Pick up your money, pull up your tent, McGuinn

On my Sunday I figured, mm, where to go? What I settled on was the Silverball Museum, in Asbury Park --- on its boardwalk, by the way. After Hurricane Sandy there were several inches of wet sand in the building, and the electrical service was completely destroyed, but most of the pinball machines were left standing and apparently all the backglasses and playfield glasses are intact, an awfully good sign for the machines themselves being in order. They expect to reopen ``mid to late November'', according to their web page right this minute, so I'd imagine that they'll probably be back in operation around Christmas.

So I got the all-day pass and figured to try playing not every machine in the arcade --- that's just too much pinball --- but at least a full row of machines. This I got fairly close to doing, though there were some people squatting on some of the newer and (honestly) better games. I even had a couple really good games on some machines I've been able to play in simulated form on Pinball Arcade, so, good on the app-writers. And I got to explain to some confused-looking kids just how the older pinballs worked and they went from looking confused to smiling at their games.

When I got out, I found a ticket on my car, for being parked past the metered time. Since I had bought three hours using the centralized credit card-based system, and had the receipt in my wallet, I was rather peeved at this. But the court date was after I'd be back in Michigan, and even my father's attorney recommended that yes, I might have the receipt --- which I should have put on the dashboard, although there's no instructions to that effect in the system --- I just just pay the $36. And I did, but then I called the Asbury Park parking office to ask for the $6 in parking I did pay refunded. Rounds of phone tag hadn't left this resolved by the time Sandy came in and now the pettiness of it seems too big to continue.

Trivia: According to records, on 11 January 1789 a page delivered to King George III's apartments ``a fine Bunch of Grapes from the Hothouse''; the King is recorded as asking who sent them, and being told the Queen, asked ``what Queen''. It was his wife. He ordered them taken away. Source: George III, Christopher Hibbert.

Currently Reading: The Big Roads: The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionaries, and Trailblazers Who Created the American Superhighways, Earl Swift.