I Brake for Ferris Wheels

Saturday morning I met Susan at the coffee shop and we drank our iced lattes. They were made by Andy, who was hungover, and that was funny because he was still all clean-looking and tall, but looking carefully, you could see that his eyes were just a little bit red - usually they are very bright and clear. I don't think he appreciated my noticing that.
Eventually I wandered home and pulled together my knitting and other amusements, put on a summer dress and zipped up north to the company picnic in Snohomish. I did have a nice time, and I ate popsicles and watermelon and took my shoes off and walked in the grass and found out that one of our VPs somehow found our blog!!! (Hi I.G.!)
After the picnic (and I'm sad to report that there was no piglet show because apparently the piglets got out of their pen and the eagles who nest in a tree near the Farm swooped down and had some tender bacon for breakfast one morning) I pulled out my Lynyrd Skynyrd box set and got Natalie back on those country roads. One of the country roads took us by Klahaya days outside of Snohomish, and what Klahaya days seemed to mean was a travelling carnival with funnel cakes and a ring toss where you could win a bowl of goldfish, and carnies the color of a leather handbag for whom a cigarette was really a kind of 11th finger.

When I saw the ferris wheel featured above, I had to stop. This is the kind of girl I am, the kind of girl I make a conscious effort to be. I will stop to ride the ferris wheel, even if I have to do it all by myself. Actually, in some ways it's more amusing to stop and ride the ferris wheel all by yourself.

But I didn't end up riding the ferris wheel all by myself. Turns out, if you don't weight the ferris wheel appropriately "you can try to stop the thing, but it'll just keep on going. even if you put it in reverse, it'll keep right on going forward". At least, that's what the guy running it told us. I wasn't going to challenge him on this. So he put me in a car with a long-haired grizzly dude and his little son, who had spectacles and seemed a little tentative about it all. I took their photo together up at the top and he gave me the thumbs-up sign.

On the way down, the little boy said "My eyeballs don't feel too good."
"Your eyeballs?"
"Yeah, my eyeballs feel like they're gonna barf!"

And that, my friends, is going in the book for sure.