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This weekend saw a lot of Michigan under winter storm advisories and watches and warnings and an ever-escalating series of concerns. Which would have been fine enough to sit out, except that we had business taking us to the western end of the state. I mean the lower peninsula. In particular, to Fremont, home of the Clubhouse Arcade (formerly Special when Lit), the exact same spot we were at the weekend before. Friday would be the last day of practice time at the venue hosting the Michigan State Pinball Championship Series (Saturday's event) and then the Women's Championship Series (Sunday's). As state women's representative bunnyhugger had to attend Sunday, and as one of the qualifying competitors she had to attend Friday. The least ridiculous to do would be to spend Friday through Sunday there. Especially as it's a two-hour drive in ordinary circumstances and we had the threat of bad weather, basically, from Friday morning through to tomorrow morning.

As another element to things, we had a carpooler. FAE, a non-binary player who the past few months started playing in bunnyhugger's women's tournaments and sweeping them all with unsettling ease, by virtue of those appearances in women's tournaments gained a state women's rating. And their finishes in Lansing Pinball League and in Pinball At The Zoo --- coed events --- gave them a high enough 'open' rating to qualify for one of the eight positions reserved for open-tournament players. (bunnyhugger had her position from women's-only events; she needed a couple better finishes at RLM tournaments, or in Lansing league, to get an invite for her open finishes.) But FAE doesn't drive, whether for lack of a car or lack of learning how to drive, and asked if we could give them a ride and it would be churlish to refuse.

While we set out close to our noon target Friday, we were not close to getting to Fremont by the 2pm expected. This was the snow's fault. It was heavy enough to be annoying, though not so heavy as to cause traffic hazards. Just slowness, especially once we got past the Grand Rapids outskirts and were on two-lane county and smaller roads. The drive lasted three hours, meaning that we got into town just in time to check in to our bed-and-breakfast/AirBnB (turns out the place works both legitimate and Internet bookings), the Gerber Family Guest House. So we moved our stuff into there first.

The house turns out to be something like forty houses grown together. It is so large. There are a whole bunch of rooms, each with a person's name, suggesting the most prominent resident of each, and the rooms all have their own bathroom, inviting the question of what these rooms were before they were bathrooms. For our room (Sally) I think the answer was ``nursery room''. It has the bathroom sink on the outside wall, which made sure the water started frigid for the first couple minutes after you turned it on, so that can't be the original plan. Bathroom sinks get interior pipes where possible. The room also has more closet space than our actual house, one a good-size walk-in closet and one a charming little shelved closet with a three-quarters-height door. It gave me such strong feelings of being at the home my grandparents built in the 40s, right down to the sloped ceiling in the bathroom.

Also the place had an estimated twenty living rooms, all connected to one another, plus multiple kitchens. One was probably a servant's kitchen. One --- the yellow one --- we were invited to use and was where they had the snacks available for free use. Also at least two sinks and two four-burner stoves, one next to each other, as if I were making a joke about the brobdingnagian nature of the place. The many rooms were also decorated with Gerber family photographs and trinkets from the history of the Gerber baby food factory, so you could have some idea of who the people who had guests in this house were. They were in black-and-white and dressed like your grandparents' wedding pictures.

It was a neat place, large and open and with a seeming never-ending number of new rooms to discover. Also apart from bunnyhugger, FAE, and this one person I think was doing housekeeping Saturday morning I never saw anyone else in it. bunnyhugger had better success, spotting some other pinball players hanging out in common areas Friday night, but I had stayed in our room catching up on my Internet friends and whatnot, so missed all of that. Really fun, charming spot, though, and already at the top of our list for if we ever have to stay overnight in Fremont again.

Finally we reach the next event on my photo roll, back in the United States but without setting my camera back to Eastern Time! So please take the metadata on this with a grain of salt and conversion from Central European Summer Time to Eastern Daylight Time. This was Juneteenth, which we thought might be a good day for riding at Cedar Point. It was ... mm, there's been better. It looks like Father's Day might be the better mid-summer amusement park day.

This would also be our last visit to the park before Siren's Curse, the roller coaster dropped into the park to distract from the problems Top Thrill 2 was having, would open.

And, as you can see from the park sinking under six inches of water, maybe they shouldn't have invited the Siren to Curse the park. We weren't sure any roller coaster would open through this. ... Also note that the park had replaced its Cedar Point 150 sign erected for the sesquicentennial.

The carousels were running! We got some damp rides to the Midi-enabled band organ.

And Blue Streak would be our first Cedar Point coaster of the year. I'm inexplicably fascinated by the channel dug into the ground for the dispatch of the coaster trains.

The park was doing brisk business selling rain ponchos.

This uncharacteristically empty restaurant used to be a Chickie and Pete's, the only one I ever ate in (I guess it's a chain), and before that, was a sports bar where Dad could hang out while the kids were having fun. It's empty this year except for the person sitting on the porch there. Probably something will be done with it eventually but who knows when or what it'll become? (Another restaurant.)

Trivia: In debating whether and how to ask Vice-President Chester Arthur to assume the office of President following the shooting, but before the death, of James Garfield, the only strong precedent the Cabinet could agree was relevant were the periods of insanity of British King George III, when the Prince of Wales only accepted the regency following an Act of Parliament. The first of those periods was November 1788 through February 1789, when a Regency Bill was approved by the Commons but not settled by the Lords; the second, in October 1810, when a Regency Bill was passed, ultimately with the King's assent. Source: From Failing Hangs: The Story of Presidential Succession, John D Feerick.

Currently Reading: A Call to Arms: Mobilizing America for World War II, Maury Klein. I swear to you all, I am reading this book, it's just over 800 pages and I haven't had much time to simply sit and read.

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And now, at long last ... the last pictures of our European Vacation, an odyssey full of disappointments and delights. It ends, as you'd hope, with snacks.

The bag we got our dinner in one night, which I love just because ``eet smakelijk'' looks like something you might come up with if you were faking Dutch for ``eat smiling''.

Oh yeah, one of the bags of baby carrots that they gave us as we left Plopsaland for some reason. Not just us; everyone got two bags per. I have no explanation for this phenomenon.

And now, sad to say, we had to leave. Here's a view from De Lijn of Plopsaland; you can see the hotel up front and The Ride to Happiness behind.

More views of Plopsaland from afar.

And the the sad last look at Plopsaland, on the train bringing us to Amsterdam. It was a sad evening.

We stopped to change trains in Gent, which I didn't recognize as the Ghent, but we were fascinated by and curious what this handsome-looking building in the distance was. Turns out, it was the (historic) Ghent train station.

We were stumped thinking what it was, having nothing but these remote views. There was plenty of structure above --- and below --- us that was obviously modern train station so it didn't occur to us these were all part of the same train station complex.

One of my favorite compositions of bunnyhugger looking out of frame. ... In hindsight if I'd paid attention to the Gent-Sint-Pieters sign I'd have realized where we were but, have to admit, we were mostly sad and rushed.

Still, there were pigeons having a good time, so that's nice.

And come the next day we got to the airport, which still had the old-style click-click-click destination board! Mostly; the flight numbers and air liveries were on flat TV screens. But the signs still clicked, like destination signs ought.

Also, a picture of one of the snacks we'd bring back to Michigan with us to have with afternoon coffee break. A Nutri-Score of E means it's Excellent, right?

You can tell this is a quality wafer chocolate snack by its affording a seven-differences puzzle.

