last day of work was relatively painless and included a number of pleasant surprises, most importantly, a batch of homemade white chocolate macadamia nut cookies and an additional check for one day of vacation. woo hoo.

story time. this one's recent adventure reminded me of last november's south texas fairgroundy extravaganza. i found myself visiting the lovely and talented RGo in Austin right smack in the middle of Wurstfest, the ten day salute to sausage. it seems that her posse rents a van each year to make a pilgrimage to New Braunfels, in order to get their bock and brats on. lucky me.

much like anything hosted on a fairgrounds, just about anything you want comes on a stick. i'm sure if you looked hard enough, or asked the right person, you'd find beer on a stick. just saying. after gorging ourselves with chunks of spicy and sweet mystery meat, washing it all down with bock from plastic cups procured with drink tickets, the carnival beckoned. yes, that's right, an old-fashioned rickety-ass carnival, complete with every carnie cliche you can imagine. straight out of gibsonton, you might say, minus lobster boy, of course.

seeing as we only had enough tickets for a whirl on the ferris wheel (drink tickets double as ride tickets, you see, it's all good amongst german lovers), three of us queued up for the time of our lives. that's when i noticed the yum yuck, dirty hot carny guy cruising me. at first, i thought it was just me. a carny? in new braunfels? i mean, stranger things have happened but... then said cruising was independently confirmed by disinterested bystanders. creepy, and yet, i was just tipsy enough to be vaguely turned on by the idea. i took the fantasy far enough to envision my head being severed seven-stylee afterwards, which cooled my jets considerably.

once at the top, the folks in the car next to and slightly above us lit up a cigarette. i cried out, "hey, i want a smoke!". our neighbors inquired, "oh yeah?", to which i replied, "yeah!". next thing i know, a cigarette is being hurled at me from above. i lit up and we all laughed. the wheel began turning again and at each pass of the hot carny, i had to hide my smoke, blithely puffing away on each upswing. somehow i think he knew, but what was he gonna do? throw us off the ride? not so much. oh yeah, and there were fried oreos.