austin_dern

How's my humor blog looking? Well, start of a new month, so it's got that inexplicably popular readership review, that's something. What else is there?

• MiSTed: The Tale of Fatty Raccoon, Chapter XIII
• 60s Popeye: Who's Kidding Zoo, a title that needs some baby goats to really land
• Statistics Saturday: Some Astounding Apollo 14 Trivia
• 60s Popeye: Motor Knocks, where Popeye loses his car inside a covered bridge
• I'm happy with the results in Extreme Donkey Vacuuming though
• What's Going On In Mark Trail? How is Mark Trail not in jail? November 2020 – January 2021
• Statistics January: People don't hate Mark Trail as much as they used to
• MiSTed: The Tale of Fatty Raccoon, Chapter XIV

Now we'll close out that visit to the slavers' graveyard. And, since that was the last full day of our brief visit, close out the Charleston trip from January 2020. I know; I'm also surprised to have so few pictures of it.

Monuments to the dead crews of the Hunley, which includes HL Hunley himself.

Evening view through the graveyard trees.

Why not build a black pyramid mausoleum?

So I guess sometimes when a tree blows over in the storm it figures it can work out a plan B.

I like the natural arch the tree provides for the monuments beyond.

The statue and canon monuments put up in commemoration of soliders killed defending Charleston for the slavers.

The monument, which explains itself on the left here. On the right in shadow are what look like seals of possibly the city and the state.

Must admit that's an impressive amount of work for that age. At nineteen I was the beat reporter for two undergraduate student governments for the leftist weekly student newspaper.

So, in the evening, our last evening visiting my parents, we exchanged Christmas presents at last. Here's the small tree my parents set up.

And here's their cat, the last one they expect to have.

The cat licking clean. She would die about a month later; it hadn't registered to me that she had gotten that old while I wasn't looking.

Flying home was unremarkable, although we did pass this candy shop that had vintage snack advertisements including this fascinating old sign we can't explain.

Trivia: The Apollo 14 Lunar Module had about 70 seconds of firing time remaining when it landed on the Moon. Source: Apollo By The Numbers: A Statistical Reference, Richard W Orloff. NASA SP-4029.

Currently Reading: Chariots for Apollo: The NASA History of Manned Lunar Spacecraft to 1969, Courtney G Brooks, James M Grimwood, Loyd S Swenson Jr.

bunnyhugger took down the last of our Christmas lights today. This kept her vow to leave them up to Candlemas. It makes our street a little less decorated, but Christmas does have to end sometime. There's one house up the block that still has decorations up (as of yesterday) but they only turned the lights on erratically all season. I did see them on a couple days ago, but why? And why so inconsistently? There's no way to know.

She had last week taken down a strand of icicle lighting used for the flowerbox because those lights stopped working. She's found the original packaging and the receipt, though, so we can at least send it back to the manufacturer and see what they do about defective lights.

Meanwhile, in comic strip reading: What's Going On In Mark Trail? How is Mark Trail not in jail? November 2020 - January 2021's plot gets revealed for you all.

And now let's see more of the Hunley museum.

A warning tag to not remove a thing that I found loose on the observation platform's floor above the submarine. Of course I find that interesting; you know me.

One more look at the rear half of the Hunley in the tank of preservative fluid.

And one more look at the front half of the Hunley in the tank of preservative fluid.

A poster showing various stages of the ``Deconcretion'', digging the submarine out of its encasement.

Peering out over the edge of the observation platform and getting a glimpse of the working parts of the museum.

Tubing on the outside of the preservative tank; this is from underneath the observation platform.

One of the keel blocks taken from the submarine and on display, if guardedly.

A poster explaining the torpedo --- tube of black powder attached in ways they're not precisely sure of --- at the front of the submarine and used to destroy an American ship.

Poster illustrating roughly how the Hunley attacked and sunk the American sloop-of-war USS Housatonic.

A poster about ``the legendary gold coin'' and one of the handful of artifacts inside the Hunley that can be definitely tracked to a specific person's, as the $20 gold coin was written about even before the Hunley was discovered.

The $20 gold coin on display. It's hard to find an angle that makes for a legible photograph that also shows off the coin's distortion from the bullet at the Battle of Shiloh that struck it.