Trivia: On its second flyby of Earth, in December 1992, the Galileo probe flew 300 kilometers above the South Atlantic and within one kilometer of the intended target, accurate enough that post-Earth trajectory maneuver TCM-18 was cancelled, saving about five kilograms of propellant for later mission operations. Source: Mission To Jupiter: A History of the Galileo Project, Michael Meltzer.

Currently Reading: A Call to Arms: Mobilizing America for World War II, Maury Klein.

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In pictures, I'd like to share the last of our photos at Oostende and then getting back to our hotel, as we had to leave early and get to Amsterdam for our early-morning flight.

Here's what it looks like when you'd think you could just hop onto a drawbridge as it closes. I bet if you tried all sorts of people would be tense at you, though.

And we're back and traffic can move freely again!

Under the overhang here are those portals to the bicycle dimension, and far in the background is De Lijn.

Unfortunately they have vehicle-wrapping advertisements in Belgium too, but at least the ones in Dutch read funny. (It translates something like 'So that's the taste of pleasure'.)

Here's our train! It looks so very narrow but it's an extremely normal size once you're in.

Unfortunately the ride back was so packed there was no good photograph-taking, or even sitting. But we got back to our home station and hey, here's that blue ring again!

Statue standing outside the welkom-in-De-Panne center of a woman who looks like she's seen better days maybe, but so have we all.

Also found in De Panne: funny supermarket names!

Really big fans of American television networks here.

And this was our hotel. I think we were on the second floor, so you could actually see our hotel room from here.

There comes a point where you have so much fire extinguishing technology on display at the hotel that it becomes unsettling. I know you're asking why that second fire extinguisher is chained up but don't worry, there's a guy comes around with the key every like five minutes.

The view out our window, which makes this corner of De Panne look like a SimCity 2000 location.

Trivia: By 1777, thanks to Lavoisier's research, France was able to produce two million pounds of saltpeter per year, with a yield considered the best in the world. By the 1780s it could propel cannonballs 50 percent farther than British powder did. Source: The Invention of Air: A Story of Science, Faith, Revolution, and the Birth of America, Steven Johnson.

Currently Reading: A Call to Arms: Mobilizing America for World War II, Maury Klein.

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european vacation

Sunday for the first time in years we made the not-quite-two-hour drive to Fremont, out somewhere near nothing in the world. The main reason for this is that the Clubhouse Arcade there --- formerly Special When Lit, formerly the Blind Squirrel League --- is the location of this year's Michigan State Pinball Championship, both Open and Women's, and bunnyhugger needed the practice time. Might still need some more.

But also going on was the first Michigan Seniors Pinball Championship. This event, really a just-for-fun thing, was open only to pinball players fifty years or older, which bunnyhugger and I are both in. (There was also a Youth Championship, which eight kids played in, though one had to leave early.) This threatened to be an all-day thing, and it nearly was, for other people.

Qualifying started with twelve rounds of matchplay, drawing people in random pairs on random games, many but not all of them in the State Championship this coming weekend. And I, dear reader, started out with a loss on Golden Arrow after putting up a should-be-awfully-good 81,120 (or something) score; my opponent got just a couple thousand more. All right; that happens. Then came another loss, this time on my best-ever game of X's and O's, a caveman-themed tic-tac-toe game which has a huge skill shot if you can make it the first five seconds of your ball plunging into the shooter lane. I had practiced this ahead of time and managed it once out of three times, ordinarily enough to win a game even if you don't, as I had, blow it up all three balls. But what do you know but my opponent came back and whittled away all that score on me. Then on to Joker Poker, and a loss; then on to Jacks To Open, and a terrible loss. At this point I was four games in, out of twelve, and was doing as well as if I had stayed home in bed. I can't say I was heartened.

But then my luck changed! With the next game, Blackout, I had a killer first ball and my opponent never got close again. And this started a heck of a winning streak, with my getting wins both impressive and deserved (Future Spa, Barracora, World Cup) and total nonsense (Surf Champ, a race to the bottom that I lost). I even beat CST on an electromechanical game, to my endless amazement. Ten games in, I was at the cut for finals and looking good.

But then my luck changed! With a close loss on Firepower and then having to go up against PH on Scuba, a 1960s game with tiny flippers that I had maybe one good ball on, to PH's four. Ah well. I would have to play a seven-way tiebreaker for the last six spots in playoffs, and on my old Pinburgh friend Jungle Queen. I came in in the middle of the pack, which is fine, as the important thing is that I not come in last.

I might as well have, though. Playoffs were double-elimination group-of-three games and I lost early and often, becoming one of the first players to lose two rounds. bunnyhugger, who'd won more games than I had in qualifying, had a similarly disheartening race-out-of-qualifying, knocked out in the winners bracket by the guy I lost on X's and O's to, and in the second chance bracket to PH who somehow hadn't won his first round. PH would go on not just to beat bunnyhugger but also everyone else in the second chance bracket, putting him up against the winners bracket champion, the always formidable CST. And PH went on to beat CST two matches in a row, taking the first ever state Seniors Championship in dramatic fashion. Do like to see that being exciting at least.

The advantage of being knocked out fast in playoffs, though, is that bunnyhugger was able to sniff around the games, trying them out, gathering intelligence to use this coming Sunday. Hopefully to use a lot of it, but pinball is fickle and anything can happen. I'll share the news with you when it's there to share.

Back to Oostende and our walking around while we could in that truncated Sunday in Belgium, back in June.

Now, if we'd known there would be restaurants we might have got something to eat here. Note the Señorita Daisy so apparently you can get either Spanish or Mexican food in Belgium. Also, burgers and fries.

We were intrigued by what the Bistro Beethoven might be, but also weren't hungry. You can see it's connected to Beethoven's Cafe, though.

Getting ready to return to the tram line and oh, what's this? The drawbridge is drawing!

Look at the underside of that bridge. Almost no chewing gum stuck to it at all!

And here's the boat making its way down the channel, that we all stopped and waited for.

Bye!

Trivia: The mistle thrush is one of the few birds to eat mistletoe without harm. It excretes the semi-digested slime from the inside of mistletoe fruits, which the plant hopes to have land on tree branches, stick and sprout seeds. Source: Slime: A Natural History, Susanne Wedlich.

Currently Reading: A Call to Arms: Mobilizing America for World War II, Maury Klein.

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In my humor blog this week, as you've seen on your Reading page or perhaps in your RSS reader (LiveJournal Friends Pages count) you've seen the end of one MiSTing, a whole brand-new one, two panels from a dumb comic book, some comic strip action, and me complaining about AI scraping. Want to live it all again? Here's your chance:

And in pictures, we're as far along De Lijn as we would get and walking around some before heading back to our hotel. Take a look.

And here we are at Oostende's famous Cathedral ... uh ... something. Just love all that spikiness, though; it's very soothing to keep looking at and spotting new detail.

And a monument nearby to the soldiers and dead of the World Wars.

Not sure if the smaller structure, left, is the old cathedral or merely a church.

The older cathedral has this text explaining it, although the shadow of the inset makes it a difficult thing to photograph and so transcribe.

Another view of the cathedral, looking even richer with detail than before.

Small sign letting you know about the mausoleum here too.

Sometimes you just need to get really close to an enormous building and look up.

Sometimes you just need to get not quite so close to an enormous older building and look up.

Found the Hidden Mickey! Up on top of the frame there, turned upside-down.

Huh! Now what would a heraldic shield and a pointing brass arrow mean for us?

Well, look at that, we're being led around the cathedral right to ...

