As my friend Jacintha described it: “it’s the distillation of all that is North Carolina.” And she was right!

We:

• Checked out the monster pumpkins
• Rode rides (well, I did at any rate… Brian & Meghan are of the non-ride-riding persuasion… see, that’s them waiting for me to ride)
• Ate Deep Fried Twinkie (Meghan, not me — that’s what she’s brandishing in the photo above)
• Saw the cake Brian decorated in the cake-decorating competition (very nice — suble white-on-white with a wee bit of blue. Nice fondant.)
• Found the cotton-candy-flavored ice cream that I’d had two years ago, but had managed to miss last year. Also discovered that it’s available year-round at Cary Town Center. Danger.
• Went through the entire vendor building. I bought sparkly eye shadow (almost inevitable) and Meghan got honey cotton candy. (I tried it, but it turns out I prefer my cotton candy “straight up”)
• Played waaaaaaaay too many fair games
• Won! four fair games.* (And that was just me — Brian won, like, a million, prizes — check out the loot bag!)
• Ate hot dogs & butterfly fries
• Bought a monster bag of cotton candy

**

* I won a realistic looking dog (which I gave to Brian who was going to give it to a friend of his to whom he gave a real puppy of the same breed [which, of course, I can’t remember now), a blue pony (for Meghan), a floppy blue puppy (for Jeff) and a “Stutch” for me. “Stutch” was obviously supposed to be “Stitch” from Lilo & Stitch, but we suspect that Disney may not have been involved in the production of “Stitch” so we started calling him “Stutch”.

Other favorite stuffed critters:
Cracker Monster
Elmer
SpongePete Rhomboid-Pants
Hi Kitty
Large Bird
The Incredulous Hulk
Pikachomp

** Surprise of the day: A Monster Bag of cotton candy is (a) only 1.5 servings (for once the people who make up those numbers think like I do!) and (b) each of those servings is only 115 calories. Guilt-Be-Gone!