Seeing Old Friends, Oh, the Fun of It All at Holiday Time, Holiday Time

[austin_dern]

Christmas at bunnyhugger's started with a couple of traditional exercises, like my waking bunnyhugger over and over fidgeting on the inflatable mattress we have there. Last year we brought a sleeping bag that I used on the floor, but this time we failed to remember it. Also I got up first, when something loud was going on outside, and had the idea to go to the bathroom just as bunnyhugger's brother did. We worked it out. I forgot my hairbrush once again, and I don't know where to find their hair dryer, so my hair was not doing well.

Brunch was the traditional scrambled eggs followed by waffles, with bunnyhugger's parents apologizing all the time that the waffles were only being guessed at for done-ness because the light for 'done' wasn't working. They were just fine, we have no idea what was wrong. We also finally got an answer to how bunnyhugger's father got interested enough in making scrambled eggs that he's good at it: he dunno, it just seemed fun to learn how to do.

Between everyone's slow start we had a scheduling problem in unwrapping presents: my family had the idea to do a group Facetime about 2:00. I'd imagined that might run 15 or 20 minutes, and it did not; everyone was really happy to talk and show off things --- one of my niblings had some Lego set for a Fortnite(?) restaurant(?) thingy that he completed live during the call; another was weirdly happy with this stretchy-foam stick of butter(?) that I don't understand, sorry --- and we got into riffing on great and embarrassingly bad gifts of our youth. Also me showing off how I was wearing the Red Cross Pac-Man socks I got for a platelet donation a couple weeks back.

Well, during all this bunnyhugger's family figured they had to start opening presents or we'd never be cleaned up in time for dinner, and I missed the first couple rounds, including the one where bunnyhugger gave her mother a new iPad. When our group phone call finally ended and I could start complaining about how Facetime's interface has gotten worse since last year, bunnyhugger's brother, as the Christmas Elf, said he was going into emergency protocols giving me two gifts to every one everyone else was opening. Spoiler: I got a lot of books, plus the Peanuts page-a-day calendar, which is just as I'd like it.

And! I managed to give everyone at least one thing that was not a book, this time. A record for bunnyhugger's brother that kind of felt right and that he was delighted by. Jigsaw puzzle for his partner. Rubber stamps for bunnyhugger's mother, as stamping's one of the hobbies she can still do. A replacement neck pillow for bunnyhugger. A couple t-shirts for bunnyhugger's father, of local Lansing institutions, which might be a mistake as he kept asking and getting wrong what FB&C --- Flat, Black and Circular, a revered used record shop --- stands for. I suppose it doesn't much matter if he gets them wrong.

And then there's the things that didn't go as traditional.

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But before getting to the end of the day let's get back to Plopsaland in June, approaching the biggest-name roller coaster in the park:

The entrance to The Ride To Happiness, which gets its queue started in this building that looks vaguely steampunk-inspired.

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Inside the building are a lot of displays of things rotating slowly and the suggestion of fire and water.

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View of a returning train from the queue. The tower and coaster track out of it is not part of the ride. The other track is, as is the four-car train with the spinning cars.

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Paddlewheel that adds to the atmosphere underneath the ride.

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The last stage of the queue is ascending this sun-themed stairwell.

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And you go past more rooms full of riveted tanks and stuff.

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Trivia: According to a 1954 television survey Milton Berle was watched by only 1.9 percent of viewers in Charlotte, North Carolina. Source: With Amusement For All: A History of American Popular Culture since 1830, LeRoy Ashby. The networks concluded people feared he was too Jewish for small-town America; this kind of fear would help get Dick Van Dyke the leading role over Carl Reiner for what became The Dick Van Dyke Show, which had been based on Carl Reiner's own life.

Currently Reading: A Call to Arms: Mobilizing America for World War II, Maury Klein.

Comments

Waffles

[moxie_man]

No two waffle irons are the same. The light comes on on ours when it's heating. A second light comes on when it's up to temp.

Doneness? In our case, when steam stops flying out the sides. Then give it another minute or two to crisp it up.