... a big communal space? I'm not sure we needed the guidance here. Maybe it makes sense if you've got the pocket guide. Please note that this is a duly-posted Zone.

Trivia: In 2017 World Bank chief economist Paul Romer was stripped of control of the research division after declaring he would not clear any report for publication if the word ``and'' made up more than 2.6% of its text. Source: Seriously Curious: The Facts and Figures That Turn Our World Upside-Down, Editor Tom Standage. Romer claimed to be trying to improve the readability of reports by discouraging complex compound sentences. The 2.6% margin was apparently chosen so the texts would match the readability of academic papers.

Currently Reading: A Call to Arms: Mobilizing America for World War II, Maury Klein.

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And now a spot of happy news! It turns out Crystal, our mouse, isn't dying of cancer at the advanced age of maybe two years. It turns out she's just old. Also fat.

bunnyhugger had the veterinarian's appointment, early in the morning, while I went in to another office day at work. And it turns out the vet doesn't think there's anything particularly alarming at work in her innards. To make sure we could get a CAT scan done but for obvious reasons we don't want to put her to that stress.

But she has gained a lot of weight. Something like ten grams, which doesn't sound like a lot until you remember she started at 48. So, she has to stop getting so many snacks, which may be a self-solving problem as the young mice don't see any reason they shouldn't have treats we give her more.

One treat we do have to give her and her alone, though? Everyone's favorite arthritis pain-manager, meloxicam. The catch is that it's hard to give an injection into a mouse's mouth that doesn't threaten shoving it down their lungs. So we're looking to trick her into eating it, by soaking the meloxicam into a bit of bread. This has caused us to realize we're not sure Crystal has ever had a bit of bread and so she doesn't know whether it's a treat. Bread smeared in peanut butter, though, peanut butter being the food mice love as much as cartoon mice love cheese? She's not sure she likes that either. But also impairing things is that we took her out of her cage to put in the travel cage and feed her there, and that's circumstances that put anyone off their diet.

So we have to figure the best way to get medicine into mouse on a regular timetable. If we're lucky she'll come to see it as a special treat she and no other mouse gets to have and maybe that helps her feel not quite so aching and toddling. If not, well, we're old hands at doing stuff for our pets' good that they don't see why we're bothering them about.

Have some more pictures now of Oostende, the far point of our trip on De Lijn and where our last full day in Europe started to end.

Public art outside the train station, a couple concrete benches along with statues in case you want to sit in a faceless person's lap.

Somewhere over that way was a lighthouse. It didn't seem near enough to visit, especially behind fences like that, so we can't say we got any credits with the North American Lighthouse Society European League.

I think it's lovely they have a whole ship channel dedicated to the Mercator projection map!

We figured on the cathedral as the thing to walk to while we were out there and heading up that way discovered a tattoo parlor.

We didn't get anything this time but we were delighted by the Popeye, Betty Boop, Flower, Minnie Mouse, and ... Snuffy Smith For Some Reason ... tattoos they had on offer.

Serious things to ponder on a car painted to look like a late-evening sky.

Trivia: The traditional 753 BCE date for the founding of Rome is generally credited to the calculations of Marcus Terentius Varro, 116 - 27 BCE. Source: Marking Time: The Epic Quest to Invent the Perfect Calendar, Duncan Steel.

Currently Reading: A Call to Arms: Mobilizing America for World War II, Maury Klein.

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I know what you really want to know is What’s Going On In The Phantom (Weekdays)? What’s coming for The Phantom? October 2025 – January 2026 so after reading that, please enjoy a double dose of pictures from our ride on De Lijn:

We've reached the portion of the shore where there's parasailing, that's nice to see.

Quick stop to have detraining passengers get eaten by a crocodile.

Here's a hotel, I believe, that has this mesh wrapping that caught my fancy, I think because it looks like those mesh bags they'll put an orange in to carry.

And the Atlantic Ocean, seen from the other side from what we were used to back in New Jersey.

Nice and tolerably centered view of the shoreline and I'm guessing a parking payment station.

There's those parasailers again.

Is it really the Spilliaert House? Sign says so. I can't tell you anything more than that.

And here's the station at Oostende, roughly the halfway point and where we had to stop to turn around.

It was a multimodal station, buses, interurban, trains, probably boats, and as you can see, portable holes.

The portable hole, you can see, leads to a dimension of bicycle parking.

Also a drawbridge, raised and lowered as boats moved along the channel.

Here at the fabulous Belgian Hall of Justice ...

Trivia: New Jersey's constitution of 1844 expanded male suffrage to all adult white male citizens who had lived one year in the state and five months in a particular county. There was no move made to restore the voting rights of Black people or women, which they had enjoyed from 1776 through 1807. Source: New Jersey: A History of the Garden State, Maxine N Lurie, Richard Veit.

Currently Reading: A Call to Arms: Mobilizing America for World War II, Maury Klein.

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european vacation

We are coming up on the Michigan State Pinball Championship, in which I will not be playing. Neither will bunnyhugger. We don't play enough events, given how busy the Michigan pinball schedule is. Nor how competitive it is; even if we did do some pinball event every weekend we might not earn enough competition points to make the top-24 in the state.

But the day after the (open) Pinball Championship is the Women's Championship, which bunnyhugger runs and is also qualified for. And this week she's been calling news departments and such for tv stations anywhere that might be interested, and a few have got back to her. One of the Grand Rapids stations hopes to talk with her Thursday for a segment to air Friday. There's this Muskegon station that ... might or might not actually exist. She's been unable to tell, from their web site. And closer to home?

Lansing's Channel 10 interviewed her last week, for a segment that ran on today's 3:00 afternoon news show. This didn't talk about the state championship, though, just the upcoming start of the Lansing Pinball League season. bunnyhugger got to talk a fair bit about what's fun in pinball, and how the league is a pleasant, comfortable place welcoming to new players, and at the end of this she got cut off for mysterious reasons. I assume there was a time constraint that couldn't be worked around.

bunnyhugger was worried the video they took of her playing Attack From Mars would show off to any experienced player that she wasn't doing well under the news cameras. She needn't have worried; the editing cut up the flow of the game enough that all you could tell is she kept the ball from draining several times over. And that, in the end, she hit the shot that blew up a saucer, exactly the sort of visually distinctive and exciting thing you want to show on TV. There are more challenging accomplishments you can do on other games at our local hipster bar, but I'm not sure there are any so obvious to the novice that Something Exciting Is Happening.

Sunday we too De Lijn, an interurban that's been running the west coast of Belgium since the 19th century; the whole run is supposed to be an outstanding experience. Unfortunately we could only take it halfway, because we'd discovered late Saturday night that we had to leave De Panne early in order to make our plane flight home Monday morning. So we took half the line and you're going to see it.

Waiting for the train! We had our tickets and were just waiting to hop on.

On the train here, looking back at the Blue Ring that's surely the companion to that Golden Ring over in Royal Oak or whatever it is in Michigan.

One of many features passed on the way up the coast; I believe it was a memorial to Great War dead. Don't mess with that Nood-opening; looks dangerous.

We have no idea what that Ferris wheel's deal is.

And then we encountered this sign of these beloved(?) Belgian(?) cartoon(?) stars(?) on the side of this hotel(?).

I feel like I'm looking at a meme.

Trivia: The Chicago Tunnel Railway is a system of about 62 miles of track, almost all underneath the city. In the 1940s 150 electric locomotives and three thousand cars delivered coal and other freight to basements of buildings in the Loop and hauled away ashes and more freight. Source: The Story of American Railroads, Stewart H Holbrook.

