food show

Yesterday Jeannie, her family, and I went to the "Food City Food Show", where we paid six dollars to get in and left with about thirty dollars each worth of sample groceries, not counting the amount we grazed at the show itself in place of lunch.

This is one bag's worth:



I came home with two bags, and there were tables we skipped.

The baby seemed to be having a great time staring at people, listening to music, getting extra things just for being a baby (possibly the only time I've wished I had one; next year I may borrow someone else's for a couple hours), and meeting mascots:



Eventually he got fussy, though, so we brought him home. That was, of course, after he vomited on Jeannie, reminding me that I don't want one of those after all.

Mauled by Gators

Last weekend’s game against Florida was, as one of my former coworkers would put it, both tragedous and disasterful. I’m not even sure where to begin discussing how bad it was, because the day began so peppy and full of hope.

We had inflatable mascots by our tailgate tents:



We had planes towing marriage proposals over the stadium:



We had tailgates:



We had bigger tailgates, possibly the world’s largest:



And let’s not forget the Gator bashing. There was Gator dragging:



Gator bitch-slapping:



Even Gator stabbing, a tablescape décor worthy of Sandra Lee:



Sadly, there was no Gator defeating. At halftime, when my gate shift ended, we were down twenty to zero, and the Big Orange Army decided to pack it in and head home:



You can hardly blame them. If we keep playing this poorly, by the end of the season you won’t be able to give tickets away, much less scalp them on every corner.

The Plastic War of Northern Aggression

Downtown, at the Mast General Store where I went to buy candy* after** seeing "Burn After Reading"***, I spotted this near the candy:



Yes, that's right, it's the Civil War in a bag. Not the whole Civil War, of course, because you'd need several thousand more plastic soldiers, but it still seemed bizarre to see a bag labeled "Authentic Gettysburg".

Authentic? Really? Because all the plastic soldiers have all their limbs. And the sides seem evenly matched. And the horses are all the same color. And there aren't any collaterally damaged civilians. And the Union flag isn't correct for the era. Other than that it seems totally authentic.

*I buy candy at Mast General because they're one of those fake "olde timey" stores that trades on nostalgia, without offering anything at olde timey prices. Part of that, though, means they have olde timey candy there, and there's nowhere else in town, or probably in Tennessee, where I can get a Valomilk when I have a craving.

**Yes, I know I should have bought candy before the movie, but we didn't get there in time.

***"Burn After Reading" was good. I laughed all the way through.

topper

Since I moved here I've always said that you could paint pretty much anything Volunteer orange and someone in Tennessee would buy it. Today at the bookstore I realized there really is no limit to "anything":



At first I was terribly amused, and thinking, "Damn, somewhere out there someone has an orange and white wedding cake." Then I started thinking about an orange citrus cake with white chocolate frosting, and then I wanted cake and there wasn't any around.

Stupid cake topper.