Christmas this year promised to be the most nearly normal one had since 2019. ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger's brother and his partner arrived Wednesday. bunnyhugger had to make the awful drive to Detroit airport to pick them up; her parents are for some reason willing to drive people to the airport but not pick them up. I'd have done it happily except this was my second day at the new job and it turns out the new job is not like my old where I could just take off as long as nothing was exploding. bunnyhugger doesn't like driving to the airport either, especially as she had been up until about ten minutes before their flight arrived, caught in a storm of grading that she admits should have been done sooner. But she was awake enough to drive them in reasonable safety.
She left earlier than she really wanted to, so she could get home and into bed at an early hour, and then got a flat tire that AAA needed over two hours to respond to. An hour and a half of that delay was total nonsense: while bunnyhugger misinterpreted a mailbox near where she'd parked and so sent them to a nonexistent street, they tried to dispatch someone to the whole wrong city, going for the only street in Michigan they could find with that address rather than suppose she knew whether she was forty miles from the other city. Things could have been worse --- she had considered taking her spare tire out of the trunk, so her brother and his partner would have luggage space --- but this was still bad enough. The consolation was that we'd go to her parents' Christmas Eve and have a nice luxurious time with them, likely stretching it out to the 26th before coming back home.
And then came the snow.
All week we watched the long-range forecast changing here and there. The temperatures for Thursday and Friday crept up, while the snowfall totals did too. At least the median forecasts; the ranges kept going could be four inches, could be twelve. Could be really bad weather driving out. Friday there were a couple inches of snow, that I cleared well from our walks, but more came down. bunnyhugger's parents warned us not to come because the weather would be too awful. But their cable company gives them Grand Rapids's weather, for some reason, and Grand Rapids was having a much harder time of it, with lake-effect snow that would never end. So far this season Grand Rapids has gotten over 67 inches of snow and that is not me exaggerating, that's the literal truth. And the snow storm warning for our counties was supposed to expire overnight Friday-into-Saturday. By Saturday afternoon might we be able to set out?
Reader, we tried. The neighborhood road was unplowed, of course. The more major road to the highway was poor but that's understandable. My car fishtailed a little turning onto the highway on-ramp but all right. And it just ... never got better from there. The snow was heavy enough, and the road slushy-to-icy enough, and the cross wind gusty enough that we didn't get two exits before admitting defeat. It wasn't much better getting back, and while we held out hope that maybe the snow would let up enough we could drive safely down there, we also knew that wasn't going to happen. bunnyhugger called her parents when we were safely back home and had unpacked everything that seemed likely to be endangered by freezing. They almost broke her heart by saying how her brother had been asking when she would arrive. By 'almost broke' I mean 'completely broke'.
Well, there were some things we could do anyway, besides feel awful. bunnyhugger worked on trophies for her Silver Balls In The City charity pinball tournament that she'd otherwise have had to do this past Monday. I tried to finish off a coherent article about why everyone's mad at Funky Winkerbean. And we both thought about the sadness of not having anything special for Christmas Eve dinner. Her parents, brother, and his partner were having fondue, that we'd been almost able to taste.
bunnyhugger was getting ready to order pick-up food. I offered something I had in reserve. Back at Thanksgiving I'd picked up an extra Quorn roast, more than we needed then, and had figured to make it when bunnyhugger really needed a pick-me-up of some special sandwiches. This was a good moment for it too, though. Add to that Stove-top stuffing spruced up with the last of our caramelized onions and also a side of pasta salad and we had a decent enough little meal, not to mention some sandwiches for the days after.
And then we watched some Christmas specials, some on purpose --- including this new stop-motion Mickey Mouse one that was nicely done but lacked a story --- and some by accident. Boomerang was showing, apparently every Flintstones Christmas special they had, then every Yogi Bear, and was showing their Tom and Jerry ones when we finally went to bed. Also The Nutcracker Suite as done by Tom and Jerry kept on turning out better than I expected for nice patches. Would recommend.
But those were the small consolations made from a big disappointment. What we most had to hope for was that things would be better come Christmas Day.
We are now at the end of Halloweekends, in my photo reel. What awaits and will it be pinball stuff? Just you wait and see.
The penultimate ride cycle of Monster. About half the people on this ride would get a re-ride, as the operators gave them the chance to just sit where they were and not fiddle with their restraints, and get a fresh go-round.
Monster coming to the end of its ride. I like where some of the goofy faces finished up.
Heading out, at last. A final(?) view of Top Thrill Dragster's top hat. I assume it's going to be there next season, but as some other ride's top hat.
Another historical plaque, this one noting how it used to be how the entrance gate by Magnum had you walk through a pedestrian subway. They renovated away from that a couple years ago, removing Cedar Point from the prestigious list of amusement parks you can get to by pedestrian subway (members include Kennywood, Holiday World, Chessington I believe, and I bet there's more).
A quick look back through the Magnum gate into the park again, tragically(?) forcing Eurydice (center-left, appearing within the frame of an X-ray scanner) to be trapped forever within the park grounds.
In the parking lot was this family, which had a couple huge-size plushes to somehow fit in their van.
Trivia: Among the gifts the Wright Brothers gave Christmas 1903 were a set of silver forks and steak knives for their younger sister Katharine, and a two-inch micrometer for their shop mechanic Charles Taylor. Source: First Flight: The Wright Brothers and the Invention of the Airplane, T A Heppenheimer
Currently Reading: The Rise And Fall of the DC-10, John Godson.
