MN State Fair — Butter Sculptures

Every year counties across Minnesota crown dairy princesses. At the state fair, each princess has her bust done in butter. What other material would you use to sculpt the bust of a dairy princess??

I have pictures to prove it:
   

Both are pictures of the cooler in which the sculptures are made and displayed. The sculptures take about 6-8 hours each are are done with a 90-pound block of butter. In the first picture, there is a completed sculpture facing out of the cooler. In the second picture is the princess (on the left) and the sculptor (on the right), both wearing jackets to keep warm.

So, what do they do with the butter that is sculpted off of the 90-pound block? In past years I have been around when someone brought out trays of the butter on crackers. I assume that they still do that, though not while we were watching.

The princesses each take home their own bust at the end of the fair.

A Day at the MN State Fair

I haven’t been to the MN State Fair in ages. It’s been at least since 1994, because in 1995 I moved to New Mexico for school before the state fair started. When I was little, the big draw was the animals and the midway. Now, I prefer the food, vendors and arts and crafts displays.

We arrived at the fair at about 11 AM, and we made a bee-line to the mini donuts. Mmmmm. I was concerned that I might have inflated how good they were over the years, but, no, they are just as good as I remembered. There are actually a few different mini donut makers at the fair, but Dad remembered which one we liked best. (Though, we couldn’t remember if they were actually better donuts or if they just gave us more donuts for the same amount of money.)

After that, Dad led us to the Creative Arts building. I remember the last time we were in the building was just after I had finished my big carousel cross-stitch . Someone had done the same one, and I think got a ribbon for it. I wasn’t too bitter…

After the Creative Arts building, we went for lunch — spaghetti for Mom and me, lasagna for Dad. Oddly enough, the spaghetti made me feel a bit icky — but the mini donuts had sat fine with me. Oh well. On our way to the grand stand, Dad stopped off at the John Deere display on Machinery Hill. (Boys will be boys.)

Just outside the Grand Stand, there were some of the Linuses that had dotted the city over the summer. (Andrew and I had caught the Charlie Browns two years ago.) We shopped in the Grand Stand, then Heritage Square and finally the International Bazaar. Our last stop was the dairy building (now known as the Empire Building, but everyone still calls it the dairy building). We soothed our tummies with a yummy malt, and watched the butter scupltor for a little while.

We actually got home before 7PM, but it felt like we’d been walking for days. We all crashed — Mom and I watched While You Were Out while Dad made arrangements for his upcoming fishing trip.

MN State Fair — Stuff on a Stick

A lot of people I’ve met in my years since leaving Minnesota just don’t understand the whole food-on-a-stick craze that I’ve described to them. So, on my trip to the MN State Fair this year, I decided to document some of the food-on-a-stick. Here are my results:

A hot dog on a stick — that’s not too weird. Most of us call them corn dogs or proto pups, though.

Perhaps cheese on a stick isn’t that weird, either, since Minnesota is farm country.

I suppose condiments on a stick isn’t all that weird either…what were cocktail toothpicks invented for, anyway?

Now, these are a little weird —
   

Pork chops?? (And not just at one place!)

And don’t forget dessert!
   

The Mother Load

Mom and Dad ended up taking Grandma (Dad’s mom) out for dinner, since she hasn’t been dealing well with Denny’s illness. (Denny is Dad’s brother, and has been fighting cancer for over a year now. He took a turn for the worse this week.) So that left Sweetie and me to figure out something.

I suggested Chevy’s, which is located conveniently across the street from the Mall of America. Sweetie wanted to look for a few things at the Mall so we went after dinner. Our trek took us past the Lego store. I was going to resist the urge to drag Sweetie into the store, but I saw from the hallway a fully constructed Star Destroyer! I thought these were only available on the web, so I had to go look!

Drool.

Sweetie engaged the sales guys in conversation while I drooled and snapped my picture. I vaguely remember her complaining that she doesn’t have the type of job that could have a Lego set made from it. Hmmm…”I’d like the health insurance and benefits specialist Lego set, please.” Yeah, I can see her point.

Somehow it came up that she is my “dumb friend”, and I turned to the sales guys and said, “Well, I’m an astrophysicist, so all of my friends are my ‘dumb’ friend, really.” I instantly realized that that comment made me sound somewhat…um…bitchy? elitist? stuck-up? So before they could say anything else, I piped up, “Gosh, that makes me sound really mean, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah, but you guys are funny, too.”

Sigh. I should really learn when to keep my mouth shut.

Oh, and I did not buy that Lego set, but I’m debating whether or not I should beg Andrew for it for Christmas.

