delicious sandwich cookies), pretzels, and alcohol. To be fair, I also walked miles each day so I didn't gain that much weight, but I definitely gained some.

Still, it fit, and it looked really nice on me (aka it made me look like I had bosoms, when I don't. Also, it's really amusing me to keep referring to breasts as bosoms), and Sarah told me I should keep it. Then we went swing dancing.

For awhile the dress stopped fitting (because when you come back to college, eat crappy food, and don't walk miles and miles every day, apparently you gain a bunch of weight, who knew). But then I lost thirty pounds and it fit easily and looked amazing and is perfect when it's hot out etc. etc. Alas, pregnancy is giving me bosoms (sort of) and generally rearranging my body, so I think that was the last time I'll squeeze into that dear old dress for awhile. But if all else fails, I'll make a bag out of it and send it to Sarah.

And for the record, it isn't some magical fancy Swiss dress from a boutique or made by a cute little Swiss seamstress. It's from H&M. But a) we don't have one of those here (pout), b) it's H&M Europe so the sizes are in European which makes it automatically cooler than American H&M right?, and c) it still has a cool story behind it. And it looks great on me. So there.

Since I wrote a novel about that dress, I guess I'll stop for now. More next week!

It's Wednesday, y'all. What are you wearing?

Linked up with What I Wore Wednesday at the Pleated Poppy, which I should have been doing for these posts all along except that I forgot what blog I originally found the idea on and decided to just hope everyone else knew what I was talking about. But now I found it again and I'm happy I did, because Poppy is adorable.

The men that God made mad.

"The great Gaels of Ireland are the men that God made mad.

For all their wars are merry, and all their songs are sad."
- G.K. Chesterton

I read Thomas Cahill's How the Irish Saved Civilization last month as a pre-St. Patrick's Day holiday read.

I will confess I delighted in the book, which is blatantly biased, unrepentantly pedantic, and just generally exactly the sort of book you would expect to be written by a genial old professor thoroughly immersed in and excited by his studies.

Cahill begins by outlining and theorizing about the fall of the Roman Empire, examining the parallel lives of a now-obscure but then-famous Roman courtier-poet and the great figure of Augustine of Carthage. Cahill then traces out a coherent account of the life of St. Patrick (no mean feat considering the dearth of information on this barely-historical legend), whose proselytizing he credits, essentially, with saving all the texts of Greek and Roman civilization that survive today.

Through it all, we are treated to extensive quotations from various original sources, often in the original language--Cahill speaks (or at least writes) Latin, Greek, Old English, and who knows what else, and lets you know it. This sounds pretentious, but somehow isn't. Usually. Perhaps because he freely admits he knows no Gaelic.

I would not in any way approach this book as an unbiased historical account. This is not to say that I think Cahill is lying, but he takes scant source material (I mean, we're talking about the third to eighth centuries, roughly, here, and a people who for much of that time were illiterate) and extrapolates freely to reach his (not entirely unreasonable) conclusions.

I was not expecting it to be as biased as it was; Cahill managed to be academic without being...is reputable the word I want? At first, this bothered me a little. I hate to read nonfiction books that are compromised in ways I can't exactly define--that is, I don't know enough about this time period to have any idea what Cahill might have stretched or left out--though at least I could recognize that it was biased in this case. The book was apparently extremely controversial (in academic circles anyway) at the time it was released, and I hate to accidentally embroil myself in controversy. ;-)

As we approach St. Patrick's Day, however, I've been contemplating the book and Cahill's passionate advocacy for his Irish ancestors in the light of more contemporary Irish history.

How the Irish Saved Civilization was published in 1996. This was two years before the Belfast Good Friday Agreement of 1998--perhaps not the height of The Troubles, the Irish-Anglo, well, war that lasted from the late 1960s to (officially) the Good Friday Agreement in 1998--though violence continues even today on a smaller scale.

Let's get something straight. The Irish Republican Army (as well as its unionist counterpart, the Ulster Volunteer Force) were terrorists. There is nothing romantic or glamorous about blowing up hotels and London financial districts (this and the Manchester bombing both occurred in 1996, the year Cahill's book was published).

Have you ever listened to the lyrics of U2's "Sunday Bloody Sunday?" "Broken bottles under children's feet/Bodies strewn across the dead-end street." They're singing about a real massacre that happened in 1972 in which thirteen people died. The Cranberries' song "Zombie" (you know the song, trust me, the lady wailing "Zo-om-BEH, zo-om-BEH") is a also protest song about The Troubles, specifically the 1993 Warrington bombing in which two children died.

