Tahmi whisked me away to Des Moines yesterday. Our mission was two-fold:

• drop off some of her jewelry for entry in the Iowa State Fair
• eat lunch at a Granite City Brew Pub.

Rough, huh? Hah! I love being on Tahmi’s ‘I need to run an errand and want a passenger’ list! Especially when she buys me lunch sometimes to sweeten the deal.

Having never before seen the state fairgrounds, I was impressed. The entrance looks like Main Street, U.S.A. with its giant iron gate, paved streets, and jumble of brightly painted restaurants. The rest of the grounds we saw were lovely with old brick buildings, pavement and sidewalks, water features, gardens, landscaping, ski lifts, and benches.

I sat on a bench while Tahmi filled out a bunch of paperwork and submitted her work for judging. From what little I overheard, it sounds like competiton in Fine Arts is fierce and a great deal of the articles submitted don’t even get displayed due to a lack of space, which is astounding considering how gigantic the buildings are.

I think I might actually want to go check out the Iowa State Fair this year… for the first time ever in the fifteen years I’ve lived here! (Aside: I once lived two blocks away from the Washington State Fairgrounds. I was six. It was totally cool to ride my bike around over there.)

We left the fairgrounds and drove 20+ minutes to Granite City, got out of the car, and were walking toward the restaurant when Tahmi realized she’d left her purse at the fairgrounds. Shit! We hopped back in her late model black car and she Speed Racer X-ed us back across Des Moines to the building we’d vacated —

— and her purse was right where she’d left it, on a table at sign-in! Can you believe it? Chalk one thing up to love about Iowa: shit doesn’t get stolen very much. Which totally makes up for the weather, har-har-har.

An hour plus change after leaving the fairgrounds the first time, we were sitting in a booth in the target restaurant. (We were told to eat there because her man is doing research because he’s thinking of investing in the chain or its parent company or something or other, I’m not really clear because I don’t listen when people say things about finance, and really the point is that we were told to eat there and report back about whether or not it totally sucked. I guess we were Secret Shopping, more or less. So we interviewed the waitress like total dorks, which is why we happen to know their average serve time is twelve minutes even during peak. Otherwise, we would have eaten in the Italian restaurant across the street.) She and I split an artichoke & spinach dip appetizer and I took a picture of Tahmi eating it. She told me I couldn’t put it on the blog, so you can’t see it, neener neener neener.

She did, however, say I could post this picture:

That’s a “statue” in front of an Asian restaurant at Jordan Creek Mall, a new major shrine to consumerism we decided to eyeball. IT’S SO HUGE I CAN’T EVEN COMPASS IT. The place has a man-made lake with three fountains in it, at least a dozen stand-alone restaurants jumbled around, and that doesn’t even count the mall itself that we didn’t even enter. It’s fucking massive.

Oh: I had three-cheese ravioli in pink sauce, and Miss T had a deluxe BLT with garlic mashed potatoes. We left the research restaurant stuffed to the gills.

But all of that’s really secondary to the shopping I did. (Y’all read this blog mainly to find out what I buy, right? That’s what I thought.) I had some old gift cards from last Christmas, and bought (at Best Buy) a new set of earphones for my iPod, a specially remastered extended version of Grace with a DVD of the Grace videos, a 15-foot phone cord, and (at Borders) three books. I also bought Miss T and myself some frosty beverages at the Borders coffee shop; mine ended up having espresso in it but I drank it anyway and man oh man was it devastatingly delicious, considering it was the first coffee I’ve had in months. God, I love coffee.

Caffeine still gives me panic attacks, btw. Sigh.

We didn’t get home until after dark, probably toward the ten o’clock area. I had a totally fun, great, fabulous day. You’re all so, so jealous you’re not on Tahmi’s ‘I need to run an errand and want a passenger’ list. Believe me. You so totally are.

And this, of course, is for Joe: