So last night we settled down to watch The Flophouse's live FlopTV stream when I saw something running on the rug in the living room, and I called it out: ``Mouse!'' One of our pet mice was running loose.
What had happend was the mice were running one of their wheels and it was squeaking just this small persistent bit. Rather than listen to that noise through the event, or take the time to oil it, ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger grabbed the wheel out of the mouse's bin and set it on the floor, and told the mice she'd make it up to them later. It was a couple moments after that I saw the mouse running around.
I got up maybe faster than was wise and tried to catch the mouse. In this I was a little helped that the mouse was surely confused as all heck about what was going on, and also carefully exploring and retracing her steps to the one thing she was sure existed, the running wheel, so she wasn't making distance as fast as she could. bunnyhugger --- who at first thought I was talking about a wild mouse that had got into our house --- told me to throw something over the mouse, which yeah, was the right way to catch her. The only thing I could find was the Christmas tree skirt that we somehow hadn't put away yet, but, I dropped that on the mouse and didn't see anything escape from it, so that was good. I peeled the skirt up and got worried when I didn't see anything underneath, but finally found the mouse, turned upside-down, feet caught in the fabric of the skirt. The important thing is I could grab her safe and sound.
I handed the mouse --- one of the brown ones that turns out has grown up without our being able to tell them apart --- so bunnyhugger could apologize to her. And she did, but took a moment to admire the bits of gold in their fur that we never get to see. She also, more sensibly, took a moment to count the mice in the pen, just in case it turned out she'd accidentally taken two mice out. Everyone was where they belonged.
A wild accident, of course, and caused by our just assuming that the mice, who ordinarily skedaddle as soon as anyone reaches for them, would jump off the wheel when it was picked up. Either the brownie mouse was feeling brave or was so confused by the wheel being picked up that she didn't notice, and with our having the lights out for the podcast event we didn't see her until she was having her rug-exploration experience.
Good episode of the Flophouse's FlopTV, too.
These pictures are from our anniversary, yes, but more important they're from Six Flags America, now closed for good unless something bonkers happens. Let's look.
The parking lot! Which was more empty and more shaded than we expected, but don't worry, it was still a million and forty degrees.
Welcome to Six! The theme park based on the hit Broadway musical telling the story of the wives of Henry VIII!
Oooh, Six Flags America, I see. The park traced its origins to the early 70s which is why it looks so American Revolution in architecture. It also looks so much like the original midway from Great Adventure (opened 1974) that I felt like I was back in New Jersey a while.
Just inside and hey, look, a replica Liberty Bell! This is two we've encountered at amusement parks, neither of them in the same state as the actual Liberty Bell.
The main midway, with a couple of gift shops and stuff like that. We never did found the souvenir we really wanted but there were places to search.
And oh, did you know June 30th last year was National Ride Operator Day? Well, it was, and we celebrated it by riding things.
Trivia: On joining the International Olympic Committe's five-member executive board in 1921, Sigfrid Edström (who had competed for Sweden, running the 100-meter sprint in the 1896 Athens games) countered the traditional Scandinavian opposition to separate Winter Olympics Games by letting the IOC patronize the Wintersports Week held in Chamonix, France, in 1924, which have since been recognized as the first Winter Olympics. Source: Encyclopedia of the Modern Olympic Movement, Editors John E Findling, Kimberly D Pelle. He also fought against compensating athletes for the time spent away from work as that would ``open up the floodgates'' to lower-class professionals. The IOC eventually agreed athletes could be compensated for their expenses for up to 15 days. And let's not get started on how weird he was about women in sports.
Currently Reading: Joke Farming: How to Write Comedy and Other Nonsense, Elliott Kalan.
