Something I failed to mention about our Saturday at Halloweekends. This was about deciding what to do for lunch, which ended up being the Perkins in the Hotel Breakers. It's been a long time since we had stacks of pancakes. Also a long while since we ate in a restaurant proper. We've eaten in the hospitality suites at Motor City Fur[ry] Con and Anthrohio, and we ate at that diner car at the Gilroy Car Museum. But this was the first time we were in a sit-down restaurant with, like, wait staff and fold-up menus and stuff since the week before the pandemic lockdowns, when we were just hearing rumors that maybe they'd have to tell everyone to stay home for two or three weeks.
I'd like to say it was a decision made with careful thought but really no, it was just, we often go to Perkins there for a morning breakfast, it was morning, and we didn't think about it until the server asked if we wanted her to wear a mask too. There was some fuss at the next booth as the guests were (reasonably) upset that they couldn't get clean silverware. Staff shortages, apparently were part of the problem, and I'm not sure how this related to problems with the dishwasher but I imagine the back end of a restaurant is something where when any one thing goes wrong for ten minutes it takes a month of overtime to recover, and it was the last week of the season. I think we ended up never getting spoons, a thing our server was sorry about, but that didn't bother us. Some silverware we didn't need.
Sunday opened with us sleeping later than we figured but getting the car packed up and getting ourselves dressed for the coldest-but-not-actually-cold day of Halloweekends. It was also very lightly drizzly, something that might have helped keep crowds from being even larger, though not much. Fortunately it wasn't so heavy a rain as to shut down rides, which is amazing since we've seen them shut down Gemini because someone was thinking about rain. For this lunch we'd go back to the burrito bowl place, and I don't mean to make this trip report be all about where we ate. But the burrito bowl place was great because among other things they decorated it in the ``Stuff On Walls'' style, and the stuff was old Cedar Point stuff. Like, a menu that looked like it was from maybe the 60s, for some unidentified place offering ``Assorted German Sandwiches'' and ``Soft Pretzels'' and ``Kraut Dog'' and ``Draft Beer''. I imagine it was something near Schwabinchen, but who can say?
The most amusing thing in it was a sign apologizing that credit cards are not accepted in this establishment, since Cedar Fair has decided it's a cash-free chain and you must use a credit (or debit) card to buy anything. They even took out the coin-operated fish-food dispenser, so it's impossible to feed the carp in the pond anything except your leftover French fries or whatever.
Some more pictures here from Lynn's Arcade, where we dropped in on a pinball tournament that has left me the 1,618th highest-ranked player in California for this year. ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger is 1,669th in the open competition, but only 230th among women in California. We're probably not going to be invited to finals there.
Some of the pinball games and the decoration above, which shows not just the Rick and Morty game that I don't understand at all, but in the wall decorations icons taken from pinball games.
More of the row of tables there, and of the wall art. The heart is, I'm pretty sure, a riff on The Machine: Bride Of Pinbot, which features a cartoony valentine-style heart as one of the ramp targets.
More tables along the wall by the exit. The wall art here is of The Wizard of Oz, a pinball machine they didn't have then but could well have had at some point.
bunnyhugger playing Rick and Morty for some reason, possibly because her opponent named it for a match.
A fan-made The Walking Dead: this is a reskin of some 1970s/early 80s table with a custom-made theme and not related to the Walking Dead game that Stern made last decade.
Unfortunately the game was turned off, so I didn't get to play, and I could only get this sort of dim idea of what the table was. I'm not sure I can identify which game it ``really'' is from this.
Trivia: In December 1941 the Japanese Empire had 63 submarines in the Pacific. The Allies had 69, 56 of them from the United States and 13 from the Netherlands. (Neither the British nor the Free French had any.) Source: History of the Second World War, B H Liddell Hart.
Currently Reading: Miscellaneous comic books.
