Wednesday, I had a tremendous tire adventure. I changed all 4 tires for the first time on the Lexus, pretty good considering the car’s 5 years old and has 32,300 miles on it. Apparently those high-performance stock tires were only meant to last 15,000 miles. I’d brought the car into the dealership for a recall check, and they observed that my rear tires were almost bald and the fronts were worn pretty badly on the insides (normal wear on sports suspension, which tilts tires inward in the front for better traction). They quoted me $885 for the 4 tires including mounting and balancing, plus $169 for alignment. I don’t know whether this would include the mandatory tire disposal fees and taxes, and it was already too big of a number for me. I’m used to the Accord Coupe’s tires costing $110 each.
I left to go shop around, and after researching, ended up buying the exact same tires (Bridgestone Potenza RE760 Sport) from Discount Tires, and they installed, mounted, balanced, disposed, taxed for just under $850. Their inspection revealed that my suspension is perfectly fine, so because they saved me an alignment, I was fine paying an additional $70 for their replacement program on all 4 tires. I never thought I’d think a grand on tires is a good deal, but that appears to be the norm from my research, and I got away with really good, high-performance, higher-wear tires for under a grand, and if anything happens to them for the next 3 years, they’ll be replaced for free.
The young guys working at Discount Tires/America’s Tires were very knowledgable, friendly, and professional, and many of them have those same tires on their own cars, which they take on the race track on weekends and drift. They must’ve looked at me and my old tires that lasted 32K+ miles and thought, “Man, this car’s wasted on her, the old folgie.”

After my tires were done, I drove my suddenly quiet car over to Ann’s new house and she, her hubby Mark, and I went to the Orange County Fair. The goal was to let her try this year’s new gimmick, deep-fried Kool-Aid balls. When I saw this in a news article, I’d sent the link to her, and we’d been talking about it since. Last year, I’d discovered a deep-fried butter article and sent that to her, and she did go to the fair and try that, too. I wonder what they’re going to deep-fry next year. But anyway, we weren’t sure we’d find it since a friend was just recently at that Fair and had never heard of the Kool-Aid balls. As luck (good or bad, I’ll let you decide) would have it, it was one of the first things we came across. Ann spotted a giant sign immediately:

(BTW, at 5.5 months pregnant, I weighed myself this morning and I weigh 131.6, up 0.1 lbs from what I weighed 2 weeks ago, when the doctor told me to watch the weight gain and restrict it to half pound per week from this point on. Yay.)

There were a lot of large people in the fried foods line, we observed. I lined up in a significantly shorter line farther down for crepes, and ordered a grilled chicken pesto salad crepe, and noticed that everyone in line in front of me was fit or slender. Interesting. Anyway, I didn’t try the Kool-Aid balls. Ann wasn’t too impressed, saying the fried butter last year was better. The Kool-Aid balls were apparently just donut holes in which red punch Kool-Aid powder was mixed into the dough, then deep-fried. She said the doughy innards didn’t have much taste, altho the more fried outside seemed to have been sprinkled with Kool-Aid powder and did achieve more tang of flavor. She felt sick after eating those and some globules of deep fried zucchini strips, and didn’t eat anything else. Mark had a giant hot dog in a giant bun buried in giant amounts of condiments. I’d never thought of mayo as a hot dog topping. At one point Mark got up and left the table to look at some exhibits, and Ann and I were approached by an elderly couple, the woman in a wheelchair. The gentleman asked politely if they could share our table (I guess the farther back ones would make for difficult wheelchair maneuvering) and I told him of course. It then occurred to me I didn’t even check with Ann, but she didn’t seem to mind. The couple had purchased deep-fried Oreo cookies and offered one to me as I was curious to them. I did not allow Allison to have that, but the two of them said it was good and showed me a cross-section of one they’d bitten into. It looked like fried yellow cake (batter) with a doughy black center (Oreo). Ann said she’d had it before and the oil makes everything soggy inside.
It was fun wandering around the fairgrounds with them, people-watching, exhibit-examining, animal-observing. At the livestock section, a goat had just given birth to two little does about 45 minutes before we’d gotten there. She had already licked her girls clean, altho her rear was still seeping some bloody goo. Animals are so resilient. Mama goat doesn’t even look tired, and the baby goats were already walking their tiny, wobbly fuzzy bodies to mom’s teats and nipping at them, eyes open and everything. Farther down in another pen, some giant sows were laying on hay sleeping on their sides. Their tender sat on the gate, explaining to a bunch of onlookers that the sow behind him is expected to give birth the next day, signs being the changes in her behavior, teats, and she’d begun lactating a bit. Mark leaned against this gate and watched the sow, as Ann and I wandered around all the pens and looked at other goats, chicken, chicks, etc. We returned to the sow section a couple of times and had a good laugh at how many people were gathered around the pregnant sow, just staring, when she was on her side asleep the entire time. What are they looking at? Nothing was happening or going to happen, apparently, until the next day.
Anyway, I think I’m now vegetarian again. The Fair does this to me every time.