Last night at the Kern County Fair, Lydia and I ran in to some friends who attacked their corn on the cobs with a savage hunger only a fair-goer can experience.

I don't know if these photos make me hungry or want to puke. Check out the video, too. It's priceless.

So did fake journalist Nancy disGrace drive her TV show guest to commit suicide?

You decide:

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wi...

By TRAVIS REED

LEESBURG, Fla. Sep 13, 2006 (AP)— Two weeks after telling police that her son had been snatched from his crib, Melinda Duckett found herself reeling in an interview with TV's famously prosecutorial Nancy Grace. Before it was over, Grace was pounding her desk and loudly demanding to know: "Where were you? Why aren't you telling us where you were that day?"

A day after the taping, Duckett, 21, shot herself to death, deepening the mystery of what happened to the boy.

Police have refused to say whether she left a suicide note, and said nothing they have found so far in their investigation of her death has shed light on the whereabouts of her 2-year-old son, Trenton.

As the annual Kern Press Club Golf Tournament approaches, my partner Lydia, friend Ginny and myself decided to hit the driving range last night and get in some practice.

What a wild drive around town trying to find somewhere to hit some balls!

First we drove out to an interesting part of town in the southeast to find that Peppertree is permanently closed. Then we drove up to the north, next to the airport, to find that #1 Golf is also closed! So then we drove all the way down to Stine south of Pacheco to find that, as always, the third time's the charm. Jose's is open. And they have cheap beers.

We plunked $20 down to get two large baskets of balls. We didn't even finish them all! But it was fun trying to hit the lone tree to the right of the grass area. And Ginny has some sort of fascination with trying to hit the guy sweeping up the balls. And he was parked. To the left of us.

Luckily we still have time to get some more practice in before the tourney. We'll need it.

But, where should we go? Jose's was OK, but if there are any better driving ranges around town, please let me know!

Twice in the past week I have been in a conversation where the topic of the lack of fancy restaurants in Bakersfield has come up. Not that I am rich and go out to fancy restaurants a lot. But sometimes I just want to get dressed up and go somewhere really expensive and splurge for a night.

But where can you do that in Bakersfield? Where can you go and just drop a huge wad of money on a fancy dinner? About the fanciest I can think of is Cafe Med, but even that place isn't evening-gown required.

Seriously, where do people go for a fancy feast in this town?

My ears are still ringing and my throat hurts. My lungs feel like I smoked a pack of cigarettes last night. And I didn't even smoke! But I think I was high off all the pot that the Rabobank Arena collectively smoked last night during the Tool concert.

Tool? Yeah, I know. I'm 30. Aren't I a little too old to be going to a rock concert? I went as a guest of someone who loves them. And, maybe I'm actually at the right age. As my friend put it when I asked her what to wear, "Remember your grunge days." As in, what did I wear in high school?? That was so long ago.

All in all, I enjoyed myself. Although I did wish I had a shield to guard myself from the thrashing, swaying, waaay too excited girl next to me. At one point she grabbed her boyfriend and shook him so hard I thought he was going to fall over the seats into the row below us.

But I did like the show. The guitars, the drums, the lights, the dancing singer, the lasers. Yes, there were llllllasers. I haven't seen lasers since the Grunge Laser Show at the Ruben H. Fleet Space Theater in San Diego in 1994. Wow. I am old.

Yes! I am actually sticking to my plans! This nice, long Labor Day weekend I re-sealed the living room and got back to sanding. Or, as Steve at the office put it, "Why are you ironing the bench?" (Read my blog about my living room project)

It's not an iron! It's my brand new Skil sander, with seven extensions and a dust filter. It's sooooo dreamy. Four days of about four to five hours of sanding lead the completion of the large areas of the front doorway, bottom of the windowsill, and the left bench. Now I just need to finish the right bench and the fireplace mantel and I'm all ready to try the nifty extensions that came with the sander.

Sanding is very meditative. You can't listen to music because the sawdust will kill your CD player and the sander is so loud anyway, you wouldn't be able to hear it. So I just have my own mind to wander in as I sand. I think about what the living room will look like when I'm done. I think about work and my family and life. And I actually think about my dad a lot, even though we don't have a close relationship. (Read the blog about fleeing from child support.)

But the smell of sawdust brings back lot of memories from my childhood, when I would hang out in my grandpa's workshop (my dad's dad) and sweep sawdust. I don't know why I was so fascinated with the stuff. My grandpa was a cabinet maker by trade. My dad was also in construction. The smell of sawdust also reminds me of the way my dad would smell when he came home from work. Usually he was covered in saw dust, cement, paint, spackle, drywall dust, whatever he was working with that day.

As I sand, I think about what it would be like if he was there helping me. I can't even remember the last time we did a father-daughter type activity. I was probably 12.

Anyway, I'm excited to be back on a timeline to finish my living room. Halloween is my deadline. I can do it!