Chesterton was right; the Irish sing many a sad song. 

We may forget, here in this country and on this holiday celebrating a cartoonish leprechaun-and-whiskey version of the Irish, that discrimination against the Irish, especially the Catholic Irish, has a long history both in England and America. Ireland has a long history of being a shithole plagued by disease, violence, oppression, famine, and poverty. From the Irish Potato Famine at the turn of the last century that sent my own grandparents across the Atlantic to the violence at turn of this century, back and back about as long as there's been people in England and people in Ireland.

One can hardly begrudge an Irish Catholic the writing of a book that so passionately defends the ancient Irish and the country's first Catholics.

Moreover, Cahill demands respect for these ancestors of his (and, by extension, their descendents). He describes them as great warriors and partiers, yes, but also as learned, civilized men and women who loved books as much as beer. Between the IRA, the UVF, and the benign but wild stereotype of the Irish characterized by our St. Patrick's Day celebrations (and less benign, think of movies such as Boondock Saints), the world doesn't exactly have much respect for this particular ethno-religious group.

Cahill assigns perhaps rather more importance to the achievements of the ancient Irish monks than they deserve, but they did achieve much. The Irish, as Cahill shows, are more than America's two-dimensional image of them and they are more than the depressing, desperate violence and poverty that has defined the country since the Middle Ages.

Enjoy your Guinness and Jameson today; I certainly plan to. Wear green and play Pandora's Irish Pub Rock station (which is awesome but, um, not censored). Celebrate the life of a dedicated saint and a country finally enjoying some measure of peace and prosperity for the first time since the triple-digit centuries. Remember that terrible things happen in places we don't expect--and that everyone has something to teach us.

What I am into this month: February

The same view from my office window that I usually post.
We didn't get much winter weather this year,
but on Valentine's Day we did get fog.

On My Nightstand: I read Death Comes to Pemberley finally and...it was not as good as anticipated. I should institute actual Book Review Posts or something. The problem, I suspect, is that it was neither fish nor fowl, neither Jane Austen novel nor thrilling detective story. Meh.

Strangely, the Orson Scott Card novel was also rather disappointing. I mean, it read quickly and smoothly and that world will always be Real to me the way the best stories are, but...perhaps I am too old and not yet old enough to be charmed by the antics of precocious children. And sometimes you just never can cotton on to new characters in a series where the old ones are like dear friends. Y'know?

The Help. Lord, The Help. It's such a troublesome book. The period it discusses is troublesome. The balance of current race and gender relations is troublesome. That it's written by a white woman is troublesome--and yet, it's as much a book about gender as about race. In some ways, I don't know what to think about it because inevitably, I will offend someone with my opinion and that is a problem, as well as a whole 'nother topic.

But. In the end, it's just a good story. A good story about people who seem real--they're not all good and they're not all bad and some people are awful but even then they are people, as real people are. I enjoyed the pacing and the writing style, for the most part, the distinctive voices for each narrator. Read it for yourself, and I, for one, will not be offended by your opinion.

Either The Help or this next book was my favorite read of the month: How the Irish Saved Civilization. I am a sucker for a beautifully written, pedantic, scholarly sort of book when the author is just. so. excited. about his subject matter. It's why I loved my professor's books on Faulkner better than Faulkner's books themselves. It's why I will just as happily read Tolkein's scholarly articles as his fantasy novels. And it's why I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

I've started The Omnivore's Dilemma. I read Pollan's In Defense of Food several years ago, and found in it a fellow food-spirit. He gave words to much of my own wordless food philosophy. And though I could do without the tossed off lectures on global warming and obesity and a few other screeds, those are refreshingly few and far between. Moreover, you don't get the sense that Pollan, like so many other green/food/environment/organic writers, dislikes man. So. Good times.

Want to Read: Introverts in the Church has been floating around the blogosphere book rec list lately, and Anne convinced me I should read it. Well, the library doesn't have it, so that's put a stop to that temporarily, until I can convince myself to spend Real Money on a book (am I a sucker for impulse-buying the entire stock of used book stores? Yes. Can I very often convince myself to part with money for a brand-new book? No) and order it from Amazon. I also have a couple biographies of Luther on my list (which, of course, the library doesn't have!), and I need to add in a few Fun Books or I don't know what will happen to me. Suggestions?

