When AnthrOhio wrapped up last year with the declaration they were moving to a new hotel, I'm not sure it came with the news it was moving to a new weekend. We did learn about the move to a late-April weekend months ago, though, and were mildly irked that it would be coming so soon after Motor City Fur[ry] Con. Also that it would be coming in the late-middle part of the term. With ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger having Monday classes we'd have to drive home after closing ceremonies, not even sticking around for the Dead Dog Dance, to have a chance of getting her in bed in time. Or cancel classes, something she's most reluctant to do for mere fun.
And then came Pinball At The Zoo. This, the biggest tournament in Michigan, is always sometime in mid-to-late April and what do you know but it was set for this past weekend. As in, the same weekend as AnthrOhio. So we were stuck with the question of what would we miss, the furry convention that, despite outgrowing the cozy, intimate convention we loved, is still our favorite; or the pinball tournament that's so exciting and fun and social and competitive and that's become one of the Pro Circuit events where some of the best pinball players of the whole continent converge.
And then, eventually, we realized that it was also Easter weekend, a day --- often a weekend --- that we always spend with bunnyhugger's parents. There's no inherent conflict in going to Pinball At The Zoo, which ends Saturday, and to her parents for Sunday. But there's a compelling conflict going to central Ohio and mid-Michigan for the same day.
We did a lot of thinking out what was the less bad thing to miss. We finally chose to miss AnthrOhio, for me for the first time since 2012. We'd be glad for Easter with her parents. And we'd be glad for attending the least replaceable pinball tournament of the year. As long as we did well enough.
No pressure.
Now let's have a bit more 4th of July fireworks from the City of Lansing and from outlying territories.
On the left, I think, the city's fireworks. On the right, the fireworks of whatever town is north and west of Lansing. I'm going to say ``Delhi''? That sounds like a town that exists.
Here's a meteor seen just at the limits of sensor range while in warp.
Dutch angle! Fireworks local (on the left) and distant (on the right).
And here's the city or possibly the ballpark fireworks getting to the grand finale!
More finale, but this time so you can see colors and the shape of the cloud.
And this is no fireworks. This is traffic, cars driving back from downtown. We stuck around a good bit after the show because we figured why rush home.
Trivia: A conventional break-bulk cargo ship of the mid-1950s would typically require 150 or more longshoremen working for at least four days to unload and load a vessel's cargo; using $2.80 as a basic longshoreman's hourly wage, this implied over $15,000 in stevedore charges for a typical port call. Source: Box Boats: How Container Ships Changed The World, Brian J Cudahy. For perspective, that's more than a contestant might win on a whole episode of The Price Is Right --- when they would play for the full half-hour show --- of the time.
Currently Reading: Slime: A Natural History, Susanne Wedlich. Translator Ayça Türkoğlu.
PS: What’s Going On In Olive and Popeye? What’s this wrestling story going on? January – April 2025 finally, finally gets its turn.
