With enough happening at work it's time for chaos to break out at home, displaced by two blocks north and two east. Particularly, with pinball league. ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger got an alarming text from RED, the guy who takes care of the pinball machines at our local barcade. The barcade was asking if we could move league to Wednesday nights, so they can close Mondays and Tuesdays.
Now. Um. Wow. Of course the reason the pinball league is on Tuesdays dates back to the original insight of league founder WVL. He figured a regular league could get more pinball machines added, given the more play, and succeeded beyond anyone's expectations. And picked Tuesday because that was the slowest night and the one with nothing else going on to crowd the league out or make too much of a racket to enjoy playing. And since then, despite a couple attempts by the bar to start something that would be crowded and loud --- particularly experiments with live bands or DJs --- none of them have worked, and Tuesday night has returned to being a nice low-key evening where we can stuff twenty-plus pinball players in without making trouble.
So the things which make it a good league night are just the things that make it a night the bar might want to save on hours. Probably doesn't help that at least three of the league regulars are non-drinkers and I think everyone else is a light drinker at best. The days of WVL getting sloshed enough we casually walk him home to make sure he gets indoors are gone. Nominally, there's no real trouble moving league to Wednesday, besides that Service Industry Night is busier and louder and bunnyhugger finally got her schedule to where she can expect to teach Wednesdays. For years after league started she was teaching Tuesdays and rolling into league minutes before it started.
A little later and things have maybe settled. They claim to be willing to keep the bar open Tuesdays through the end of the season, suggesting they don't quite know how long a season runs, and revisit the decision to close Tuesdays then. And maybe nothing will come of it after all; maybe closing Mondays will save enough staff hours for the time being, or something. The world is vast and full of stuff going on.
Now, some more Exclusive Ride Time at KennyKon:
No ride photos for our exclusive time. I'm not sure if Phantom Photo is open regularly anymore, actually; we didn't think to look during the day when it might have been.
KennyKon attendees hanging out in the Lost Kennywood section, at the exit of the Phantom's Revenge. There's a fair-length hike back to the entrance of the ride from here.
And what's decorating the fountain in the retro early-20th-century stylings of Lost Kennywood? That's right, dolphins! No, really, that's the architectural term for fish gargoyles.
Back for more rides, including a couple where they let us just stay on the ride if nobody was waiting at our gate. Here's what the coaster looks like from the unloading side. Not sure why those two are waiting for a middle-seat ride.
See? There's plenty of near-the-back rows available and it's not like a ridiculous wait for the final car.
Ride being dispatched into the night!
Trivia: In the latter part of 15th century French and Italian mathematicians would typically use p with a tilde and m with a tilde to represent plus and minus. Germany used + and -, and the standards competed for years. Source: A History of Mathematical Notations, Florian Cajori. Huh. Wonder which of them won.
Currently Reading: Interesting Stories for Curious People: A Collection of Fascinating Stories About History, Science, Pop Culture, and Just About Anything Else You Can Think Of, Bill O'Neill.