TV Show Worth Watching: Let's see. We finished United States of Tara and are now pretty much back to our regularly scheduled programs: Once Upon a Time, Grimm, Castle, Bones, Royal Pains. Oh! Community returns next month! *happy dance*

Movies I've Seen (in or out of a theater): I don't think I've watched a single movie this month, and that's okay. It may or may not also be a lie, but if I can't remember it, it obviously didn't make enough of an impression on me to be worth mentioning.

In My Ears: I am currently obsessed with this. A Pandora station seeded with Gotye and Kimbra has proven to be bliss, at the moment. I was glad to see a singer who can actually sing clean up at the Grammys this year. I'm tempted to steal Adele's voice box and have it surgically implanted in my own throat. Would that work?

What I'm looking forward to next month: The day for the men that God made mad! I mean, of course, St. Patrick's Day. I am precisely half Irish and half German, so St. Patrick's Day and Oktoberfest are practically religious holidays in my family. Corned beef and cabbage, Guiness, green things, my Irish punk rock Pandora station...happy (green) panda. I'm sure there's other stuff going on, but it can't possibly be as important. Oh! Except that it will be my parents' thirtieth wedding anniversary in March! So that's something.

Goal Progress: I posted some goals for the new year, and I figured these monthly wrap-up posts would be a good chance to check my progress throughout 2012.

The Budget: Yeah...well, we're continuing to meet our budget for paying off debts, and I've managed to save a good bit. But. Our sewage line backed up to the tune of one hundred thirty-five unexpected dollars. The DDH took a trip to visit his sick brother in Houston and bring him a bunch of food and cooking supplies (he was just diagnosed with Celiac's and of course the dorm meal plan contains nothing gluten free except plain lettuce). Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. It could definitely be worse, though.

The Garden: I daringly planted out a bunch of seeds the last weekend in February. I know! I'm really living life on the edge here. Post to come soon.

Food: I'm not sure if my renewed Reality Chef blogging habit is feeding (ha) my resolution to cook at least three times a week, or if my resolution is feeding (ha. ha.) the blogging habit. Either way, tis tasty.
The Craft Room: Post to come on this.
 

How are you doing on your 2012 goals? What are you looking forward to in February?

Sunny Leap Day, with the willows starting to leaf out and the
redbuds beginning to bloom!

Puppies aren't for Christmas.

Christmas sweaters to the contrary.

And neither are kittens or bunnies or lizards or any of them.

Don't get me wrong. I am of the firm belief that every child person should have a dog (or pet of some kind...but mostly a dog). Obviously, I have two dogs. I grew up with three of them. I've had a plethora of other animals. I can't imagine life without a canine companion or at least some sort of animal friend.

But there is a right way and a wrong way to go about adding a four-legged member to your family.

The wrong way is to impulse-buy an unasked-for cuddly big-eyed ball of fluff, wrap it up, stick it under the tree, and hope for the best.

But the eyes! It's so hard to resist the eyes!

Dogs are a lifetime commitment. They are living creatures, not objects. You have to be prepared to feed, care for, and love to pieces that adult animal for its entire lifespan of seven to twenty years, depending on breed (though, really, no matter how long it is, it's never long enough). You have to put that sucker in your will with provisions for its care in case of your sudden passing.

The American Kennel Club has a great list of things to consider before getting a dog (and once you own one), most of which apply whether you're looking to purchase a purebred or rescue a mutt from the pound. Number 74 on this list is an excellent summary of everything I'm trying to say:

You aren't a dog owner just at Christmas, or on the weekends, or in the afternoon, or when you have spare time. You aren't a dog owner just when the dog is behaving, or when he's a cute fuzzy puppy, or when he's winning awards. When you bring a dog into your family, that dog is yours for life. If you can't keep that commitment, don't make it. And once you've made it, don't break it. Your dog's life depends on you.

Sometimes dogs eat watermelons.
Ask me about the time they drank all the beer.

Puppies are cute. They're also smelly, messy, curious, tirelessly energetic, and helpless, dependent on you for everything. Kind of like babies. Babies with really sharp teeth. They will pee on the carpet. They will shred your favorite slippers. They will wake you up in the middle of the night. They will run around like maniacs at all hours. They will shed on everything even if they never even go into the room where that thing is stored.

They're worth it, but even if you have carefully considered the decision to bring a dog (or whatever animal) into your home, the holidays, with their hectic schedules, hazardous decorations, and general insanity, are not the time to do it. Instead of a puppy, give animal supplies as gifts with the promise to choose a dog when life has settled down in January.

Everyone will appreciate your foresight and patience. Especially your new best friend.

Or friends.

I am sipping the fruits of my labor, and they taste like pumpkin spice.

So.

Guys.

Guess what?

It's fall! And do you know what fall means?

PUMPKIN SPICE FLAVORED EVERYTHING.



Seriously. Google image search "pumpkin spice."
There are pumpkin spice flavored Hershey's kisses.
There is pumpkin spice flavored BEER.

This, in my opinion, is the best of things. The only problem? As usual, money. Do you know how much pumpkin spice lattes cost at Starbucks? Even QuikTrip (the poor Tulsanite's Starbucks) has raised its drink prices. And as dearly as I love the pumpkin spice flavored froyo at Cherry Berry, thirty-nine cents per ounce adds up quick.

So what is a pumpkin spice loving cheapskate to do?

Make it herself.

Obviously.

Someone (my guess is Frugally Sustainable, and even if it wasn't, let me just say that Facebook-friending her has about septupled by OMG-want-to-do-that list) posted this recipe on Facebook. The DDH and I experimented this weekend, and I thought I'd share our version.

We made pumpkin-spice flavored coffee because we were actually out of coffee on Saturday (it was the only ingredient we were missing!), but I've been bringing the milk mixture in and putting it in my normal coffee at work and that tastes fine, too.

We made this in a pitcher and it probably makes about twelve servings, depending on how big your mug is. ;-) I've provided the thirded (is that a word?) recipe in parentheses in case you have food commitment issues/don't want to drink this every day for a week.

3 cups milk (1 cup)
1 can pumpkin puree (1/3 to 1/2 can)
1 teaspoon nutmeg (scant 1/2 teaspoon)
1 teaspoon cloves (scant 1/2 teaspoon)
1 teaspoon ground ginger (though wouldn't fresh ginger be yum!) (scant 1/2 teaspoon)
2 teaspoons cinnamon (scant 3/4 teaspoon)
3 teaspoons vanilla (1 teaspoon)
6 tablespoons brown sugar (though our housemate has lent us some agave nectar to try next time) (2 teaspoons)
generous shake of garam masala (1/3 generous shake ^_~)

I dumped all the ingredients in a pitcher and had at it with the immersion blender so that I could just stick the lid on the pitcher and store the extra. Otherwise, put everything in a blender and blend well, then pour into your chosen container.

Mix pumpkin mixture with coffee to taste (so me, I like it about half and half; the DDH likes a spoonful or two in a mug of black coffee). It's also nice if you warm it up before adding it to your coffee. Top with whipped cream (cream + sugar to taste (though you could do unsweetened for this, really) + vanilla to taste beaten in a metal bowl with a hand beater) and cinnamon.

The mixture will settle if you leave it sitting around, so shake or stir briskly before pouring that second cup. And the third.

Sadly, I had no cream to whip. It was delicious anyway.

Ich bin Deutscherin!

Well, half German, anyway, and that's more than enough during Oktoberfest!

Tulsa has, perhaps surprisingly, a really good Oktoberfest each year. Usually the DDH and I go on Thursday night with a free admission coupon, but the dealership or whatever it was that handed those out before didn't do that this year. :-( So instead, we actually went during the day, and that turned out to be a lot of fun!

First, before it opened, we went to a worship service put on by the LCMS Lutheran churches in the area. Our DCE led the service, and we got to do the Apostles' Creed and the Lord's Prayer in German. Woot.

After an unexpected storm Saturday night and several days in the fifties last week, we thankfully had beautiful weather. The fog cleared for a sunny day in the seventies. Wunderbar! ;-)

A Weiner Dog Races Foto Montage:



Those are some fast little short-legged doglets.



A girl next to us in the crowd with
her dachshund, Fievel.

Some dogs were less into the "running" part of the race than others.

On your marks!

Go!

Run run dachshunds.

The one on the left was the eventual winner, Bolt Speedman.

The black-and-white dachshund in the middle is aptly named "Snoopy."

The Grand Champion, Bolt Speedman, and his human pack.