So, this is the way to go, right? I enter here?

Trivia: The international designation for the Apollo 14 Lunar Module, once it undocked from the Command and Service Module in lunar orbit, was 1971-008C for the ascent stage and 1971-008D for the descent stage. Source: Apollo By The Numbers: A Statistical Reference, Richard W Orloff. NASA SP-4029. I, too, am surprised that the ascent stage --- which only flew free after the descent stage was exhausted --- didn't get the D designation.

Currently Reading: Chariots for Apollo: The NASA History of Manned Lunar Spacecraft to 1969, Courtney G Brooks, James M Grimwood, Loyd S Swenson Jr.

Have I just given up on my mathematics blog? No, but I can see where you might make that mistake. I've only had one thing published there each of the last couple weeks, so, here's a couple weeks' worth of writing from it for you to review:

• How Did Compute!'s Gazette's MLX Program Work?
• How 2020 Treated My Mathematics Blog
• A Quick Yahtzee Puzzle
• What do the less-than and greater-than symbols mean?

And now? Close out the visit to the Cypress Gardens, with more walking along the trail that loops around the main lake and that brings us to what's surely prime letterboxing territory, if we'd gone and tried to letterbox ...

A small burial ground for members of the Kittredge family, last private owners of the gardens.

The dividing wall between the burial grounds and the rest of the gardens.

The in-ground plaque marking the burial grounds' consecration.

The three-plus burial spots. Kittredge family members would be buried there as late as the 1980s, decades after the grounds were donated to the county.

``My Happy, 1941 - 1957'', a small grave marker next to the full-size one. We assume it's a pet, likely a dog or cat, but that's our assumption.

A water depth pole. Clearly there's times the water gets very deep.

bunnyhugger pauses to check where that algae-covered pond is.

The part of the gardens where the gazebos huddle together for comfort.

A plaque commemorating one of the people responsible for converting the gardens into a public park.

The Patriot Bridge, a feature you might have seen. A half-dozen or so movies have been filmed at the Cypress Gardens. One of them was The Patriot. Remember? Mel Gibson movie from 2000? Sony made up a movie critic to provide a positive blurb? Settled the class-action lawsuit where they'd pay $5 to dissatisfied customers? Anyway, as part of filming the movie they built this bridge for the cast to tromp over and it's been part of the gardens ever since. From the sides it looks plausibly like a stone bridge, but it's all poured concrete.

Excuse me, warning sign, but I think we'll let the ASFR community decide on that.

Currently Reading: Chariots for Apollo: The NASA History of Manned Lunar Spacecraft to 1969, Courtney G Brooks, James M Grimwood, Loyd S Swenson Jr.

We had stuffed peppers for dinner yesterday. It's a meal bunnyhugger makes. It started as something done once, maybe twice, to harvest the peppers she grows in the summer. When we discovered we could just buy peppers from the store, though? And that we could (often, not always) buy a heavily discounted about-to-go-bad bag of miscellaneous peppers? Now it's become a monthly thing. So yesterday I bit into one that was really hot. Really really really hot. No, hotter than that. Hot enough I had trouble breathing, and I had the horrible thought that I was going to cough up the seeds and that was going to destroy what was left of my throat. It was so hot I got hiccoughs, and couldn't easily stop them.

The peppers weren't bad, mind you, just a bit much. Also, bunnyhugger then had to try her half of that pepper. Hers was hot, but not bug-your-eyes-out-like-a-Tex-Avery-wolf hot.

So let's get back to looking around the Cypress Gardens.

After the swamp tour we went into the animal and botanical gardens. Here's some Mexican heather flowers which the sign tells us isn't related to the other heather flowers.

Some of the birds in the butterfly house.

Actual butterfly as seen in the butterfly house.

More butterfly pictures. I was challenging my camera's ability to focus on things there.

Goldfish! It got us worrying about our fish back home, who were doing just fine, really.

More birds in the butterfly house. This one seems skeptical of the whole business.

Strrrrrrrreeeeetch!

Nice little lineup of whatever birds these are.

bunnyhugger having a quick chat of her own with the birds.

You blinked!

Let's get back to butterfly pictures and I really try having a plane of focus.

