Alligator, ruins, and a sneak-attack boob

       I went to the Taste of Colorado this last weekend.  (I find it quaint that there's a "Taste of" involving the entire state - despite it being, in actuality, largely representative of only metro Denver area cuisine - it seemed so much more picturesque and delightfully small town than "Taste of Chicago."  Just the name, not the event itself.)
      It was shockingly crowded.  I went with three friends fairly early in the evening.  We arrived in time to hear. hilariously enough, Bret Michaels take the stage.  He played mostly covers.  I never got a good look at him, or the stage itself for that matter.  It was just the suggestion of a vague, glowing corona over the silhoutted heads of the crowd.
      But my friends and I wandered off to the edge of the festival, were it was a little easier to breathe and talk, and searched out some food.  By the recommendation of my boyfriend, I tried some fried alligator.  It looked like popcorn shrimp and tasted like fishy chicken.  Cliche, yeah.  I tasted a berry-kabob (exactly what you'd think - a bunch of fruiti on a skewer and drizzled with chocolate), some amazing shepherd's pie, and downed a bowl of kheer.
       I went home full, footsore, and smelling like stale cigarettes and funnel cakes.

       On Labor Day, I went to this outrageously seedy amusement park with my cousins.  The rides had a rented, mobile look to them, despite the fact that they'd also obviously been there for years.  There was a derelict ferris wheel right in the middle, nestled between two functioning rides.  It had peeled paint and sad grey steel and rusted bolts and snapped cables and popped lightbulbs.  It was a little eerie, but mostly just sad.  A leafy treee towered over it, poking a couple branches through it.  No one looked at it or paid any attention to it.  It was just background, forgotten.
       After that, we went to a cheap "italian" "restaurant" (a misnomer - both words were stretched to the breaking point) and had pizza while a lady at the table next to ours hiked her shirt up, displayed a large amount of boob and not an inconsiderable amount of nipple to the room before clamping her baby to it.
       It was weirdly upsetting.  I was in a pizza eating frame of mind.  No one in a pizza eating frame of mind should have to be suddenly exposed to pale, fleshy, stretch-marked boob.

       In other news (I couldn't and still can't get that image out of my head, pizza or no): I still don't have a job.  I still don't have an apartment.  Life's still pretty bleak at the moment.  I can't hate being an adult yet because I haven't had any opportunity to be one.
       I did make it to the library yesterday, which was comforting and frustrating.  I love libraries, but this one had the poorest, slimmest, meagrest selection.  I did manage to find Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book and Lev Grossman's The Magicians (both of which I read that day).  I've read The Graveyard Book once before - I loved it just as much the second time around.  It's so wonderfully macabre and melancholy.  And I devoured The Magicians.  It was everything I was promised it'd be - magical (of course), dry, wistful, sinister, tender.  It made me feel lost and pessimistic and hopeful and heartbroken and watchful.  It was pretty meta, which is satisfyingly mind-twisting.  It felt good to read something new.

       Tomorrow I fly to visit my family, including my brother's new daughter - my parents' first grandchild.  It'll be nice to see everyone.  It'll be especially nice to eat a few mom-cooked meals, too.