My super glamorous job will have me at the New Mexico State Fair four out of five days this week.

Yesterday, I managed to sneak a peek at the palomino and the paint horses. I enjoy the Western Pleasure shows, but am always kind of regretful from where I sit in the bleachers about the fact that I'm probably not going to be one of those western pleasure cowgirls in a delightfully sparkly outfit. Autumn always makes me kind of wistful ...

I think I'm going to have to wait for the topes in Costa Rica one of these days. I imagine I can have something sparkly then.

I ate a deliciously greasy gyro at lunch and was surprised to find ... Ophelia ... on the midway. Well, a dive show anyway, complete with a State Fair mermaid whose outfit was red (and sparkly). The swimming pool was made of glass, and you should have seen the little kids reaching out to try and touch the eternally youthful mystery of the deep (from Florida, I understand) swimming by with her hair fanning out around her in the blue water.

I was quite surprised to see her there. She perched as pretty as could be, resplendent in her red mermaid costume and bright red lipstick, on the edge of the glass pool while a blonde young man performed a high dive from 90 feet into 9 feet of water.

Funny, when our internet connection was down over the weekend and I was trying to locate a paper dictionary for my daughter, I unearthed my old college Riverside Shakespeare. In DC, at the Eastern Market, there was a woman there who was selling handbags made of old books. One of them was made out of my collected works of Shakespeare from a million years ago. I came this close to buying it.

And maybe I still can ... I think this is her! Wonder if I could get a bag made out of a Grimms' collection of fairy tales? That would be cool.

Tomorrow, I'll try to take a photo of that mermaid.