I am happy with the way the focus came out here.

Trivia: The final launch countdown for Apollo 14 began at T-28 hours, at 6:00:00 Greenwich Time on 30 January 1971, with a scheduled nine hour, 23 minute hold at T-9 hours, and a one-hour hold at T-3 hours, 30 minutes. Source: Apollo By The Numbers: A Statistical Reference, Richard W Orloff. NASA SP-4029.

Currently Reading: Chariots for Apollo: The NASA History of Manned Lunar Spacecraft to 1969, Courtney G Brooks, James M Grimwood, Loyd S Swenson Jr. And I know what you're thinking: ``but aren't there already like thirty space history books all titled Chariots For Apollo?'' No, but I understand your confusion. There's like fifty.

bunnyhugger's parents have an appointment to get their first vaccination. It's to be Saturday and I hope that all goes well. It's a great relief to have them scheduled. That they couldn't get a shot has been a source of tension between them, and between me and bunnyhugger too. If all goes well, though, they'll be as well-protected as can be soon. bunnyhugger still has an aunt who hasn't been able to get vaccination, or an appointment, and that's our next concern.

My mother was able to get her first shot a couple days ago, and my father's got an appointment for next week. So that's something.

Meanwhile, in mathematics: What do the less-than and greater-than symbols mean? I tried to find what the guy who introduced the < and > symbols to (Western) mathematics thought the symbols should represent. It was not completely successful.

Now back to the Cypress Gardens, from our visit to my parents back in January 2014.

A guide to some of the wildlife you might see at Cypress Gardens. We saw none of these.

What the trees look like at the waterline and the reflection in the black water.

And hey! Whoa! What's that?

Well, we set out on our boat tour, with a bunch of people and a guide, and of course our attention went to ...

There! You see it? An alligator spending a bit of time at the water's edge.

The alligator hangs out in the water and leaves us wondering what happens if it tries to approach our boat. (It wouldn't, and why would it? Why does an alligator need trouble?)

Alligator enjoying the water. And there's the trail around the main lagoon there.

Looking up at the trees; it feels almost like entering a cathedral.

Tree with a directional arrow, to guide the people in rowboats taking self-guided tours.

Our boat going past a self-guided tour boat. You can see bunnyhugger's chicken purse enjoying the tour too.

Cypress trees at the waterline.

Low bridge! Everybody down! ... No, seriously, everybody had to duck down to clear the bridge.

Trivia: The Solid Rocket Booster O-ring erosion on the STS-2 space shuttle launch, in November 1981, was not discussed in a Flight Readiness Review for nearly three years, when the erosion began to appear again. Source: The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at NASA, Diane Vaughan.

Currently Reading: Cities and the Sea: Port City Planning in Early Modern Europe, Josef W Konvitz.

Sad news from my parents. Their cat has died.

It was sudden, and unexpected to me, but not so much to them. The cat had had a cancer scare last year, a tumor that was removed fairly easily and left her, for a while, forced to wear a cone or be scolded for licking her scar. I had thought that everything was fine after that, and when bunny_hugger and I visited my parents in January, the cat seemed in good shape. Maybe a little slower than she used to be, but who is not?

So apparently the tumor was more dangerous than I had understood. Or the surgery took more out of her than I'd realized. Maybe more than my parents had, too; as my father described it, they had woken up to find that she'd died, in the night.

It had happened several weeks ago, during a stretch that interrupted my routine weekly calls, as I missed them or got them at a bad moment or whatnot. My father mentioned it as casual old news.

This is the fourth cat they've had, and the last of the barn kittens that my sister had given to them. In fact, this cat I had brought from the barn where my sister then worked to my parents, coming home with me after a Christmas party that I had been invited to.

It's another sad thought about the passing of time, as though there were any happy thoughts about the passing of time. But here is another sad thought: my parents don't figure to get another cat. Not just because my sister lives a little farther away and it would take a little more effort to deliver a cat who didn't really belong in a barn. This cat was just over twelve years old when she died, and this felt abbreviated. There is something implied in the decision that they will not have another pet.

My parents are still in good health, so far as they have let on. And there's no reason to think otherwise. But where might they be, and in what state, for the next twelve years?

