Yech

Ramona and I went to the Holiday Food & Gift Festival today. It was inspired by our trip to Gordman's yesterday and walking through aisles of "who buys this stuff? and if no one buys them, where do they go?" The amount of useless crap sold in our society amazes me. It's not even a matter of asking yourself if you really need it (e.g., do i really need wineglasses if i have cute mugs). I can't imagine anyone "needing" $30 ceramic frogs. But maybe we all have different needs.

Anyhow, we ended up at the festival figuring we'd either find something good or we'd end up blogging about it. First issue was parking. Parking downtown at meters on Sunday is a myth. An expose from Ramona is forthcoming... It doesn't matter if it's free, you have to find it first. And why are there so many cars/trucks towing trailers parked at the meters anyway?

Then we tried to navigate the poor signage to find the festival. You would think a big festival like this would have better signage than our meetings. But no.

There were lots of fascinating things, even though we were definitely the wrong audience for those knickknacks. Mostly it was the same stuff as any of the festivals in Civic Center throughout the summer ("People's" Fair, Taste of Colorado, etc) but more holiday-themed. It was easier to try the food though. There were some interesting things like soup mixes you boil in a bag, cookie/brownie mixes, dried meats, flavored oils, dips, jams, and so on. By the end I couldn't eat another thing flavored with jalapeno or habanero. I know we live in the southwest, but it's a bit much. In fact, I don't think I can eat anything for a while...