My early anniversary present: this beautiful market basket.
I've been admiring the baskets sold at this stand at Oktoberfest and the Fair
for several years; supposedly they're made by a group of women in Ghana.
I never know how much to believe those sorts of stories, but the baskets are
beautiful, reasonably priced, and I've seen people using them at the market, so
they seem sturdy and like they hold up well. The DDH kindly noticed my
drooling and told me to choose one for an early present.

Brats, Polish sausage, and kraut. Noms.

Oktoberfest is held at the Festival Grounds of RiverParks.
A view of the river and the syringe building.

Some German state flags. The black and yellow one with
the lions is for Baden-Wuerttemberg, the state where I lived.



And my favorite part--potato pancakes and applesauce!

I am October: The Fair!

The DDH and I went twice to the Tulsa State Fair this year.

I love Fairs. They're just silly. I like to eat junk food and pet animals and see all the 4-H exhibits and gawk at the junk for sale and watch the fun shows.

Last year there was the coolest fire-twirling show I have ever seen, but this year all the shows were lame. The trick dogs, of course, and then a Star Trek show (lame) and a hypnotist (also lame). So that was a disappointment.

We did look at the cake decorating contest. Some of those cakes are just mind-bogglingly amazing. Unfortunately, all of those pictures are on my "real" camera and I haven't uploaded them yet.

BUT. For your vicarious Fairjoyment, a photodocumentation:
 

Long-horned cows + bonus baby cow.

My family used to show dogs and are generally all-around dog people, and one of the things I love MOST in the WORLD is seeing dogs doing what they were bred to do. I get super tickled when I see dogs that were bred to herd cattles hanging out with cattles. Because what is more awesome than that? (I noticed all the Welsh Pony fanciers ALSO had Welsh Corgis, which is also awesome.)

A working Pembroke Welsh Corgi keeping an eye on its herd.

Another favorite Fair pastime is checking out all the crafts and artwork submitted by children and adults for competition. The children's Lego competition is my favorite, and this is probably the coolest freestyle Lego Fair entry I've ever seen:

Pacman! With little ghosts and spare lives and cherries and everything!
And look how the asteroid is the controller ball! :3

Ok, my other favorite part of the Fair (I have a lot of favorite parts) is looking at all the rabbits and surreptitiously poking my fingers in to pet them without getting bitten or yelled at by their owners. While I love looking at rows and rows of Megs (my castor (brown) Mini Rex) in different colors, I also like the weird breeds, like this. I think it's an English angora?

Alien Rabbit

The strangest thing I saw this year at the Fair was this entry into the adult handicrafts competition:

Nazi Quilt

No idea. None at all. Though the DDH insists those look nothing like swastikas, everyone else I've shown the picture to agrees with me.

As a surprise, MC Hammer performed one of the evenings we were there. He is not as cool in a white pimp suit as in parachute pants. And though the classics are the classics, the truth is: There's a reason he's performing at State Fairs and not at, you know, actual concerts.

STOP!
Hammertime.

So there we go! I will admit that the Tulsa State Fair has nothing on the New Mexico one, but it's still always a good time. We adopted the Adorabeagle after seeing her picture and description on the Animal Aid display in 2006, so the thing holds a special place in my heart.

Come on, you know you like them.

I am proud.

I may have mentioned that the DDH passed the bar exam.

Five years of law school, going part time while working full time at a variety of usually miserable jobs.

Two months of hardcore, nothing-but-studying studying.

Forty-four days of nail-biting waiting, wondering, praying.

And finally:

One ceremony for each of the Oklahoma law schools (OU, OCU, and TU).

We road-tripped out to OKC with his mom and stepdad, took a million billion pictures of the DDH in a suit in the fancy Capitol building (vastly inferior to the one in Santa Fe, IMHO), sat through yet another succession of speeches, and, yay! his name was read, he took the oath, he signed the rolls (with his work address, because apparently the bar rolls are public records and disgruntled criminals or clients or whomever can use them to look up your address, break into your home, and threaten you and your children, not that we know anyone this happened to or anything), and he's officially a shiny new lawyer with a shiny new job working for the state not making shiny lawyer dollars at ALL, but he loves it and it's work and he got to go to trial today so yay.

We followed the ceremony and picture-taking with a wander 'round Bricktown, with a stop at Bricktown Brewery for beer and food.

Our selections.

Always a good time.

A grilled spinach mushroom salad with bacon dressing. Noms.

Also, that salad? It was amazingly delicious. Fo' realz.

Yay!