Doin' the county fair thing

This morning I took a bit of a detour on the way to work, stopping by the Comal County Fairgrounds to drop off some entries for this year's fair. And by "dropping off" I mean "stand in line for two hours in almost, but not quite, scorching heat." Those of you who've been paying attention will recall that my holiday spiced metheglin took third place last year in the homemade wine competition. So naturally enough I felt compelled to enter again. This year I settled on entering a bottle of my jalapeño metheglin, since the prickly pear and mint meads will benefit more from aging. The jalapeño metheglin, on the other hand, is like a kick in the teeth and isn't going to benefit much from aging. As I've mentioned before, it starts off sweet on the tongue--deceptively so--before a severe case of afterburn sets in. I really, seriously and sincerely doubt that it will place, but I figure those wine judges are too complacent with all the mustang grape and agarita wines they normally see. This won't be one they're likely to forget any time soon.

Entering the mead took all of five minutes. The rest of the time was spent in line to register photos for the art displays. We had three all together--my photo of the wet Lady Margaret passion flower, one Monkey Do took of her friend underwater, and a portrait the Wife took of Fairy Girl over at Mission San Jose. Unfortunately, the hanger on my framed photo was defective, and came loose right as I finally got to the head of the line. Unable and unwilling to leave, fix it, and return to stand in line for another two hours, I entered the works of the womenfolk and left. Yes, I'm disappointed my shot didn't make it in, since I've been looking forward to entering it for months (I so rarely take a good photo that I don't think I can be blamed for this) but them's the breaks.

Judging in all the categories took place tonight. We're going to swing by the fair tomorrow evening and see if any of the Blaschke clan snagged any ribbons. Or if I've been banned from entering any more honey wine. Wish us luck.

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