austin_dern

When last I reported about my lost camera and Motor City Furry Con we'd had established two important things. First, they had my camera! Second, it was in storage so who knows when they'd find the chance to recover it?

Well. I could manage going to Pinball At The Zoo without a camera and even the handful of things we got to in May without. Mostly local pinball stuff, although this might be the first time I don't have a proper ``what we compete for'' picture of the plaques at pinball night. But we are coming up on things I must have a camera for, and while yes, my iPhone is probably adequate for most purposes I want a camera that's a proper camera.

So I went looking and found a used Panasonic Lumix camera, one very close to the camera I had before my misplaced camera. And I finally have all the pieces I need for it together --- camera, memory card, battery and spare battery, charger, and the data/power cable that connects it to a computer or USB power supply! I even found that my old camera bag, the one used for the previous camera, fits this new one just fine. It lacks a strap --- I'd transferred that to my Samsung camera so that's in the Motor City Furry Con Lost And Found Storage Locker right now --- but the important thing is I can take good pictures and plenty of them. And the zoom on this doesn't --- yet --- get jammed up partway through, putting it ahead of my Samsung.

Now, of course, I just have to explain what I need to take pictures of that made me spend money on this.

We close the month now with something I bet you'd never thought you would see: the end of Kennywood pictures from our trip last year! And what comes up to follow this? Hm. There's so many possibilities ...

Oh yeah, we rented a locker for the second time ever and had to get stuff out of it. Do you see our locker number? Well, it was easy to remember since it was 1054 and I need hardly remind you what an important year that was.

Super Kaleidoscope, the charming circular-shaped building up front with the candy shop inside. It just looks good. You can make out the Old Mill's frontage in the background.

The Goodnight heart, last thing you see before entering the tunnel to leave Kennywood.

They've painted the tunnel with all kinds of Kennywood memorabilia and items, including a replica ticket from nearly a century ago and the reminder to gentlemen after using the washroom.

Looking back at the park from the parking lot.

And here's a panoramic view at the end of the night, to match the one had at the start of the day.

Trivia: The pancreas's name reflects its label as ``pan'' (all) and ``kreas'' (flesh), an organ of all flesh. The name may reflect early lack of knowledge of what it did and was simply there. Source: The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human, Siddhartha Mukherjee.

Currently Reading: The Harvey Comics Companion, Mark Arnold.

bunnyhugger, stirred up by my post last night about the tree and the risk it might present, spent too much time worrying about what to do and turned to doing something about it this afternoon. And by remarkable stroke, found something very effective: a couple guys who could come out to the house today to give an estimate, and who're scheduled to come out tomorrow afternoon to cut the fallen branch down and chop it up into useful wood. So now we're set to be even more well-stocked for when we get the fireplace converted into something not dangerously unsafe to operate.

Also we got back the clock. As promised they had it ready Wednesday; I ventured in after work, but before going to the card store to get my father a birthday card. (This spun out into also getting father's day cards, saving me a trip sometime in two weeks.) As bunnyhugger texted to ask if I was stopping for something after work I was on my way to the art glass shop. This was all but the work of a minute. I came in and both the woman and the guy who'd been in the car on Saturday telling me she'd gone back in were there. I started to explain what my deal was when the woman pointed to the counter. I was delighted, and said so, by how lovely the new glass looks. bunnyhugger observed maybe the real difference was just that it was completely new and clean. But it does look great. And now it's on the wall and everything's in good shape in this part of this room of the house! We're making progress.

And now we return to Kennywood and to the flying saucer gift shop!

And here's the 90s t-shirt. Steel Phantom was rebuilt into Phantom's Revenge; Wipeout and Pitt Fall are gone (Wipeout to Lake Compounce). I can't find any information about Fort Kennywood and wonder if it might have been a show or event or something that wouldn't make lists of former attractions.

bunnyhugger admiring the Grand Carousel by night.

The carousel all white-lit and brilliant by night.

The inside has plenty of mirrors so you get to see the insides of the horses in this picture.

Looking out from atop a horse. bunnyhugger grabs a picture of me here.

bunnyhugger goes for a ride on the tiger this time.

Trivia: E-470, the beltway toll highway around Denver, is an incomplete loop, with the northwestern corner never built owing to plutonium-239 contamination of the soil of the former Rocky Flats Plant, which operated from 1952 to 1992. Source: Land: How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World, Simon Winchester. In 1989 the FBI raided the plant, owned by the federal Department of Energy, over Rockwell International's shoddy management.

