Parking Lot + Daystar = Sadness

We attended the "Taste of the Summit" event over the weekend, wherein the various restaurants around the local shopping megaplex set up tents and let us sample their delicious wares for $10 a person.

I tend to avoid the large area most people refer to as "outdoors" for various reasons, not the least of which is that it is the natural habitat for bears, tree pollen, and Jehovah's Witnesses. However, some of our friends were going, so we braved the suburban wilderness of southeastern Birmingham and headed to the Summit.

The crowd was huge, and the lines were long. The food was every bit as good as I've come to expect from the restaurants around there, but waiting in line for up to twenty minutes for a couple of spoonfuls of pasta was a bit disappointing. Sure, it's only $10 to sample ten different restaurants, but I doubt they would have lost much money (and probably gained more future customers) by being a bit more generous with the portions. Still, the cuisine was excellent and we got to hang out with our friends and listen to live music, so overall the day a success.

Except for one thing.

One critical fact about the outdoors that I had overlooked: there's a really bright, hot ball of fire that sears the flesh of fish-belly-white nerds like me. I woke up this morning looking like I'd run a marathon through a slaughterhouse. I'm also pretty sure that sometime during the night, small gnomes replaced the water pipes leading to my shower with similar pipes carrying sulfuric acid. I figure shaving is completely out of the question, so I'll be going with my unpopular but far more comfortable "mountain man" look for the next couple of days.

Ouch.