Currently Reading: A Call to Arms: Mobilizing America for World War II, Maury Klein.

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And now, I bring you --- believe it or not --- my last pictures from Plopsaland De Panne, in a race between the last hours of the day and the last bit of my camera battery charge, forcing me to take fewer and fewer shots. Which! Will! Win!

The Viking boat ride, and as you can see, several people shooting the water guns at people. You have to hand-crank the wheels on their sides to pump water through, which is how they make a game of it.

A small indoor area that we thought might be a gift shop; it's instead a bunch of kiddie rides and themed to that clown from the other day. And you can see a theater there, but we didn't see anything happening there.

We were delighted to find a tunnel-of-love style ride, Het Bos van Plop (Plop's Woods) an indoor boat ride through scenes. It was themed to Plop, a series about a gnome community that gave off Smurf vibes but more human-shaped.

Boat coming up, ready for us. The dark and steady movement mean pictures were really hard to get. There's a TV screen you can make out over there showing the safety spiel.

Part of entering the woods; there's a really nice decor of forest and miniature houses and, like, mouse-drawn sleighs and things like that.

A gnomic watermill that I imagine we'd know something about if we knew the show. There's a lot of figures here, many of them in steady motion.

And here's a delight, Plop's Woods's own amusement park, with a little Ferris wheel. There were other rides too and it made me think of the 'prehistoric amusement park' in the cave train ride at Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk.

Back to Heidi: the Ride for another ride. Here's a view of how much queue space they have and how much wood they put into making it.

And back for one more ride, this time going for a back-row seat.

You'd buy this as the workshop of a Swiss Mountain-Living-Uncle of the 19th century, right? Look at all that stuff that could otherwise have been on the walls of a Cracker Barrel.

And our last ride for the day, The Ride to Happiness. I was trying to get a video fo the welcome spiel and failed.

But I did photograph this sign, of an award given in English to the park, in Belgium, where the languages are French and Dutch.

Trivia: A visitor to New York City in 1719 lamented that the city had ``but one little Bookseller's Shop'', which is more than Maryland, Virginia, and North and South Carolina had. Source: The Bookstore: A History of the American Bookstore, Even Friss.

Currently Reading: A Call to Arms: Mobilizing America for World War II, Maury Klein.

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And now, to come to some physical health news about me. It's behind the cut because it is bad news but, let me stress this, it is the least possible amount of bad news that could still be any bad news at all, and that I am fine and look to be fine as long as anyone in 2026 can hope to be fine.

( Read more... )

And I just want to get ahead of things and thank everyone for their support and kind words and thoughts. Again, though, I'm as fine as anyone can be.

On a vastly lighter note, then, let's get closer than you imagine to the end of our day at Plopsaland De Panne.

Train's on the move again and here's beloved Land of the Lost star the ankylosaur!

We were a little early for this ride. Too bad.

Did put my arm up over the construction fence to see what progress they'd made on it, though.

This is a Viking-themed boat ride, sailing along a pretty comfortably long track, and --- it turns out --- shooting water cannons at other boats and people on the docks who have their own water guns.

Going into the boat ride we spotted this pigeon going about their business.

And her's a view of the course, which is satisfyingly long and offers a lot of nice chances to approach and draw away from other boats. It was fun riding. Also the 'rafts' and other 'boats' had targets you could shoot to make stuff happen.

Trivia: The basilica which we know as the Hagia Sophia was built as a replacement of a timber-roofed basilica which burned in 532 AD, which was itself was a replacement of a timber-roofed basilica that burned in404 AD. However, earthquakes in 553, 537, and 558 collapsed the original dome and the church was rebuilt with a higher dome made of ligher bricks, rededicated in 562. Source: Force: What It Means to Push and Pull, Slip and Grip, Start and Stop, Henry Petroski.

Currently Reading: A Call to Arms: Mobilizing America for World War II, Maury Klein.

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So, some sad pet news. It hasn't happened yet, as of this moment, but it's coming soon. Tucked behind a cut for people who don't need bad pet health news in their day.

( Read more... )

On a cheerier note, how about some Plopsaland pictures? Still on the train ride here.

Nice view of the outside of Heidi: The Ride that the train offers. This sort of banked turn is a signature move of maker Great Coasters International.

Goats! Or goat statues, anyway. We're getting near the Heidi launch station.

And here's the train stop for Heidiland. The train you'll note is billed as an 'Express' even though it makes every stop.

T-rex statue visible from the train ride.

And the tail end of that brontosaurus you might have seen in other pictures. (I forget if I included one that showed it at all.)

There's a dinosaur threatening people who go down the log flume, which is a great way to juice a log flume up a bit.

Trivia: Toyland, Fred Thompson's amusement-park project for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition of 1915, was not complete until six weeks after the Exposition opened, and ran to something like $278,000 in cost, despite meeting almost none of Thompson's design goals for the site. Less than a week after its opening other investors were ready to close it. Source: The Kid of Coney Island: Fred Thompson and the Rise of American Amusements, Woody Register.

Currently Reading: A Call to Arms: Mobilizing America for World War II, Maury Klein.

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On my humor blog this week I finally wrapped up the Tale of Jimmy Rabbit and I just realized I forgot a joke I wanted to put in the closing sketch. Well, I'll just edit that in now and the newsgroup version will have to be out of date is all. Also, there's two comic strip plot recaps and some news about comic strip artists changing so you should be in good shape reading:

As usual for a Thursday now, please enjoy a dozen pictures from Plopsaland. Don't worry, there's only like twelve weeks left of this.

People being loaded onto The Ride To Happiness, but composed as if an album cover.

And the steps back down, which look like the fancy queue gates you never use in Roller Coaster Tycoon.

Train getting ready to depart the station here.

And here it is, on a low-speed spiral and already spinning.

More of the spinning car. Someone looks like they aren't quite having fun there.

We went back to the elevated swing ride, the Nacht Wacht Flyer, and discovered that --- much like Windseeker at many Cedar Fair parks has done --- the winds were too much.

Well, over to the spinning teacups ride, here doing its best to compete with Gilroy Gardens and d'Efteling for making the setting really good.

A better view of the teapot and cups. Also the floor, which looks too good for an amusement park ride despite being basically what a carousel might have.

Now we got on the train ride; here we are going past the #LikeMe Coaster.

And we go past the sleeping giant of Meli Park.

One of the other stations and the best view you're getting of the trash bin decor. It's a troll inside a gazebo or flat ride.

The other side of that little city-driving kiddie ride, where you can see there's gas pumps that do something, though we didn't see what.

Trivia: England's King Henry III esteemed the needlewoman Mabel of Bury St Edmunds, who made a chasuble in 1239 for him and an embroidered standard for Westminster Abbey in 1234, such that he commanded she be given six measures of cloth and a length of rabbit fur as reward, an honor usually reserved for knights of the realm. Source: Threads of Life: A History of the World Through the Eye of a Needle, Clare Hunter.

Currently Reading: A Call to Arms: Mobilizing America for World War II, Maury Klein.

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New Year's Day Night --- please try to keep up with me --- we saw the weather was less bad, and so we went to the Lake Victoria Light Show. This is a big setup by a guy on the outskirts of the city, near Lake ... you know ... and he had posted a day or two before how he was taking the time to fix some problems that came up on Sunday with all the rain. So while he might take the light show down anytime, we had reason to hope it wasn't quite so soon as this.