Currently Reading: The Harvey Comics Companion, Mark Arnold.

When I got home yesterday from getting some stuff from the pet store and the hardware store I had news for bunny_hugger. She'd wondered when the Joann Fabrics in our local mall would close. The answer: 55 minutes. We dithered a small bit about whether to go; would it be just depressing, or might we get something useful like really cheap Easter egg dye kits or bolts of fleece or stuff?

We got there to learn that they didn't have any fleece left. Or Easter egg kits. Or almost anything, really; they did well at keeping the store open until they ran out of stuff. All the remaining merchandise was on two small shelving units up front, and most of that was decoration letters. If you need a box of Z's, we could set you up, except that Joann's is now closed for good and all. Someone working the tiny remaining stock was urging people to buy boxes of toothpicks with lobster or shrimp cutouts atop them. We're not sure why anyone would get these at all, even if, as she observed, they won't spoil. I had the feeling this had turned into some minor silly retail obsession, waiting to see if anyone would ever take any of this.

We also wandered around the shelving and fixtures, where another employee was doing her best to find some piece of hardware we would take home with us. Apparently some of the thread spools are also a good configuration for storing Hot Wheels cars, in case you have a hundred-plus Hot Wheel cars that need storing. But we don't, nor anything close to that. Some of the pegbord-with-bin shelving seemed like it might be useful in our basement, if it weren't too big to fit in our basement.

And yet as we were leaving I noticed they had boxes full of pegboard racks, like, the metal or plastic rods that stick out and you can hang stuff on. So we got a box of that, for five bucks, and have the promise of organizing more things in our basement and garage if we ever get to that. I also, maybe foolishly, bought a couple boxes of some silicone sheets that are meant to be pressed around mugs or other ceramic things. I don't know what to do with them but have the feeling there's probably something decorative we can do. bunny_hugger sees in them mostly a thing we'll have to get rid of at some point. I suppose either will do fine.

And that was our last Joann's visit.

Now to what I hope was merely the most recent Kennywood visit, drawing as you can see nearer its close.

Almost at The Phantom's Revenge's station and this gives a view of the exit queue. (Also the entrance for people with mobility needs, like the guy in a wheelchair coming up the other way.)

Lanes to get your seat for the ride. Note there isn't that automatic gate that keeps you away until the operator decides you may approach.

That gift shop again, now seen by night. Also showing off the Small Fry's, that place where you can get the same fries as at The Potato Patch but with less of a wait. And yes, per Kennywood: Behind The Screams, it is based on the entrance to Wonderland at Revere Beach, Massachusetts. (Yes, if you looked at that link, you saw an 'Infant Incubators' building inside Wonderland. Early 20th century was weird.)

Sitting at the top of the reflecting pool in Lost Kennywood, looking out over a beautifully clear sky and the Black Widow swing ride.

Over that way's the swing ride. Oops, accidentally got a tiny bit of a view of bunny_hugger in there. Sorry, won't do that again.

And here's how the pool looks by early night.

Trivia: Charles Babbage invented a mechanical time clock in 1844. Source: Time's Pendulum: The Quest to Capture Time --- From Sundials to Atomic Clocks, Jo Ellen Barnett.

Currently Reading: The Harvey Comics Companion, Mark Arnold.

Long-memoried readers may recall a couple weeks ago I broke our atomic-clock-based wall clock, the one that uses time signals from WWV to adjust to the current time. The clock itself was and is fine, but the glass plate protecting the clock face from the elements was shattered into so many pieces. More than you're thinking of. More than that.

My father recommended that if there's a place in town that sells stained glass or art glass that they'd likely be able to cut a thin, eight-inch disc of glass. It happens there's a stained-glass/art-glass store so nearby it's even closer than the nearest convenience store. But I kept failing to actually check with them to see if they could do the work.

Today I finally got to doing something about it. But because of another errand, details of which I am not yet ready to make public, I got to the shop just before it closed. They were turning off the lights and everything, and I went back to the car but a guy waiting behind the shop said she'd gone back in, go talk to her.

