This weekend was one of more social obligations than usual. ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger had one on Friday, attending the retirement party of a friend at the bookstore. Then Saturday came the Celebration of Life for ERR, the pinball league friend who died while shoveling snow back in February.
Despite knowing this was coming we were still fuzzy on details until pretty late on, including just which of a small chain of bar/restaurants it was held in. The one it was actually held in was much easier to get to, even without the construction zones and the post-tornado emergency construction zones. Also not clear: how formally we should dress. I went with ``dark but office-appropriate'' clothes and bunnyhugger wore some pinball gear so people would know how we knew him. It turns out, as would fit ERR, the dress expectation was ``come as you like''.
We were briefly terrified to start when we didn't recognize anyone. But we were greeted by ERR's son, and his mother, and were able to say some nice things about him to them. And then we found a couple of pinball folks, two of whom were just leaving --- we'd learn most of the pinball folks had gotten there earlier; the celebration ran from noon to four and we got there halfway through --- but others who were sitting at a table, near the big display of photos of ERR's life, and we sat with them most of the afternoon.
We both left cards with memories --- mine was less specific, and more about the way ERR behaved at just about every pinball event we ever saw --- and picked up packets of forget-me-not seeds that we really can't grow in our yard. Not enough light. But maybe there'll sometime be a good place to use them.
So all that was a pleasant experience I hope to go a long time without repeating.
A thing we would like to repeat: visiting Kennywood. Here's pictures from our last trip.
Waiting for the Turtle ride. A woman sits down for the ride cycle ahead of us and you get views of the Phantom's Revenge coaster on the left and the Thunderbolt on the right.
And here's a view ahead of the Turtle queue with Phantom's Revenge (in purple) and Thunderbolt (the wooden coaster) behind.
Nice picture here lined up with one of the spacers between turtle cars.
Here's the Phantom's Revenge soaring overhead of the Turtle.
Leaving the Turtle you get this view of the wiring in back of the neon sign and of the Lucky Stand.
And here's the Wishing Well, where there's only ever really one wish to make, for the park to close late today.
Trivia: Samuel Bentham --- younger brother of the economist/philosopher Jeremy Bentham --- was in 1796 made Inspector General of the Royal Navy Yards, and among other things introduced steam power to the Portsmouth docks, putting in machine-powered tools to make the wooden blocks for the typical man-o-war's nine hundred pulleys, and a rolling mill able to make three hundred thousand copper plates a year for sheathing hulls. Source: To Rule The Waves: How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World, Arthur Herman. After spending enough time pushing for reform of the Navy Board, Bentham's post would be abolished.
Currently Reading: The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore, Evan Friss.