There was also the promise he might try some new things, now that Christmas was over, and so he did. Some of the Christmas music, played on his low-power FM station, was gone! In its place were more general rock tunes, not seasonal at all. The light show was as intense and varied for ... oh, uh. Not Get Ready For This, but something with a similar tone ... as it would have been for ``Blue Christmas'', but the energy still felt different. One wonders if he's preparing for a summer show; apparently he already does a Halloween lights show and I guess as long as the things are up, might as well use them. Curiously cut were ``The House On Christmas Street'', this novelty song sold to people who do overdone Christmas Light houses (with their own street in place of Christmas Street on the recording) and the request to donate to the food bank made every half-hour. Also nearly all the bits where an inflatable snowman fills up and then, to some goofy joke song, 'melts' again were run one after the other, instead of spacing out between songs. Possibly the program of performances got scrambled in the song substitutions. We were plausibly the last people there for the night.

And a couple nights later we drove all the way to Brooklyn, Michigan, to return to the Michigan International Speedway. You might remember that in mid-November we went to a 5K run or, for us, walk, to see the many light displays set up on the track while sauntering about. Now, just before Twelfth Night, was their last day in operation and we wanted to drive through it the way everyone not on the 5K experienced the ride.

We started --- wait for it --- later than we really meant to and were a little bit worried they might stop letting cars in before we got there. They did not, and in fact we wouldn't even be the last car in. A couple cars came in immediately after us and I finally pulled to the side long enough that they passed, and then we suspected we were the final people there, only to have someone catch up to us at the end of the trail.

We had seen all or almost all the paid-course lighting when we walked through it and so anticipated we wouldn't need to take many photographs at all, despite which we did. Completely new to us were the fixtures for sponsors, which you see in the long drive up to the ticket booth. There did seem to be more than we remembered there and some were pretty clever at that, so we also got bunches of pictures of those that won't be nearly as good as seeing them in person.

The light show was great but was done before we were ready for it to finish, and was great to have done, much like the holidays are. Back to quotidian stuff soon, and then back to pinball stuff shortly after that.

I'm happy now to bring you pictures of the ride to happiness, as we saw it back in the day (June):

So we got another Ride to Happiness. This time we noticed the boardwalk leading to it has the ride's (English) motto to 'Live Today .. Love Tomorrow ... Unite Forever' in it.

Some artificial lily pads in the waters surrounding the ride.

And here we are back at the station. There is something really Victorian Train Station about the high glass windows with all the muntins like this.

There's that motto again, underneath the computer-animated face greeting you into this.

Ride ready for dispatch. Half of everyone starts out backwards but the spinning --- unlike other spinning coasters we've been on --- starts almost immediately out the gate, rather than waiting even until we ascend the lift hill.

So while you can pick your seat, front- or back-facing, as you load the station there's no way to know which way you'll even start, and you certainly will spin during the ride.

Trivia: Noon, originally ``none'', was the ninth hour of the day, around what we would term three in the afternoon; the time retreated to its modern position over the fourteenth century, likely because during fasting periods monks could not eat before the none hour, and in long summer days this would take quite some time. Source: Beyond Measure: The Hidden History of Measurement From Cubits to Quantum Constants, James Vincent. This was also an era when there were twelve hours to daylight, with the length of the hour growing in summer.

Currently Reading: A Call to Arms: Mobilizing America for World War II, Maury Klein.

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We went on New Year's Day to the Festival of Trees at Lansing's historic Turner-Dodge House, the very building where Turner Dodge invented the automobile or something. We got there closer to the 5 pm closing hour than we expected, in part because we'd gotten the bad information online that they were open to 7:00, but we had time to visit every room in the house anyway. We also would have had an extra quarter-hour or more; while were there the docent promised a woman on the phone that if she and her gaggle of kids could get there by 5:15 they'd have the place open for them, but not later. I don't know why so many people are missing on the proper closing hours. My supposition is that some LLM somewhere decided the Turner-Dodge House could stay open until 7:00 and if that were false, that was a burden they were content to make the Turner-Dodge House staff bear.

Every room in the century-and-a-half-old house had at least one tree in it, many of them several trees. There were a couple that were straightforward, keeping their whimsical elements to a topper or a couple special elements. There were a number that were a little odd but in normal ways, if that makes sense, like a fairy tree where all the ornaments were fairy-winged dolls; that's not far outside the range of things someone might use as their ordinary tree. And then there were some high-concept ones, such as the humane society's ``tree'' made out of cat trees and canned goods and animal toys, things that had been donated and that I assume after the event go back into the donation bin. One that I ultimately voted for as best was in the ballroom on the top floor, a snowman tree framed by a giant cardboard book to look like you were stepping into a fairy-tale. Another that I almost voted for, and that bunnyhugger did, was an actual game of chutes and ladders, with several dozen colored and numbered squares, and half-pipes and ladders, with a couple of movable ornaments for your game token and inflatable six-sided dice to play.

Also a couple of rooms that we hadn't seen previously were open, including a billiards room just off the ballroom. It had a model train set up, but the track was in all many pieces so there was no hope of it running. Also in the corners they still had the plastic skeletons from some Halloween event we assumed. On the first floor they had open the servants kitchen, which we weren't fully sure we were allowed in, but they had explanatory signs in there so we can't have been doing anything too bad by nosing around. Also past that, open, was the real kitchen, with the staff refrigerator and all. We probably weren't supposed to be in there so we didn't stick around, past observing what rooms still had those push-button on and off switches along with your modern rocker-style light switch.

As we drove home we went past the pet store we normally get stuff from, and saw cars in the lot and figured this a good chance to get some pet food. Nope: the store was closed. Why so many cars there, then? We don't know; maybe the staff holiday party? No telling.

Meanwhile seven months ago we were in the middle of a parade. We'll start with a couple stills from the movie I took and then go back to normal pictures when I accidentally stopped the movie recording.

Bumba! I guess! Some kind of clown show, at least, as we saw at that playground area and also one of the indoor areas that I can't remember if I shared pictures of yet, or if they're coming. You'll see.

And some bees, which bunnyhugger tells me are coincidental to the park's former existence as Meli Park, built around an apiary.

And there's the close of the parade with beloved Plopsaland character (???) waving to everyone.

Back to ordinary park activities like not being eaten by a pterodactyl statue; how's that sound to you?

Back to photographing those ducks in a circle. It does look fun, doesn't it ?

And here's the entrance to The Ride To Happiness, seen from the side where there's gardening and all.

Trivia: In 1920 Marjorie Merriweather Post, inheritor of C W Post's cereal company, married the second of her four husbands, investor E F Hutton. Hutton left Wall Street to work for what would become General Foods. Source: A Square Meal: A Culinary History of the Great Depression, Jane Ziegelman and Andrew Coe.

Currently Reading: A Call to Arms: Mobilizing America for World War II, Maury Klein.

PS: What’s Going On In Alley Oop? What happened to the dinosaurs and raccoons? October 2025 – January 2026 in time travel nonsense, but there's some good art too.

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The original plan for New Year's Eve was that we might go out to the Lake Victoria Lights Show. This is this guy who's set up a bajillion lights around his house and a low-power FM radio station playing music they're synchronized to. But New Year's Eve Day started with the 412th day in a row this season of a light snow turning into a mushy, icy crud on the roads. I dealt with enough of that popping out to Meijer's for hors d'ouevres that I wasn't looking forward to doing that, only at night, and on country roads, and bunnyhugger took a look out the window and agreed.

