For the events I describe below to be wondrous you must understand both ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger and I hold PhD's, demonstrating our ability to think deeply and seriously about a subject.
So. Back on Christmas Day I realized something I had not received, and had not thought about putting on my wish list: the Peanuts page-a-day calendar for 2025. I always want the Peanuts page-a-day calendar, whatever the year is, and while I often think to put it on my wish list and, usually, bunnyhugger get is there have been a few times I forgot to list it and nobody thought to buy it for me. And I did not want to put bunnyhugger --- always and needlessly worried that she isn't good enough at gifting me --- through the agony of punishing herself for not getting the calendar for me.
First time, then, that I had the chance I drove out to the mall and found at the bookstore that ... they were completely out of Peanuts calendars. But the calendar shop did have one left (at least without looking in back), and at 50% off, so all's well.
Except that when I got home bunnyhugger saw what I'd been vague about going out to get. Because she had gotten the calendar, and before Christmas. She just hadn't had time to wrap it and had left it at home when we bundled up everything she was going to wrap at her parents'. She had thought this all right, though, because she could wrap it up and leave it as a surprise gift under the tree for New Year's ... if I hadn't spoiled it, and if she didn't now have a second Peanuts calendar of no use to anyone. It'll spend the year in her office, more or less.
Stave the Second. So every year the American Coaster Enthusiasts publishes a calendar with pictures, often, of roller coasters we've ridden or hope to ride, and I give it to bunnyhugger. Except this year they kept not having the calendar; as late as ten days before Christmas they didn't have it in their store. I thought seriously about using my pictures to print up my own calendar, a counterpart to the carousels calendar she makes for herself every year, but I never found time for it. Just as well, too, because shortly before Christmas they did publish the calendar. It wouldn't arrive before Christmas, but that's all right. I could wrap it up and set it under the tree for New Year's, as a late surprise gift.
When she found it --- and she had found another late surprise gift for me --- and opened it she froze. She had been checking the ACE web site just that last night, and saw that they had the calendar for sale and that they had announced its sale very late, and that she hadn't gotten it for this year and ...
Well. She had been ready to buy it but thought she should hold back and make sure that I hadn't actually bought it after all. So we avoided having a double calendar mishap.
Stave the Third. New Year's Eve we again spent in. We switched the TV to Dick Clark's Ryan Seacrest's Chuck Dick's Charles Dickens's Rockin's New Year's Eve, then switched the receiver over to DVD to watch (most of) A Muppet Christmas Carol. (We didn't quite finish before midnight and had to resume). When we switched back to the TV we saw them, preposterously, claim the time in New York was 10:45 pm. And, weirder, they kept the off-by-an-hour mistake going, even after a commercial break. I could only imagine how they were getting roasted on social media for this. We kept checking our clocks to make sure we hadn't somehow misunderstood something but there we were, 11:48 by our clocks when the TV claimed it was 10:48, 11:55 by our clocks when Ryan said 10:55.
The most amazing thing to us was that they counted down the last minute of 2024 not in Times Square, but rather at a party in Puerto Rico. It felt weird breaking tradition like that but we both admired the courage of choosing to broadcast a different event for once. We again were imagining how many extremely angry white men were tweeting about this and how many very boring thinkpieces were being composed. But there it was, and we celebrated the new year together.
After finishing the last reel of A Muppet Christmas Carol we saw the most preposterous thing still on TV: crowds in Times Square. Yes, not everybody leaves right away, but it still clears out pretty fast, what with it being cold and people having to wait in little designated boxes for like eight hours if you want to be in the good spots. There was no way in the world that the place was still packed 25 minutes after midnight. And Ryan was still going on about the end of 2024 going on here.
Have you got this figured out yet?
What we finally realized, nearly an hour into the year and this strange phenomenon, is that it's not that New York City had moved to Central Time. No, instead, while switching the TV to Dick's Ryan's New Year's I must have accidentally hit pause, and the DVR paused. When its 60-minute buffer filled, the DVR resumed playing, having the minutes just right --- so we didn't suspect the problem was our viewing --- while the hour was off. And, uh, I guess neither of us had reason to suppose that Puerto Rico might not be on Eastern Time, so that wasn't any hint to us either.
So, yes, neither of us were able to work out from hints like ``ABC would not be an hour off on the New Year's Eve time and would not show Puerto Rico instead of Times Square at midnight Eastern'' that the problem might be our DVR instead of the world.
Now we're enjoying more of the day at Camden Park and I hope you are too.
Here, we're back on Big Dipper for a ride. The previous train's just left and is climbing the lift hill here.
Looking out from the station we see the Hawnted House, with no line to speak of there. You can see the park's entrance sign in the distance on the right there.
Peeking a little more southward where you can see the carousel's building on the far right.
Train coming back to Big Dipper, and the ride operator's working the brake levers.
A building off at the edge of the park. The maps suggested this was some kind of museum that, naturally, we'd want to see, but the maps appear out of date. The buildings were closed up although some stuff inside them suggested they might be used as walk-through haunted houses in October.
The closed building above is at the far end of Big Dipper. Here's Big Dipper seen from that side. It's a bit startling that there's no fence or anything blocking people off from the structure, which includes parts where the track is within arm's reach.
Trivia: Venice's Arsenal, the giant shipyard opened in 1104 which gave western Europe the word, derives its name from the Arabic ``dār șinā'ah'', meaning ``house of construction''. Source: The Riddle of the Compass: The Invention that Changed The World, Amir D Aczel.
Currently Reading: Archaeology, January/February 2025, Editor Jarrett A Lobell.
