If You Can Fry It, It's at the Fair

You could have rolled me home from this week's business trip to Dallas. For Tuesday's breakfast: a half cup of fruit, but unless you wanted to spend the next four hours in the hotel conference room hungry, the other offerings were eggs, sausage and bacon. Lunch was pancake-size hamburgers, onion rings and fries. And for dinner, they dispatched us off to the Texas State Fair with a clutch of food tickets.
It's ironic that I'd never ever been to a State Fair in my life and now I've been to two (in two different states!) in the past three years. Fried fish. Fried chicken. Fried okra. Fried twinkies. Fried Snickers. Fried marshmellows. Fried guacamole. Fried avocados. Fried Coke. (I don't know how that last one works out chemically, the whole liquid to solid alchemy must be the magic of the state fair.)
I had an apparently famous Fletcher's "Corny Dog," and corn on the cob (sounds healthy, until I tell you that it was dipped in butter!)
It may have been a blessing to have come under the positive exercise-oriented glow of my grade-school BFF, Andra for dinner the night before. And for an omega-fatty acid full dinner of sushi no less. I had not seen Andra since we were... maybe 10 years old? (You'll see below that we go back to the early 80's.)
But as I made notice of the little details of her life it was a little spooky: Hello Kitty charm on her car's rear-view mirror. Hello Kitty charm on my cell phone. Economist on her coffee table. Economist on my coffee table back at home. Ann Taylor blouse on her, matching my Ann Taylor blouse. Her reflecting what it's like to be one of the few women in a business leadership class. My sharing what it's like to have my boss' boss' boss draw sweeping generalizations about women (and men) in business. And then sharing a collective "what's up with that? We are SO capable!" sentiment.
Too bad that Texas is not closer to Illinois so that I could see Andra again sooner.
Too bad that I am now feeling like my tummy has swollen so much that it might begin to cover the geographical gap. Andra, if you look out your window tomorrow morning and wonder whether that mountain on the horizon was there last night when you went to sleep... that's actually my navel.
Too. much. food. at. the. Fair.