So instead --- with no New Year's Eve tournament that we hoped to attend, nor the desire to go to our hipster bar and face that crowd on that night --- we stayed home, with the old movie-and-snacks plan. This would turn out to be our chance to watch the Alastair Sim Scrooge, which we'd missed over Christmas proper, and once again we noticed things we hadn't before, like the way Scrooge's pleading with Jacob Marley foreshadows his begging Ghost of Christmas Yet-To-Come. We keep digging out new stuff; that's part of what keeps us from getting exhausted with the movie.

Also in looking for a short to precede the movie bunnyhugger found a copy of the Betty Boop's Grampy where he brings Christmas to an orphanage, which is pleasant in that way every Grampy cartoon is. The next thing on the compilation was a baffling early-30s thing with no credits titled The Snowman, one of your generic human-and-animals-dance-until-they-accidentally-create-a-snowman-who-comes-to-life-and-is-mean-and-scary cartoons that ends when the (sigh) Eskimo runs into what looks like a power plant that turns out to be the factory controlling the Northern Lights, cranks them up to 11, and in an light show that we agreed would be really something if this were in color, melts the Snowman. bunnyhugger was able to follow all the clues, however, and discovered just where the short came from. It was Ted Eschbaugh, this indie animated movie-maker, who did work with Van Beuren studios occasionally (gratifying my hunch that it was Van Beuren, even though this short was not) and who was stumbling out of complete obscurity into mild obscurity; he's got a footnote in a much bigger cultural history as the director of the 1933 The Wizard of Oz cartoon, the first (known) cartoon and color production based on that story. She also found a decent, color print and yes, the short is much more interesting that way.

So with that happy discovery and a lot of popcorn eaten we were in good shape to eat a lot of oven-heated snacks --- they all came out of the oven and toaster oven together, for once! --- and have the wine leftover from Thanksgiving to ring in 2026.

Now to ring in, oh, like 3 pm back that June Saturday at Plopsaland De Panne:

Looking up at Heidi: The Ride --- you can see a train just crested the hill --- although admittedly it does look like most any modern wooden coaster.

The area we had our lunch in, with Heidi: The Ride in the background and track for Nacht Wacht over it.

The castle for Nacht Wacht's Draconis. Now, why would we be sitting here again if we'd already eaten?

And here's why! There was a parade and we wanted a good vantage point for it. Here's the leading edge of it.

I tried taking a movie and got interrupted partway through, but, this will do. I think the float might be representing Heidi.

And here's something pirate-based. You've seen pirates before.

Trivia: Among the requirements for manned spacecraft ground tracking developed in spring 1959 by the Space Task Group and the Tracking And Ground Instrumentation Unit was that ground station placement should ensure there would never be more than ten minutes between loss of signal at one station and picking up of voice contact at the next. (The space medicine community pushed for continuous voice contact, which proved impractical fro the time.) Source: Read You Loud and Clear: The Story of NASA's Spaceflight Tracking and Data Network, Sunny Tsiao.

Currently Reading: A Call to Arms: Mobilizing America for World War II, Maury Klein.

PS: What’s Going On In Thimble Theatre? You forgot about Thimble Theatre, right? October – November 2025 in a comic strips update I could've run anytime the last two months.

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Silver Balls '025 would be the 150th pinball tournament bunnyhugger has run through Matchplay, a web site that does great at organizing matches and keeping results straight and all that. It would also be the first one she's run without using her computer to do the computing work. She had a used iPad Mini, formerly her mother's and replaced as a Christmas gift, for the work and did it in a trial by fire, for the biggest and highest-profile open tournament she runs in the year.

Or almost. There were fewer people this year than usual --- 21, I think, with a couple leaving early --- including the absense of a couple people like MWS and BMK. It might have been the weather; they promised snow starting about 9 pm and that'd be lousy to drive home through. It might be the way the state pinball rankings shaped up this year; there weren't many people who could push themselves into contention, or improve their standing worth anything, by taking a high rank in this tournament, partly because a huge tournament in Bay City the weekend before took that spot. No telling. Still, people came, people bought in raffle tickets --- the raffling off of a couple boxes of charity prizes also being done by an app on the iPad Mini --- and there were some random draws for door prizes, t-shirts and the like, so that all went well enough and left bunnyhugger with a fattened wallet to bring and deposit later than she really wanted to.

The tournament itself started a little past the scheduled time, with bunnyhugger's voice fading under the stress just as her megeaphone was fading under battery fatigue. I had to repeat some stuff for her. But we were under way, groups of three or four players. In the fair-strikes format, the person winning a game gets zero strikes. The person coming in last takes two strikes. Everyone else takes one. The big difference between this and progressive strikes --- where you take one strike for everyone who finishes ahead of you --- is that near the end of the night, when there might be three or two people playing, someone's always taking two strikes in a round, cutting the finale rounds in half.

My first round was in a match against DMC, a very much stronger player, on Kiss, a game I'm good on, and some other people. DMC had a lousy first and second ball while I had my decent-but-not-exceptional play. And then DMC went and had a ball that not just kept on going on, but kept getting to higher levels of achievement, climaxing in something called Kiss Army Multiball that I have never, not in a decade of playing this game, seen or even heard of before. He said it was a surprise to him too, though I don't know if he meant he didn't expect to attain it or didn't know it even existed.

So, I took a single strike. And I got a single strike on the next game, Metallica, ordinarily a strong one for me but today being mean. That's all right, though; I figured if I averaged one strike a round I'd be in a good place overall. Then on the next game, Attack From Mars, I finished last, taking two strikes. I made that up the next round, The Addams Family, just squeaking out bunnyhugger to her delight. So the next round, Mandalorian, yeah, I took last place again and now I was in the do-or-die position where I'd have to win every game to continue. That sound be on Stranger Things, where my path once again crossed bunnyhugger's.

Stranger Things is another of those games that's usually in my back pocket, but I just wasn't having it balls one or two. Meanwhile FB, a new guy, was calmly running away with it. My last ball I would have to make up a hundred million points to beat him and, you know? For a while it looked like I might do it. I fell far short in points, about forty million or so, but that's because I had the bad luck to drain at the start of an Upside-Down Mode that, completed, would have brought me pretty near the top.

So I indirectly mentioned how I gave one strike to bunnyhugger. She had a frustrating tournament, taking one strike in every single round until that Stranger Things game where, thanks in part to my strong finish after a mediocre start, she got two strikes and was knocked out. I did try to help her to at least a third place, which would have let her continue, offering advice on how to get the (timed) skill shot, but the game didn't let her play long enough and, critically, never gave her --- and only her --- a chance at an Upside-Down Mode that's normally good for tens of millions of points. Had she got that even once she'd likely have gone on at least one further round and then, who can say where she'd have ended up? We tied, instead, just above the median for the whole group.

In the rounds after we were eliminated more people gained their seventh strike, three in the next round and then one more each round after that. Finally we were down to three people, DMC (no surprise), FAE (also no surprise), and DG, who was having a killer tournament. He started everyone by beating both these A-rank players in The Munsters, and was doing pretty well on Deadpool until a catastrophic moment. After DMC put up a monstrously high third ball, DG went up for his turn, forgetting until after he plunged that it was FAE's turn. This meant that he took a last place for the round, automatically, and that knocked him out. FAE finished out the game even though DMC observed --- and we didn't quite understand it at the moment --- that the outcome didn't actually matter. DMC would win unless FAE beat him two rounds straight, whether or not FAE took first place this game. (FAE did, it happens).

