interlude: minnesota.

Hello there!

Sorry for the long absence. I'm going to go ahead and blame it on my end-of-summer vacation--which I'd like to tell you about in this post. If you've been a reader of this blog for any time, you probably know that every year, around the end of August/Labor Day, I make my pilgrimage to the homeland--and the Minnesota State Fair.

"You go home for the Fair??" everyone asks me, with a pronounced "are you a complete idiot?" tone of voice. Well, yes and no. I've always had a certain fondness and yeah--nostalgia--for the Fair. It's kind of Midwest thing. But what it's really become is my own family holiday, redefined.

Most people who know me know I absolutely refuse to spend triple the price of an airline ticket to fly on the busiest day of the year for a damned turkey dinner and some barbaric football game. Just, no. Never. Not any more. As for Christmas? Well, I pretty much feel the same way, although now that my sis and her family are back in the great state of Cali, I am willing to take a nice coastal drive to watch my niece open her presents and partake of my sister's most excellent cinnamon rolls.

But back to the Fair. I've found that redefining traditional holidays is wonderfully liberating, so in addition to copious amounts of food on a stick, it's really become about family--all the more so this year, because I got to see my brand new niece, Mirah Jane.

So, in the next few posts, I'd like to share with you some of my experiences and photos of my late-summer vacation.

And then keep coming back, because I've recently found many incredible things to love--I can't wait to share it all with you.

More to love:

No journey to the Land of 10,000 Rehab Centers (har, har) would be complete without--no, not a secret vacay for "exhaustion," but to the mighty Minnehaha Falls.

That's all for now, but I'll be back tomorrow with all the delicious food I sampled while away. xoL