Naturally the thing following Silver Bells In The City is Thanksgiving. This would start for us a couple hours earlier than usual, the result of ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger's father wanting to be sure he could drive home before sunset. I'm not going to make the preposterous claim that we had dinner at noon, but it was close enough. As a side effect we didn't have time to watch either the New York or the Detroit parades before her parents got here.
We did have time to start a fire, though, and that has some significance we wouldn't have guessed then. In the annual fireplace cleaning and inspection a few weeks later we got terrible news: our chimney does not have a liner --- it was apparently built without one --- and is unsafe to use. On the one hand, better to know than not. On the other hand, we've had the same people inspecting our chimney every year for fifteen-plus years; how did none of them ever notice or think this worth mentioning? The situation is even worse than we thought; in studying what to do about getting the chimney lined we learned there's no insulation between the chimney and the wood frame of the house. If we'd ever had a chimney fire there's too high a chance it would've burned the house down.
Something we did know would have significance: this was our last time entertaining with the old kitchen. We'd already committed to having the floor re-done, and while we didn't have the counter replacement committed-to yet we figured this was going to be the last time we'd be doing everything quite this way. I had precious little to do with the cooking, though; bunnyhugger and her mother were enough of a crowd in there, trying to get everything together and ready at about the same time.
The company, and the activity, was great. It just ran too fast --- bunnyhugger's father started checking his watch about a half-hour before he said he'd need to leave, and we were so hurried trying to pack everything they should get that we forgot to give her mother the Advent calendar bunnyhugger had got at Bronner's --- and ended too early. But this did give us time afterward to enjoy the fire and wonder if we'd finish our leftovers before we needed to empty the fridge for the floor people to move it. (We did, by far.)
The fireplace, though, that's an unexpected problem for us ...
That disposed of, let's now get to some more Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk pictures.
Back to hanging around. Here's some stuff from the historical diorama just outside the Colonnade.
They've got a Laffing Sal! Still laughing, too. And, the sign claims, still using the original laughing soundtrack.
Back for a fresh ride on the Looff carousel.
Here's a close-up of the ring arm, as you see from the business side, where you have to risk smacking your fingers into something to grab a ring.
That's the other side, where you can see the long trough the rings slide down and also see that they're painted. Also it looks like the top of it really wants to come loose and they hacked it back together at some point. But that's an illusion! Come and see ...
The far side of the ring arm in a normal shot, showing that the side of it swings open (and down), I assume for easier maintenance in case a ring gets stuck or something like that. The clamp on top is so the side doesn't swing open at other times.
Trivia: The Virginia Inland Port, near the intersections of Interstates 81 and 66 by Front Royal, Virginia, (in the Shenandoah Valley) was established as a containerized cargo port to reduce congestion leading to the seaports, and to make the over-the-road haul for truckers be shorter to a Virginia port than to Baltimore or New York would be. Containers left there can be shipped by railroad to Norfolk, Portsmouth, and Newport News. Source: Box Boats: How Container Ships Changed The World, Brian J Cudahy. Cudahy doesn't mention, but Wikipedia notes the facility is about 220 miles inland.
Currently Reading: Pinball: A Graphic History of the Silver Ball, John Chad. I'm into my Christmas presents, and a book I never imagined existed!
Chimney
Date: 2024-01-06 07:05 pm (UTC)