Getting to MN

I didn’t notice this the last time I flew (in December), but they no longer ask, “Has anyone unknown to you given you anything? Has your luggage been out of your control since you packed it?” It just seemed wrong.

The flight took off on time, and was mostly uneventful. At one point, though, I looked up from my book out the window, and it seemed as though I was looking out into the abyss. Below the clouds was only darkness — no lush farmlands, no overcrowded cities, nothing. I panicked for a second, trying to get my bearings. Then I noticed a small white line in the darkness — wake behind what must have been a very large ship or barge. We were flying over Lake Michigan. I leaned forward, and could make out the eastern shore, but could not see the western shore through the plane’s wing. I can’t remember having flown over Lake Michigan on other trips; though it’s possible that I just didn’t look out at the right times.

As we neared Minneapolis, the plane had to circle around some thunderheads before landing. In the end, though, we were about on time. Sweetie was waiting for me at baggage claim. It was weird not having at least on of my parents picking me up — Dad is pretty protective of his right to be the first to see me in MN. However, this time, he said that Sweetie could pick me up, and I promised that we would be home for dinner, so he could see me just after getting home from work.

The Road to Perdition

4/5 stars

Wow. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but this was far better.

Tom Hanks plays Mike Sullivan, a hit man working for a mob boss, John Rooney. One night, Sullivan’s son sneaks along on a job, to see what it is that his dad does. He sees everything in gory detail. This puts the entire family at risk, and Sullivan does what he has to to ensure the safety of his son.

Andrew’s comment that he wishes we’d seen it on the big screen, since many of the scenes would have been more spectacular. I must agree.

The Magdalene Sisters

4/5 stars

This is not a film to go see if you want a pick-me-up. Though dark, it was quite good, though.

The Magdalene Sisters follows three girls who are forced to become Magdalenes in an Irish convent. These Magdalene laundries were places that devout Catholics could take girls who were thought to be “going down the wrong path”. The three girls we follow each get there for differing offenses — Rose has a baby out of wedlock, Bernadette was an orphan who flirted with guys who hung out around the fence of the orphanage, and Margaret was raped. At the laundry, the girls (there were many women there of all ages — some old and gray) are forced to work from dawn to dusk, they are fed gruel while the nuns eat heartily in the next room. Disobedience is not tolerated, nor are attempts to run away. The only way for a girl to go home is for a family member to come and get her. Since often the only family the girl had was the one that put her there in the first place, we don’t see many girls go home. The essentially become slaves of the church for life. Of course, all of this is done in the name of God.

The scary part is that the Magdalene laundries were real, and the last one was only shut down in 1996. Its amazing how many atrocities have been committed by the Catholic church in the name of God. What’s more of a wonder is that they continue to get away with it.

The Borrowers

4/5 stars

This was a fun, fluffy movie. Borrowers are little people who live between the floor boards of people’s houses (at least the “innies” are), and they borrow things from the house to survive. They are never to be seen by the beens (human beings). The Clock family lives in the floor of the Lender’s house, but after the Lender’s grandmother dies without a will (supposedly), they have to move to make way for Ocious Potter’s luxury apartment complex.

The Avengers

0/5 stars
(too bad I can’t assign negative numbers…)

I want those two hours of my life back.

I’m not sure where to start, since so much of this production was bad. The characters were incomprehensible, the script dull, and the plot incoherent. There was not one character that I liked, and like The Brotherhood of the Wolf, Andrew and I often looked at each other with puzzled looks, trying to figure out what the hell was happening.

Don’t bother. You’d be better off counting the hairs on your head for amusement.

Andrew drove to work!!!

I left much earlier than Andrew did this morning, because I couldn’t sleep, and ended up getting out of bed at about 5AM. I was ready to head to work by 5:30 AM. Before I left, Andrew said that he wouldn’t drive because 1) he wanted to practice the drive to work another time, and 2) it was Friday, so the traffic may be heavier than our Monday-morning experiment last week.

When I got home, he was already there, which was a surprise. After a while, he mentioned that he had put gas in the Echo (his car). Huh? When did he do that, I wondered, perhaps he drove to the Metro, and made a side-trip on the way. But, before I could ask, he said that he’d driven to work, but he didn’t want to tell me because I’d told him that I would worry. Oh, that’s nice. He said that he weren’t going to drive today. He said that he was going to Metro to work. Needless to say, I was a little pissy about that — if something had happened, and I came home and his car was gone, I would have had no idea where to start looking for him. Fortunately, everything went fine.