Ever since I was a child I loved to wander wild

And now in a rare departure for me, a multi-day epic of things I've been up to in the recent past, in this case, the Maine Gathering with bunny_hugger and a collection of other strange people from the Internet.

( We begin on Wednesday, with her arrival in the state of New Jersey. )

Still we had time to watch a few Carson's Comedy Classics, and for a fresh Floyd R Turbo American segment to give bunny_hugger a temporary favorite catchphrase to baffle online friends (``This raises the question: stick it up your nose''). And we got to eating a bag of flavored pretzel chips which had been in the house for roughly seven years but didn't show appreciable signs of ageing, possibly because of the strong spice flavor agents in them. It was looking like a good trip's eve.

Trivia: In 1891 shipping magnate Hermann Oelrichs offered in The New York Sun a reward of $500 for ``such proof as a court would accept that in temperate waters even one man, woman, or child, while alive, was ever attacked by a shark''. Source: Close To Home: The Terrifying Shark Attacks Of 1916, Michael Capuzzo.

Currently Reading: The Seven Cardinal Virtues Of Science Fiction, Editors Isaac Asimov, Charles G Waugh, Martin H Greenberg.