The next game, drawn up at random, was Rush, which you'd expect to be an automatic win for DMC. I mean, you know DMC and Rush. And yet, somehow, FAE won, getting halfway to overtaking the guy who'd been on top of the tournament all day. Next game, randomly drawn: The Simpsons Pinball Party, which DMC started out by putting up about ten million, a plausibly winning score, right away. FAE would need until the end of ball two to match this. DMC plunged the third ball, which pinged right into the outlane --- bad luck --- and we discovered that the game had no ball save.

Every couple years someone at Stern pinball gets the idea that factory settings should include zero ball save time, and everyone hates it because modern game design supposes you should have some minimum play time, and they go back to being normal for a couple years. But Simpsons was one of those no-ball-save games (The Munsters is another), and the game was probably reset to factory setting a couple weeks ago after MWS's Saturday tournament and nobody complained to RED about the problem since then.

And now this change just screwed DMC out of --- well, he'd still have had to make up FAE's score, plus enough on top for whatever their third ball would have been. But screwed him out of a chance to play, and it sucks to lose that way and it kind of hurts to win that way too.

But it was a win, FAE's third(?) in a row at Silver Balls, which would earn them permanent possession of the trophy if we had a travelling trophy.

And while it was past midnight, it was not so outrageously past midnight. We got home and to bed at a reasonable hour for New Year's Eve Day, ready to see what 2026 might start like.

But for now, you're going to see what Plopsaland was like in its 25th year and final month under that name!

Peeking around the track of SuperSplash; you can see some animals that I don't think were Heidi-linked particularly. As you get back to the station you see them, though.

People getting into a train car.

And here they're ready to dispatch.

Here's a close-up of some control button with the thing.

And here's a view out the window of the station, which is pretty nicely decorated, you can see.

We're ready for the next ride, and here's the exit side.

Trivia: In 1920, at the start of Prohibition, the United States Coast Guard fleet consisted of 26 inshore vessels, some converted tugboats, and 29 cruising cutters, one of them based in Evansville, Indiana. Congress would not approve any significant additional appropriations for five years. Source: Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition, Daniel Okrent. Okrent mentions this was for just under five thousand miles of coastline, which I think means he's discounting Alaska entirely, which is fair because Alaska at the time had about twenty people so smuggle whatever you want in, it doesn't matter. But also you kinda can't actually measure coastline, thanks fractals, so I'm not sure what the five thousand miles represents.

Currently Reading: A Call to Arms: Mobilizing America for World War II, Maury Klein.

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[Stop-motion animated snowman voice] If I live to be a hundred I'll probably never forget that year that --- you won't believe this --- the world almost missed Silver Balls In The City. You don't know the story? Well, let me tell you ...

bunnyhugger's Silver Balls has always been one of the last pinball events of the Michigan calendar and this year planned to be no exception, with the event --- a ``fair strikes'' tournament, where you play until you lose enough times, last one standing the winner --- set for the Tuesday between Christmas and New Year's. Except that earlier this month bunnyhugger discovered that while she had created a Facebook Event for it and been publicizing it in the Lansing and the Michigan Pinball communities, she hadn't registered it with the International Flipper Pinball Association, the sanctioning body for competitive pinball. They require a thirty-day notice before an event takes place, the better to avoid shenanigans where people try to cheat their way in a close pinball standings race by opening something only the conspirators have a hope of playing.

What to do? Run it as an un-sanctioned event, kneecapping participation and --- the true point of it --- charitable donations to the Capital Area Humane Society? Run it thirty days from the date of discovery, which would put it not just into the New Year but past even Twelfth Night, the latest anyone could plausibly care about a Christmas-themed event? Ask the IFPA if they'll allow an exception because there was no attempt made to hide this event from anyone, just an absent-minded oversight?

After encouragement from me, bunnyhugger took the last course, and the IFPA, possibly just relieved any woman is still talking to them, approved the event with a bit of don't-do-it-again scolding. bunnyhugger went on to register every event --- league night, side tournament, women's tournament, and charity tournament --- for 2026, so that's covered. And we could trust that nothing would stop the tournament now.

When I got home from work --- inexplicably we had to come into the office the Tuesday between Christmas and New Year's --- bunnyhugger was distraught. Her plans for upcycling donated trophies had gone wrong, and went wrong very badly, consuming way more time and proving impossible without hardware that she wasn't sure any hardware store near us had. She spent many of the hours of the night in more aggravated improvisations of a workshop, and then --- sleeping so long she lost the time to make the cookies she had promised for the tournament --- running to hardware stores to get things that might help, and might yet help, but would not help this tournament.

She had got the trophies for the final three finishers assembled, but only just, and she was not able to find the laminate sheets and insulated jacket to run the placement finishes through the laminator and was about to give up on them. (Fortunately I knew where these were.) It would take hours for the trophy toppers to really set, and a day or more for them to be really secure. All we could do is trust that people wouldn't touch the Santa figures on top, and hope that they wouldn't fall off in loading them to my car or bringing them into the venue.

However, the important thing, is that Silver Balls '025 did happen.

And before I reveal how it happened, let me share Plopsaland De Panne pictures, like you've been enjoying since before Silver Balls:

A zone of fun in the park, where kids can pedal miniature cars around on a replica city street. If I were a kid this would have been my most favorite attration ever.

Isn't that great? Traffic lanes and curbs and confusing arrays of signs? Just fantastic stuff.

Kid giving some adults a high-five for managing a loop around the city square.

And here we are returned to the front of the park and the playful fountain. Note the shops in the distance have backdrops featuring a fake partly-cloudy sky that's a little weird to see against the actually partly-cloudy sky.

And now ... that tower ride seen earlier, SuperSplash. Wonder what that means!

And here's the station. You see one of the riders is all set to be super splashed.

Trivia: The name of Cambridge's Magdalene College is pronounced ``Maudlin''; the college was named for Saint Mary Magdalene, but founder Lord Thomas Audley insisted on spelling it ``Maudelyn'', rhyming with his own name. Source: Empire of the Sum: The Rise and Reign of the Pocket Calculator, Keith Houston. Re-founded, technically; it was a reestablishment of Buckingham College, which Audley had graduated.

Currently Reading: A Call to Arms: Mobilizing America for World War II, Maury Klein.

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Saturday after Christmas we got to Crossroads Village. This was not quite the final night of the season for the historical-village-decorated-in-lights, but we figured to keep Sunday as a contingency in case, say, the weather were too awful to visit. It happens Sunday saw four billion inches of rain so it would have been impossible to visit, but the idea was sound.

The big question was which of the train rides to get tickets for. They run their 19th century train for a roughly 45-minute loop through holiday lights while the public address system plays music, and the last scheduled train was for 8:15. But often when the place is crowded they run an extra train, at 9:15, after everything else is closed and as it maximizes time in the Village it'd be the best train to get. So for days bunnyhugger watched the tickets for sale, and while every day up to Christmas they opened a 9:15 train, we never saw one open for the Saturday we planned to visit. Finally we decided to get tickets for 8:15 because who knew if there would be a 9:15?

This proved wise: there was no 9:15 train, this despite the village being extremely busy. So busy, in fact, that when we arrived the parking lot was full up and they directed us to park on the shoulder of a service road. We stayed at the village past closing, of course, and by the time we got back to the car mine was almost the only car along that road, and I observed, so many people must have thought I was a jerk parking there.

