You see a lot of interesting things at the Illinois State Fair: farm animals, butter cows, deep-fried foods and contests for things you had no idea were contestable. Despite all these intriguing things, it?s the fairgoers themselves who are sometimes the most interesting of them all.

I snapped the photos below, on my way back to my car, after stuffing myself with delicious foods that were completely terrible for me. I LOL'd hard upon approaching this gemstone of a state fair attendee specimen. Some passers-by, generally the older folks, gave the automobile strange stares while those of the younger generation ROFL'd just as I. Seeing it made me wonder what was on the person's mind??MUST HAVE CORNDOG!!!???MUST NOT MISS LYNYRD SKYNYRD AND BO BICE!!!?

Maybe this was just the last parking spot in the lot? For those of you unfamiliar with the Illinois State Fair in Springfield, many fairgoers park in the yards of homes surrounding the fairgrounds. Owners of these homes/lots make pretty decent bank from it each year, too. This is pretty extreme, however. I wish I could have been there to see how the driver got back in it. Hope he/she got a discount.

Hello August! There's nothing like a combination of great weather and busy days at work to detract a blogger from his blog. I have some things coming up that I wanted to post a quick note about:

Downtown Springfield, Inc's Pied Piper Architectural Tour number four is today at 5:30 PM, meeting at the Old State Capitol. I attended last month's tour of the Illinois State Capitol complex, but never got around to posting an entry for it (UPDATE: check it out here). I plan to go to today's event, so maybe I'll make the post a double feature.

I  bought a new (used, technically) car recently and wanted to share with you, Internet, some of the things I learned during the process. Spoiler: overall, the experience wasn't entirely terrible!