No sooner had I finished the entry below that states clearly that I am going to be burying myself in a stack of books and only coming out to sew than I went off and had an adventure.

I headed to downtown Columbus, parked, and strolled down the street. I stopped in first at the North Market. I’ve never been there before. It is the same general idea as the Pike Street Market in Seattle but smaller. I was not thrilled with the live lobsters and the many dead carcasses of other animals arranged for display but there was chocolate, and ice cream, and more salsa samples than you can shake a stick at. But I kept my diet blog firmly in mind and that (plus my purposely limited spending money) kept me in check.

After that I headed to my main goal, ComFest. I had never heard of this until last night when the husband called me and said that he just heard of it and it sounded like me. That’s not really a compliment since he also referred to it as a “hippie liberal freak thing downtown.” I wasn’t sure it would be worth going to since I’m not usually into street festivals but decided to check it out today because I could kill two birds with one stone as we shall see later.

It was great! For better understanding I will be referring to it for now and forevermore as “HippieFest”. It is so much more descriptive. Great cheap jewelry. Lots of smoking accessories that I’m not educated enough to understand. Buddists, Hare Krishnas, Scientologists, and the Druids had booths. Lots of left wing political stuff which is where I was glad the husband wasn’t with me because he would have felt a need to explain the error of their ways to the people manning the booth.

There was food. Usually at this kind of thing I can get nachos or fries. Not here. Here there were booths fighting over my non-meat eating self. Not only that – there were multiple vegan booths! I ended up with pasta with sun-dried tomato pesto, mushrooms, onions, and peppers.

Then I headed off for my two for one special. The gay pride parade started from this festival. A good time was had by all. I especially loved the contrast of the Flaggots colorguard’s incredible routine to Superfreak being immediately followed by a group of Catholic priests. I decided to follow the parade route down to where the Pride festival was to see that. I didn’t realize how far it was but I got to see the whole route including all the protesters.

The crowd was much more lively wherever there were protesters in order to drown out the bullhorns. I really irked one guy when I stopped in front of him and scooped up some purple feathers on the sidewalk. He really glared at me but the husband has the camera. I’m a scrapbooker and need something so I am not going to pass up free purple feathers from someone’s boa at the Gay Pride Parade! They would take away my scrapbooker membership card. The protester guy gave me an evil look. One protester was chanting something that sounded like, “Popeye had it all together,” but I’m sure I heard that wrong since it makes no sense and the crowd noise was really loud there.

I finally made it to the Pride festival but by then I was tired and festivalled out so I didn’t stay long. I had to hike back to my car. Round trip from leaving festival one to finding my car was one hour of solid walking. That’s my exercise for today.

I left and went to a movie. There was a fine art fair in the parking lot so I browsed there but it was super expensive. Watched Ocean’s 13 and now I’m beat. I’m off to soak my aching feet!