Also, mysteriously, at the entry booth they explained that the ticket we'd printed out online wasn't good for getting on the train. It had been, up until about a week before, when ``they'' changed the system on everyone and now they had to print out a ticket on the spot for us. I don't know what the system change was or why they'd implement a week before the new year but I also completely believe this string of events.

We got there in enough time we could see the holiday show which, as it's been for several years now, was a musical-comedy thing starring Santa and We Never Actually Call Him The Grinch, with numbers done by a polar bear, Rudolph, and Frosty. It's fun though we do miss the Victorian-ish Melodramas of a decade ago. We also got really distracted wondering if the performers in suit were doing their own dialogue, or if it was done by a voice actor in back, or if it was prerecorded. The case against prerecorded is there's a bit early on where We Don't Say He's The Grinch dubs one of the audience kids his new reindeer, and if the kid doesn't play along you're in trouble. The case for prerecorded is N T Grinch didn't actually ask or say the kid's name and why wouldn't you, if you could? Some year we've got to find out where they bought the script for this from and see how it compares to the published dialogue.

That small tent-based shopping village from the previous year was gone, but one of the buildings had, we were all but sure, a new store in it. The new store was selling, you know, crystals and inspirational candles and that other sort that's the modern version of patent medicines, so it has a weird authenticity-of-experience I suppose.

The most important thing, of course, is that the antique rides were running. Both the carousel and the Ferris wheel, the latter of which went a couple years without our seeing in operation. The carousel's still going at its six rotations per minute, and they were packed. Also, while we waited for one ride, a bunch of kids were doing six-seven at a kid on the carousel, so that's still a thing. And the Ferris wheel was going at good clip. We even got the lucky coincidence to be the last car loaded and the first unloaded, so we didn't sit swinging around in the cold breeze; we just got the fast spinning up and down.

Also, the carousel building still has the penny-press machine, and I brought a couple pennies for just this chance. bunnyhugger believes herself to have three of the four penny patterns they offer --- two Christmas and two Halloween --- but so far as I know has not yet verified this.

And now, a bit of Plopsaland De Panne, not including any roller coasters close-up this time.

Well, a little bit of roller coaster: you can see a bit of the Nacht Wacht coaster (Draconis) in the archway, in this passage through the building that hides its launch station. Behind the camera is the Heidi stuff; ahead of it is The Ride to Happiness.

Following this path, which also gets us closer to the front of The park. I admire the dangling flower light fixtures that look like something Roller Coaster Tycoon made up.

Now here's a silly parrot who thought we wouldn't notice them in the giant sugar bowl.

And here's a mouse who's snagged a teacup. I don't know how old any of these statues are or if they represent pre-Plopsa park features.

The turtle who's got their hat on is beside the teacup mouse.

And what the heck, have a mouse in a saucepan.

Trivia: A January 1969 planning document for the first moonwalk outlined a minute-by-minute work chart with the respective astronauts labelled A and B, without any identification of which would be the Commander and which the Lunar Module Pilot. Source: Chariots for Apollo: The NASA History of Manned Lunar Spacecraft to 1969, Courtney G Brooks, James M Grimwood, Loyd S Swnson Jr.

Currently Reading: A Call to Arms: Mobilizing America for World War II, Maury Klein.

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With 2025 finally getting out of here my humor blog has been able to do a bunch of silly year-end recaps that are fun to write because all I need is a premise and I'm done. Plus, The Tale of Jimmy Rabbit reached a climax none of us saw coming! Please enjoy all this and some Popeye adventures here:

And now to pictures, where I share two or if you're generous three roller coasters from Plopsaland De Panne!

Back at K3 Roller Skater, here's a train cresting the lift hill, and you can see the giant speaker, so what's going to happen next?

Well of course! ... Actually from the angle I was photographing at, I'd expected the train to leap out from the speaker but they have to go with the track they have.

Giant doll and even more giant conversation heart as part of the ride scenery. Put this in your Roller Coaster Tycoon scenario.

And now, back to Nacht Wacht and the dragon-themed coaster inside, the one with those overhead tracks we saw earlier and ... oh.

So, we couldn't ride the coaster, an extra shame because it had great theme elements like this dragon shield outside.

And here's the (closed off) stairs to the ride; that ghostly pointing hand is a great element. Also huh, so they have line-cutting technology too. Didn't see much of it.

Here's another roller coaster, Anubis: The Ride, with a theme of I guess we're starting in a Victorian or Edwardian manor home of some Egyptomaniac.

My one not-awful picture of the interior (we hustled through the queue), with taxidermy animals and other stuff of that ``we'll put together a drawing room cozy mystery'' style architecture in theme park form.

View from the front queue gate of the ride. It's a linear synchronized induction motor coaster, like Cear Point's Maverick, so there's no lift hill, just sudden motion.

Ride operator's station, which looks about like you'd imagine. There seem like fewer buttons than you might imagine but really you just need a couple for a ride like this.

Afterward we went and got some spiral-cut potato-on-a-stick to eat and were joined by a very large seagull on the table. Here's their feet alone.

And here's the seagull, towering over the spiral-cut potato chip sign.

Trivia: Radio show Fibber McGee and Molly used the running gag of opening the closet door (``don't open that door, McGee!'') to unleash a great cacophonous mass of noise and clutter 128 times. Fibber himself opened the door 83 of those times. Source: On The Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio, John Dunning. Which is a stunning figure to me since I can't swear I have ever heard a door-opening gag where anyone besides Fibber opened it. There are clearly important episodes I have missed.

Currently Reading: A Call to Arms: Mobilizing America for World War II, Maury Klein.

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Happy new year, dear bunnyhugger, and here's hoping it is a good one.

We'll get to bigger things soon but for now, some light business around town. Christmas Day was, as for everyone in the United States, warmer than average, though not absurdly so. Sunday, though, saw it astoundingly warm, in the mid-50s and pouring out all the rain we haven't had in three months at once. And then it turned extremely cold, and if you know anything about weather going from extremely warm to bitterly cold means you're going to get all the wind in the world.

Sunday night, then, was one of hearing winds howling steadily and endlessly. And, somewhere around 3 am, some loud metallic object smashing somewhere around our driveway. It was loud enough to wake me up and you have to remember, I'm only woken up by bunnyhugger pushing me and telling me I'm snoring, at which time I fall back asleep. For that matter, it even got me out of bed to see what was going on. bunnyhugger, still awake for reasons which I will not reveal at this time, had no idea. We looked outside and she even took a few cautious steps outside and we couldn't find anything obviously anywhere. With nothing to do I went back to sleep.

In the morning I had a horrible idea: our satellite dish must have fallen off its garage-roof mounting. Nope! It was there in good order and was working fine. A little looking around the front and back yards by daylight revealed nothing obviously out of place anywhere, granting that they had five more hours of extreme wind to blow anything suspicious away. No sign of damage to either of our cars, nor our neighbor's cars, nor (from what we could see) their henhouse.

So what small satellite crashed into our driveway at 3 am and then left again? We'll never know.

I start the new year as I started the last one, with pictures from a big June amusement park trip. Somehow I'm losing ground, but to be fair, Plopsaland De Panne has a lot of stuff and you're not likely to see it repeated around here. So, to pictures:

Ride sign for De Dierenmolen (``The Animal Mill'')/Le Carrousel des Animaux (``The Animals Carousel''), photographed partly because of the nice style put into it and partly because it shows off the attempt at language-neutral informational signs. The +2 means it's for ages two and up.