is now half wrapped up. The other half, shall come in September...

We began with a trip to Rhode Island on June 19th. The primary reason for that journey: The My Little Pony Fair 2008, in Providence.

We had a dealer's table at the Fair; my wife, , has doubles or more of many of the ponies, some very close to mint, which she planned to sell at the fair. Over the course of 16 hours we did $1000+ in sales, which almost paid for every single aspect of the trip. Almost. I would have liked to see at least another $400 come in... not bad for bits of brightly-colored plastic, eh? Some of those ponies go for upward of $700 by themselves, wish we'd had a few of those!

I was a bit disappointed that only those who registered to come to the fair showed up- there was NO off-the-street crowd. But it was interesting to meet the woman who created the MLPs: She had grown up overseas on a military base. Her father had always promised her a pony, but but the time college years came around, she had to make a choice... In the late 70's she came to Hasbro, and spent the next 4 years convincing them to put toy ponies on the market (the people at the time thought young girls wanted to learn how to play cook and clean!).

Providence is a bit of a pain to get around, unless you happen to have to pass through it every day, I guess. We found the Zoo to be quite well set up, and got some good, close-up looks at interesting animals. Beyond that, the only other major thing we did was visit the Hasbro facility where they creat the toys.... Good Lord! I would have liked to have walked off with some of the One-Of-A-Kind toys we saw in there!
They also had a few interesting things, such as the Artist's Proof of Han Solo in the Carbonite block, and a display for the next Transformers movie.

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We got home, discovered none of the pets at home had died, and then headed up to the cottage for the weekend. Aside from one seriously rainy day, it was a great weekend. I got myself a small-mouth bass and a 29-inch pike, both now gracing the freezer.

And now it is back to work. House work to begin, then, hopefully, something that pays and that will last for two months...