It's a hard thing to look at honestly, so I now look away and pet a rabbit of unknown age and parentage and history, but who acts young and still overflowing with life.

Trivia: In 1946 the Monopoly Guy was given a name --- Rich Uncle Pennybags --- for his appearance in the stock market game Rich Uncle. Source: The Game Makers: The Story Of Parker Brothers From Tiddledy Winks To Trivial Pursuit, Philip E Orbanes.

Currently Reading: Fontaine Fox's Toonerville Trolley, Editors Herb Galewitz, Don Winslow. So the strip, being ``slices of life'' from the days when you could have a hick trolley line running through lots of vacant lots to the town railroad station, and discontinued in 1955 when the last vestiges of the world it depicted of one-room schoolhouses and spinster librarians and the Foighten' Oirish Kid and general stores with checkers matches were forgotten, is of course quite dated in its trappings. And yet somehow it's more current than this line from its 1972 introductory matter: ``Remember tomboys, when that word was used without reference to a sexual abberation?'' Mr Galewitz, if you wish to make remarks like that I invite you to step into this door and knock yourself further senseless.

PS: Here's a couple of things at Santa's Workshop.

One of the refreshment stands. The place being named Miss Muffet's is kind of a concession to there not really being an inherently Santa-y food place name.

The Skee-ball arcade, and some of the games around that. There was no pinball.

A flying scooters ride that looks like it's of the old generation. The ride type's gotten a revival in the 2010s but the center mechanism looks different.

It wasn't until my father talked about sights in Savannah that he never got to, because my mother doesn't feel like seeing the railroad museum or such, that I understood he might have wanted to make that trip anyway. He did, though, suggest we might go to the H L Hunley museum, again something right nearby. I was interested, naturally. bunny_hugger mentioned it to her mother, who basically leapt down to Charleston to demand that we go. Well, that convinced me.

So our Sunday plans would be an expedition to this museum, another one that's maybe 285 feet away from my parents' apartment as the crow flies, and 185 miles by the highways. Also again, my mother didn't want to go along. bunny_hugger remembered watching the made-for-tv movie about the Hunley, which she was sure she'd seen on the urging of her starter husband, the Navy fan. I remembered the existence of the movie, but not watching it, and with some investigative work figured out why. When it aired I was in Maryland, attending a three-week teaching session NASA/Greenbelt ran about parallel processing. By the time I got back the movie was somehow not in the endless repeat cycles anymore.

The Hunley museum is a small museum, and is clear about its academic work: it only takes tours on the weekends. Clemson researchers work on it the rest of the time. Right out front is a replica of the Pioneer, Hunley's first attempt at building a submarine and scuttled when the United States recaptured New Orleans. The small museum also has one of the props from the tv movie, set out where you can climb in and get a photograph of yourself bent way over to fit your hands or feet on the propeller crank. The prop is about ten percent larger than the real thing, which I learned later and made my back retroactively hurt more.

We got there in time for the guided tour, which took us right to the conservation tank where the iron submarine is still being stabilized, cleaned out, and investigated. It'll likely never be brought out of fluid. Right now, we can just look down into the pool, shrinking the apparent size of the thing. The docent said he hoped someday it'd be displayed in a tank transparent all around.

The docent talked some about the building and mission and sinking of the Hunley, as well as its recovery. And then went and confused me, at least, with just how it did sink the USS Housatonic. The submarine used a spar torpedo, basically a mine held on a long rod out in front, and the docent got us confused about what precisely was known about the way this worked. My dad revealed that he had been on the tour before and had heard different things every other time about how the submarine and its spark worked. Not particularly confusing us is that there is mystery about what exactly sank the Hunley. The obvious thought is that the blast which sank the Housatonic also damaged the submarine, but apparently the artifact doesn't show signs of that, and they had a poster showing numerical simulations suggesting it shouldn't have been that hard on the submarine at least. Being sunk by Union forces deliberately seems ruled out by the lack of damage; possibly it was sunk by the wake of a Union ship. (This is where I would put my money, although in point of fact, everyone on the tour was given a little plastic coin and encouraged to drop it into one of four buckets for the leading theories. I kept mine as souvenir, as the signs said we could do, too.) The submarine was also way out of the path to safety, which is another mystery.

