So FAE won, and ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger awarded the last two trophies and winner's checks. Thanks to bunnyhugger's excellent job paneling every pinball joint in Michigan the pot of money for all sixteen winners had risen far beyond what the International Flipper Pinball Association had raised by its excises on women's events; so much money, in fact, that FAE will have to file tax documents after all this. The other competitors are spared that, but who can say what next year will bring?
bunnyhugger and I, with FAE, closed out the Clubhouse of course, between pictures and talking with AJH and PH and their family, and our general inability to not be the last people leaving anything. We did set out before they'd quite finished everything, which was lucky, since it turned out bunnyhugger had left her purse behind and we had to turn back around for it. This was a curious echo of the previous day where we'd left without FAE's laptop, except this time AJH didn't have to get back to the venue.
For dinner we figured on a Chinese restaurant and bunnyhugger Facebook-messaged AJH with the query 'chinese restaurants near me' because her phone hadn't switched to the correct app. AJH answered with the name of the only place in town, and she thanked him as Google, which may make a good running gag if we play it right.
We brought dinner back to the Gerber house and thought we'd eat in the dining room right up front. This we could not do because we couldn't find the lights until after dinner, when it was funny. Instead we went back four or five levels of dining room back, where we could find at least a bit of light, and bunnyhugger peeled back the tablecloth (we were afraid of staining it) and putting the plate with the dictionary on it off to the side. I got so many paper towels to serve as placemats so we wouldn't damage the wood of the table. And we had dinner.
The next morning we got up and once again packed and loaded things into the car. ... I ventured out first, so I got to see the six inches or so of snow on my car and get that loose, and also move my car out of its snowbank to a cleared part of the parking lot. We can't guess how bad it would have been to drive home in the early evening the previous day, but the driving home in the early afternoon?
I can't say I'm a fan. It could have been worse, which is a weak recommendation but is what you'll get. A couple times wind blew enough fresh, particulate snow to wipe out my whole ``seeing the road'' thing, but I was driving slow and steady and could not believe the people passing me.
Two times, though, I wasn't going slow enough. One of those times the light changed to yellow and I thought I'd have the time to brake. Instead, I was losing traction, and torn between ``creep through the intersection'' and whatever else might happen, I braked as much as I could without getting a warning from my dashboard and turned to the side road. This alarmed bunnyhugger, although I felt good that I managed this, had control back, and could do a U-turn and get back on M-37 soon enough.
The other time was as we were coming into Grand Rapids from the north, not long after we got news of the hundred-car pileup on a Grand Rapids highway south of the city. We were getting into the strip mall district, and once again the light changed and this time I didn't really have the time to stop and there was a car ahead that did. I steered a little out of the lane, into the crunchy slush that hadn't had a line of cars going through it, alarming bunnyhugger but dropping enough momentum that I could steer back into the lane and stop safely. I wasn't able to explain what I was doing, because I was busy trying to think what I could do to stop in time, but please trust me when I say I meant to do this and it worked out great.
East of Grand Rapids the snow let up, and the sun even came out, and by the time we were nearing Lansing the Interstates were in pretty good shape actually. The surface streets in town were not good, but we were able to drop FAE off, head over to Subway to get lunch --- we hadn't eaten before leaving town, and didn't on the road; by the time we got to Grand Rapids where I plausibly could have I didn't want anything in my hands except the steering wheel --- and get home, almost a day late but without anything bad happening. I mean besides bunnyhugger getting knocked out in the first round. Anyway bunnyhugger had to take care of something on Facebook.
And now, we're not quite at the last Tuscora Park pictures --- that should come tomorrow --- but we're nearing the end of the day. Here goes:
And here's the band organ, seen without obstruction!
Getting back to one of my classic compositions, looking at the underside of a carousel in motion.
And here's the train shed, which you pass through along the ride.
Inside's a bulletin board of all sorts of coded messages. Plus a lot of signs for possible closing times, most of which are way later than we've ever seen the park using.
And now, already, they're closing the carousel up.
And a guy pushes the train back into the shed rather than take it the long way around again. You feel for the kid looking on there.
Trivia: Robert Borden, prime minister of Canada, did not attend the January 1919 opening of the Paris Peace Conference, in a fit of pique over William F Lloyd, prime minister of Newfoundland, being given precedence. Source: Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World, Margaret MacMillan.
Currently Reading: Volume 82: Wreck o' th' Pegaso D'Oro, or, The Ispano-Squweezer!, Ralph Stein, Bill Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle.
