A Day at the Street Fair

Today, Chris and I went to the Fourth Avenue Street Fair. As usual, it was a fun way to spend a few hours (and some money). I actually managed to buy one holiday present, thus justifying it as a holiday shopping excursion, and not just an excuse to make a lot of impulse buys.

It was a nice day out, not too cold and not too sunny, but close to too windy (one booth actually blew over partway!). The street was packed with people. This is why I prefer to go on Fridays when I can, as there are usually less shoppers out on a Friday. I always manage to get stuck behind slow, meandering people -- or worse, smokers! Bleh!

There was a lot to see today, not just booths (which seemed to stretch farther than usual this year), but also street performers and such. One pleasant surprise was a group of bird of prey keepers who had a booth next to the main performance stage. Not only did they have some sort of falcon and some sort of hawk, but they had a real, live bald eagle. She was huge and beautiful, just an amazing presence.

Although I try not to do too much shopping this close to the holidays, I did pick up a few things (I figure it's OK if it's something that no one I know is likely to buy for me). I got a plate with a beautiful sparkling green glaze on it, two pairs of awesome titanium earrings (one fancy blue pair and one simple purple pair to go with the new purple shirt I was wearing), and Chris got a neat ceramic squid. We'd actually seen the squid at the Reid Park fair last month, but didn't want to carry one on the walk home, so we decided to wait and get one at this Fair. It will look cool hanging up in the game room.

As usual, I saw lots of clothing and jewelry that I wanted, but let's face it, do I really need more of either of those? Chris did his best to convince me to spend more money, but I was having nothing of it!

And of course, when we came home, our puppies were glad to see us, because we'd been gone forever*. All four of us kicked back on the couch with caramel corn (also from the Street Fair) and a silly movie. Don't worry, the caramel corn was for us, not the puppies, they just snarfed up anything that got dropped, and then begged for belly rubs when it was gone.

*Any length of time counts as forever in dog years.