Anyway we explored the museum a while, particularly paying attention to descriptions about the challenge of how to recover artifacts from it, which filled with silt over the course of 140 years and that needed, like, years of work to think about whether and how to set it upright again. Or how the human remains were identified. (One of the crew is known only by a single name, a reminder of what record-keeping was just like back then.)

While we looked around the gift shop bunny_hugger and I got very anxious, as there was a guy who'd cornered the cashier and was explaining the museum to her, at length. I reached a point I was looking desperately for something I could buy so as to just break up that scene, but I wasn't sure I wanted one of the books --- or the DVD of the movie --- enough for this. bunny_hugger did get some souvenirs, although not before the guy had finally used up all the words and left.

Meanwhile my father got a little bit anxious as he'd hoped to bring us to Magnolia Cemetery, nearby. The Hunley sank three times, killing some or all of its crew each time. Those killed in the machine have been buried together there, and this was particularly interesting as family lore at least has it that one of those dead (on the first sinking) was part of my family. This is of course interesting and we couldn't help thinking: there has got to be a letterbox here. Probably several, as quite a slice of South Carolina wealth is buried in the cemetery. We only had a short while, though; the cemetery closed at 5 pm and my father was not willing to see just how much of a grace period they gave people lingering. There were people still driving in ten minutes before the place closed, though.

This was another day of doing small things, low-key things. We came back to the apartment and had dinner, salad with basked squashes. It's another meal that's really good and really easy to make, considering; we should try it sometime ourselves.

After that and more minced meat pie desserts we finally exchanged Christmas presents. I gave books, since that's the sort of thing I think of first and besides they're very good things to bring in carry-on luggage. (That said, airpot security theater did insist on swabbing the wrapped packages when I flew out, part of their deep suspicion of people flying with books.) I also gave my mother a couple of Michigan-themed coasters, heavy marble things, again, nice flat things. I had liked them when I picked them out, and liked them more as we hung out at their apartment since they seemed to need a couple more coasters. So that went well. bunny_hugger gave my father a set of tools he'd put on his wish list, easy enough. And she got a neat little portable jewelry case, neatly filling a gap we hadn't thought about her having.

And then, already, my mother was ready to get to bed. bunny_hugger and my father and I watched a Columbo episode Murder By The Book, where I think the episode missed the actual clue, phone records, that should have undone the killer's plans. Also, once again, the criminal would have been so much better off if he didn't try to force Columbo down the wrong path. It also has a bit where Columbo goes home with the murder victim's wife to make her an omelette, which is just weird. bunny_hugger briefly confused this episode with Publish Or Perish, a completely different episode with the same guy playing the murderer. And then MeTV had this show where a couple of Wizard of Oz fans showed off their collections, revealing that allegedly in the 30s there was a thing where you'd get an elephant figurine and have your friends sign it? ... One collector had such an elephant signed by The Movie's cast, which is ... all right, certainly a thing, since we can see it and all that.

This is around when my father went to bed, and we got to preparing for bed and going to sleep early, for us. We had a flight to catch.

Trivia: The earliest known recipe for chocolate ice cream was published by La Chapelle in 1735. Source: The Essence of Style: How the French Invented High Fashion, Fine Food, Chic Cafés, Style, Sophistication, and Glamour, Joan DeJean.

Currently Reading: The Broken Dice: And Other Mathematical Games Tales of Chance, Ivar Ekeland.

PS: I have more stuff to show you from Lakeside Amusement Park.

Look up! A train goes along Cyclone.

A train on Cyclone making its turnaround, on the hill, behind the Tilt-A-Whirl.

And oh, a look from a different angle at that clearly defunct ride. ... Now, what is your story, there?

After the boat tour, through the deep dark water --- tannins from the cypress needles that fall in winter --- we thanked the guide and walked around some. There's a bunch of other exhibits. A couple of parrot-class birds in a large cage. There's also a butterfly house, with many flowers and several bunches of birds inside. We ventured in and almost right away saw the plants of, and sign for, ``Mexican Heather'', which we hadn't heard of before. The sign warns, it's ``in now way related to heathers'', so there we go. It was a lovely peaceful spot, and as we went out we saw a bright yellow butterfly going past. I'm confident that it was not one from the enclosure; there just weren't any bright yellow butterflies inside. Still, weird coincidence.

