All’s Fair

Hey, we’re back after Jeff took the past week off from work. Fall is actually a great time to take a vacation in New England because there are several fairs that take place in late September and early October around here.

Early last week, we went to the Fryeburg Fair in Maine, just over the border from East Conway, NH. Fryebrug, of course, is derived from the German expression: “Have you ever seen so much traffic?” The fair itself was great but, coming from Conway, we got stuck in a three-mile backup that took – no kidding – ninety minutes to get through to where we parked. Nevertheless, it was great! We had Jeff’s parents with us and Jakob and Bumpa, of course, could not get enough of the antique tractors on display. We also got our fill of livestock: horses, cows, oxen, pigs, goats, sheep, and almost any other farm animal you can imagine. Tiffany kept her distance due to her allergies, which makes you wonder how she survived growing up on a farm! We also sampled the usual county fair diet, which included corn dogs and soft serve ice cream.

We also went to a nice little street festival yesterday in nearby Newburyport, a nice artisan’s town on the North Shore of Massachusetts one town removed from the New Hampshire border. Again, we just walked around and checked out the different vendors and watched a nice half-hour performance by a yo-yo expert. He did just about every yo-yo trick in the book (walking the dog, around the world, rock the cradle, etc.) but had some others that were way more advanced and, of course, threw in lots of humor to keep the audience captured for the entire performance.

We also finished a few more items in the basement. At this point, we are done per se except for some minor details that we would call finish work, like installing baseboard and door trim, applying some paint, etc. Already, we have the kids down there to play, although they are still under adult supervision to make sure that they stay out of trouble. Lea is very close to taking those first steps but even so, as we reported in our last post, she moves fast. Jakob, of course, can’t keep himself out of those places that we ask him not to go so it remains that we must keep an eye on the two of them for a while longer down there.

Well, unfortunately, the Red Sox finished well out of contention for the baseball playoffs this season but the good news is that the Yankees got bounced in the first round by the Detroit Tigers (ha-ha!). So neither of us have anything to celebrate and only the future to contemplate until the 2007 season begins. It will be an interesting off-season as usual with several key players from Boston up for free agency and some hard decisions to make by the front office. In the meantime… go Patriots!