Our next big anecdote-worthy event was Silver Bells In The City, Lansing's own annual nighttime parade and street market and Christmas tree lighting ceremony and all that. This is held the Friday before Thanksgiving, the city's hope to get better weather than after. This turned out to be the coolest day of November, although that was still, you know, mid-40s cold rather than what the weather should be in November. And not so warm, or rainy, that the parade would be destroyed by a tempest like happened back in '016.
We got a spot around our usual, the nice space bracketed by the camera guy for the local TV station covering it, and ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger recognize the assistant as the guy who swapped a battery out during a commercial break that one time in ... '015? Something like that? It's a good spot, though, as there's not a risk of crowds in front of us. On the other hand, there will be the camera rigging, and the security fence, which means that when something unexpected and good happens our cameras may have no good angle on it. For example, one of the horses pulling the carriage for a guest of honor decided they had pulled enough, thank you, and were not going to move until they were un-harnessed. So there the horse was, holding up everything, until someone came and un-hitched them. And then, in a joyful postscript, a couple of people had to come over and pull the (empty) carriage away.
That would come as the parade started. The parade's start was inexplicably late, taking sufficiently long after the normal 6 pm that we wondered what had gone wrong. We wouldn't hear any explanation at the parade, or watching the recording of the parade later. The recording also cut away from the reluctant horse, apparently unaware that was the stuff everyone would want to see. Whatever started it late caused the parade to run long enough that the DVR cut off the drone light show and the fireworks that ended the night.
We're not fans of drone light shows, at least not compared to fireworks. That granted, the drone lights were a better show this year. More creativity in the patterns, including some clever use of dimmer and brighter lights to make, for example, a three-dimensional dragon weaving through the sky. Or an animated Lions logo, which the crowd cheered. A guy explained to the woman he was with that the Lions were having a great season, which is the first I heard that they were having a great season. The woman also asked why the crowd boo'ed the drones spelling out 'MICHIGAN' in blue. The guy explained no, that's not the state, that's the school the Lansing crowd is booing.
After the tree lighting, we had just the annual Silver Bells ornament to get. Every year since that time in '015(?) that they ran out, bunnyhugger bought the ornament online early and picked it up later. But ever since that time we've seen they had abundant ornaments in the little shopping village set up. So, since she forgot to order it ahead of time, we figured, no harm done, we'll just pop over to the shopping village and GUESS WHAT HAPPENED? Yeah, the popcorn guys said the ornament people closed up shop like a half-hour before.
When we got home bunnyhugger rushed to the Silver Bells web site and ordered an ornament. They took her money right away, and delivered one in the mail a short time later, which she couldn't find when she was first decorating the Christmas tree this year. She did find it, in time.
Getting back to July, now, here's a half-dozen Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk pictures.
Well hello! Here's a handsome column of horses on the Looff carousel.
And some speckled horses elsewhere on the carousel. You can also see that the clown's eyes are lit up, there in the background.
Live performer! The juggler's in the middle of sending a hoop way up above stage here.
And here the juggler's doing the eating-an-apple-while-juggling-it bit. Note the sign about being four days accident free.
View from that stage back to the Colonnade, from 1907, the big old building that has things like those pinball games and the magic shop and the Roll-A-Bingo arcade in it.
Oh yeah, and here I take a quick shot over the edge of the boardwalk to see the sand and ocean and all that nature stuff beyond it.
Trivia: NASA decided the 3rd of January, 1974 to keep the possibility of launching a second Skylab mission until at least planning for the Fiscal Year 1976 budget was completed. So, Launch Umbilical Tower 2 would be kept as it was, until a decision could be made to prepare a Skylab launch or start modifications for the Space Shuttle; existing hardware for a Skylab mission, including backups and spares, would be kept in storage; and the Skylab Program would fund the activities for minimum cost storage through June 1974. Source: Skylab: A Chronology, Roland W Newkirk, Ivan D Ertel, Courtney G Brooks. NASA SP-4011.
Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine, Sundays Supplement Volume 9: 1947, Tom Sims, Bela Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle.