There's also a small building with local animals, some of them fish, some snakes and reptiles and all that. Outside it there's a captive alligator, alleged to be the largest in captivity in the state. It was just hanging out at the side of the water, getting photographed by people who were fenced off from being all that nearby.

Then we went along one of the hiking trails. bunny_hugger had noticed on the map that there was a graveyard deep within the forests and we hadn't passed it on the boat tour. So we walked there and found, yes, a small graveyard marked off by a two-foot-high stone enclosure, with a free-standing cross maybe fifteen feet tall. There were three main gravestones, with dates reaching after the gardens were donated to Charleston, so there must have been some arrangement. Also there was a small gravestone, ``My Happy'', for something sixteen years old at the time of its 1957 death. My supposition is dog, possibly cat. And we walked back, pausing to photograph the small fake stone bridge made for filming The Patriot and kept around since, hey, free fake stone bridge.

And that was our big outing for the day. We went back to my parents' home; my mother had made macaroni and cheese and we had dinner. At home bunny_hugger and I always eat at the dinner table, an innovation I introduced because we did it that way when I was visiting her, before we married. My parents? ... Well, as is the custom in my family, the dining table was so covered in clutter that there was no eating off of it. I wouldn't fault bunny_hugger if she didn't know there was one. We just took plates to hang around the living room area.

A bit after dinner, while waiting for Jeopardy, one of my parents' friends visited. He's an author and his wife had a surplus minced meat pie and they just live in circumstances where people bring over surplus minced meat pies like that. Also like 75% of everybody they've met since moving to South Carolina, he's from New Jersey. He shared a couple quick stories about the Freehold Raceway, which I never went to because I couldn't be less interested in such, but also talked a bit about the fixing of harness races there. Which does interest me, peculiarly enough.

After all this, I go fishing around the TV channels and find they're playing a series of Planet of the Apes films on Turner Classic Movies. So we settle on that, the first time I've seen the movie in a long while. Longer, for bunny_hugger. We're both impressed by just how talky and low-action the movie is. You forget the screenplay was co-written by Rod Serling and when you learn that, you understand why so much of it is people declaiming angrily at each other. Then on to Beneath the Planet of the Apes, which bunny_hugger doesn't remember seeing at all. So when the movie gets back from being kind of boring by introducing telepathic mutants with a doomsday bomb in Saint Patrick's Cathedral? That's a surprise to her. She also was impressed by how the movie was just killing off everybody right before its end, just in time for the abrupt end of the picture.

She wanted to know how there were like eighteen sequels to the movie given how the second one ended, but it was also getting past midnight and she was far too exhausted for all this. So she just looked it up online and went to bed. I would make it through the movie, although losing focus, before I fell asleep.

Trivia: The enzyme which binds carbon dioxide into carbohydrates, as part of photosynthesis, is named Rubisco. Source: Oxygen: The Molecule that Made the World, Nick Lane.

Currently Reading: The End of Physics: The Myth of a Unified Theory, David Lindley.

PS: More things to look at in Lakeside Park.

I would legitimately try pushing a cocktail book that's just pictures of the ticket booths for Lakeside Amusement Park. Notice the Tower of Jewels in the background.

Satellite --- be a pilot!. It's one of the rides that's across the railroad tracks and near the edge of the water; you have to get to it by going over that silly little steps. Notice the column supporting nothing on the right there.

Even in the full light of day, without the neon being on, the Spider's ticket booth looks fantastic.

Something I never did, as a kid, at amusement parks: the games. I guess I never had the spare cash for games like that, and if I did I'd rather get, like, a magic kit or a giant wall-hanging park map. You know, something of lasting value. Even now it's hard for me to imagine playing the games, although I've done some. bunny_hugger has more of a history doing these things, and MWS too, and, well, that's how we got to a couple of the prize games. I'm not sure whether we played the roll-a-ball Racer game (instead of horses it's actually people in Racer roller-coaster-themed cars). Certainly MWS spent some time on the Bowler Roller, the thing with the bowling ball on a slightly inclined metal rail that you have to get to stop in the trough. He stuck it out, though, and won his prize: a plush Kennywood Arrow.

Somewhere around here we were getting dangerously hot. Except MWS, who was wearing some heat-resistant white shirt that slicked sweat away with uncanny ease. He'd encourage us all to try touching his shirt over the day, to confirm it was as cool as garments could be, and he only stopped when we did finally get the square ice cream that turns out to be more than just a local quirk, and he spilled a drop of chocolate on his chest. Still, the heat was a good reason to look for something we could do in an air-conditioned environment a while and that's why we went to the 4-D theater showing A (not The) Lego Movie. The story of that is the gang from The Lego Movie has to escape an evil amusement park they're lured to under guise of going to Lego World and fine, it's about what you expect for an amusement park 4-D experience movie. It's just weird to have your amusement park movie be about going to an evil amusement park when the characters meant to go to some other amusement park that isn't the one the movie's showing at.

We passed on the Bayern Curves ride in favor of the Grand Prix, the bumper cars I'm not sure we have been on before. And got to Sky Rocket, the roller coaster near the front of the park; we found a moment when the line for it wasn't bad at all. Somehow and I'm not sure how --- I have to go by my photos here --- we ended up split where bunny_hugger and MWS took the front seat and JTK and CVK the second seats in a car while I waited for the next train. I think there was some swapping around in lines as other groups tried to arrange their all being on the same train. bunny_hugger and I often ponder the point of that, as it's not like you can talk to other rows on a roller coaster. And here's the proof we mean it.

Anyway we went over to the Kiddieland, bunny_hugger explaining how Kennywood's was one of if not the first Kiddieland, as in a section of a park specifically gathering kids' rides together. And that four of their rides dated back to 1927(?) and the Kiddieland's opening, although one of them --- the carousel --- wasn't running just then. This is when we got and enjoyed the square ice creams that would spoil MWS's shirt. And we looked, again and again, at the Li'l Phantom.

It's the kiddie coaster, like the name and placement suggests. They've had it since 1996, although it's clearly cousin to the Li'l Thunder kiddie coaster that was the thing I could ride at Great Adventure when I was six and terrified of Rolling Thunder. bunny_hugger and I had been at the park several times, never riding it. It felt ridiculous to. But we also saw there were adults allowed on it, not accompanying children. The one constraint we supposed might be there, besides the sense that it's a little sordid to ride everything just for roller-coaster credit counts, wasn't there.

I'm not sure who pointed out, though. There were five of us adults there. There were five rows of seats. They fit one adult each. There wasn't a line. There wasn't apparently any restriction on adults riding. Why not all go together? And we did.

There's moments you know are going to be the high point of a day, maybe of a whole week or month, even as they're not even there yet. The five of us, here at Kennywood, in the early evening after a spectacularly successful Pinburgh and during a fantastically great trip to the park, riding the one roller coaster that bunny_hugger and I had never been on before here, that we knew was going to be one of those moments. I was giggling all the way along and I think this might have been the incident that inspired JTK to say ``I want to someday enjoy something as much as [Austin] enjoys everything''. (A curious echo of my own comment that I hoped to someday do something with the same intensity that our rabbit Stephen brought to chewing.) The ride operator seemed amused by us. Some people on the scenic railroad, puttering past while we were on our several circuits of the track, looked at us baffled. Maybe they thought we were riding ironically. I was in full earnest.

I can't say it's a fun ride, since like so many kiddie coasters it's a bit rough, especially on adult knees that are forced up against the lockdown bar axle. But it was fun doing, and when we were out we were all laughing and delighted and the kiddie carousel had an attendant and was running again. And at least I worked out that bunny_hugger --- who had ridden what we believed to be her 200th different roller coaster in March after the Women's World Pinball Championship --- had just ridden her 225th different roller coaster.

Trivia: Dutch records from 1610 record less-valuable tulips being sold ``by the bed'', a unit of exchange not (apparently) precisely defined. Source: Tulipomania: The Story of the World's Most Coveted Flower and the Extraordinary Passions it Aroused, Mike Dash.

Currently Reading: The Art of the English Murder: From Jack the Ripper and Sherlock Holmes to Agatha Christie and Alfred Hitchcock, Lucy Worsley. Yes, it implies a stretch of about fifty years starting 130 years ago, but it actually starts in the early 19th century and explores how murders came to be fascinating cultural artifacts.

PS: And then from our last full day a visit to a Colonial-era plantation house that's been, in structure, very well preserved from its origins and I forget just whose it was but looking it up would take effort I don't have the energy for so here. That stuff is somewhere in my archives.

Actual Colonial-era plantation for a family whose name I forget and that was in use as recently as the 1970s that's now an historical exhibit. The white gravelly spot in the lower right used to be another building, I think the guest house.

Apparently a feature of Gregorian mansions was ruthless symmetry. But the house only needed one door to the dining room, so there was a fake second doorway with brick wall behind. And vandals had damaged the fake door, supposing that the door that couldn't open and clearly lead to nothing inside the house must conceal something valuable. Good hypothesis, though.

Back hallway stairwell and a hook my father and I noticed. The guide said this was used as leverage for moving heavy stuff into and out of the house; there's a wide doorway just off to the right of the image.

I'm tired. Here's what's been on my humor blog the past week. Lot of real-life weirdness stuff going on. Enjoy!

• On This Date: November 24, If You Will and some historical silliness.
• Poking Around The Body Shop When You’re Getting Old or me trying clumsily to be whimsical.
• Statistics Saturday: 89 Most Popular Words You Can Make With Bilaterally Symmetric Letters that, as happens for these trifles, really caught people's imaginations.
• What’s Going On In Mary Worth? September – November 2017 Romance! And betrayal! And stuff.
• The Counting Thought as it's gift-receipt season.
• The Seventh Talkartoon, And The One Anyone Knows Anything About: Dizzy Dishes my second round of thinking about Betty Boop's debut.
• Minor Update on the Closing and a hardware store Christmas.
• Deflated, this week's big piece, based on how things got weird last week. Tire explosion and all that.

So now here's a whole mass of pictures from the park and from the Charles Pinckney National Historic Site that was the other big thing we got out and saw our first full day visiting early this year.

So here's the sunlit world of what man believes to be ... Reality.

And there, my father, getting his walk in while bunny_hugger and I re-hide the letterbox and I think he checked on his medical appointment. (He's reached the stage in life that's mostly about going to medical appointments.)

So do you see the alligator in this picture? Me neither, but based on how my father talks it up, point a camera in any random direction in coastal South Carolina and there's two chances in five there's an alligator in the picture somewhere. To this my mother rolls her eyes.

Main house at the Charles Pinckney National Historic Site, nearby enough to stop in and poke around a while. Pinckney you'll remember for representing South Carolina in the Constitutional Convention even though he was like 29 months old at the time, and for putting forth the Fugitive Slave Clause and the Religious Test Clause into debate.

Living room and fireplace within the Pinckney National Historic Site. Do you spot bunny_hugger and her chicken purse?

Foundations of one of the outbuildings at the Pinckney site. I think this was a guest house and that the slave houses were out back a ways.

bunny_hugger checking over the map to make sure we're on the boardwalk into what, at low tide, is a lot of tall grass. At high tide it's tall grass in the water.

Real shame when a tree explodes on you like that, huh? Well, that's nature for you.

View from some of the more feral, marshy areas back to the maintained lawn that surrounds the house proper.

Trivia: The Latin zodiac sign Pisces, the Fish, was in Sanskrit `Mina', and in the Babylonian scheme the 'Tails'. Source: Mapping Time: The Calendar and its History, EG Richards.

Currently Reading: Wonder Woman: The War Years, 1941 - 1945, Editor Roy Thomas. There are so many weird little bits of storytelling convention here. And yes, the book contains the Internet Famous panel where Wonder Woman creates a ``perfect woman's figure'' out of some cured hams and sausages. But when you put that in its full, proper context within the story: it's another weird little bit of storytelling convention. Srsly, I thought all my old-time radio listening prepped me for the kinds of shortcuts and habits of this era of dramatic and heroic adventure story but there's a lot to unpack here.

PS: Deciphering Wronski, Non-Standardly and a touch of non-standard analysis.