So, wary that I had interrupted someone's departure-for-the-long-weekend, I entered and explained my need. Without saying a word she turned the clock upside-down, dropping yet another shard of glass out of it. Then took the clock over to a work table and did some measurements, and then back behind a counter. Finally she spoke: they can do that. She gave an estimate of about $20, extremely reasonable, and while it could have been done while I waited if I had gotten there earlier, now, I would have to wait. When could I come pick it up? Tuesday, unfortunately, I'm squeezed between office and pinball league, so we have to wait for Wednesday for the clock's return. (They're closed Monday for the holiday.) But they're going to cut a fresh piece of glass and install it and that seems to be everything we could hope for. Now I just have to stop instinctively looking for the time on the kitchen wall, the one surface in the house where it will definitely not be.

You know where we definitely were, back in July last year? Kennywood. Here's photographic proof.

Jack Rabbit dispatched and making its way to the first drop, which thanks to the terrain-hugging track, is well before the lift hill.

And there's the station. They've got LEDs providing the light of the stars now but at least preserved the shape and color of the neon.

Jack Rabbit's centennial logo, with the nice long ears for the K.

The new National Historic District sign doesn't have that post-facto correction about when the coaster opened on it. For what it's worth the Roller Coaster Database does think Jack Rabbit's double-dip ``camelback loop'' is a unique feature although ... boy, it sure seems like 'two hills in a row' would be an obvious feature for any terrain coaster.

View from just outside Jack Rabbit of the Racer and, above it, the Steel Curtain scenery.

Racer's new National Historic District sign has been modified to reflect the loss of Montaña Rusa at La Feria Chapultepec. And avoids any allusion to Blackwood's Grand National.

Trivia: In France in 1907 Wilbur Wright --- maybe souring from the bad progress of contract talks --- wrote his sister Katherine that the Notre Dame cathedral ``was rather disappointing as most sights are to me. The nave is seemingly not much wider than a store room and the windows of the clerestory are so awfully high up that the building is very dark'', and after visiting the Louvre, judged ``the Mona Lisa is no better than the prints in black and white''. Source: First Flight: The Wright Brothers and the Invention of the Airplane, T A Heppenheimer.

Currently Reading: The Harvey Comics Companion, Mark Arnold.

My humor blog this week started with the silly, turned incomprehensible to people who don't know that I read something about Heroic Comics for a trivia item last week, went back to being So Random, and then took a turn into Peanuts news. So here's what you've been missing:

• MiSTed: The 72 Hours Saga, Part 40
• Now the Weather Is Trying to Get Us in Trouble With the Neighbors
• Statistics Saturday: Stories of Kids Saved From Drowning In _Heroic Comics_ of 1951
• Also You'd Think They Already Do Plenty of Sit-Ups
• Or That People Would Have Generally More Hair
• What's Going On In Prince Valiant? Does Prince Valiant have a sister? February - May 2025
• It Seems Another Musical Is Upon Us, Charlie Brown
• MiSTed: The 72 Hours Saga, Part 41

And now for more Kennywood, as of last July:

For this year they rethemed the Grand Prix bumper-car ride to ... the Potato Patch. I don't know why the cars are now fry baskets but there we go.

The far side of the wall is full of Kennywood materials, including a Lincoln Highway sign (the Lincoln Highway goes along a part of a British military trail used in the French and Indian War) and a jackrabbit crossing sign.

Kennywood and sister park arrows. The weight limit refers to the date of Kennywood's opening.

The Turtle gets a shout-out here, as does Potato Patch mascot Potato Man. I'm not sure the significance of the blobby traffic signal. Probably references some Kennywood thing I'm not hep to, like the Thomas the Tank Engine section (since rethemed).

Slightly better view of the fry-basket cars and somehow a more in-focus picture of the back wall.

And now the Kangaroo, last of the flying-coaster flat rides, with the car behind number five there showing why it's a flying-coaster.

It's not a big hop but it is a heck of one and you don't have other rides like it.

Picture of the car after landing back on the track.

Here's the new Kangaroo facade seen from behind.

Now over to The Whip, a ride nearly(?) a century old now, although not in this location.

The Whip is on the left, and that's the Pittsburg [sic] Plunge shoot-the-chutes to the right and above. And hey, what's the line for Exterminator like? If it's a reasonable wait we might just go in and enjoy ---

Oh, it's a 76-minute wait for the spinning wild mouse coaster. Never mind.

Trivia: 86 percent of French people [ as of about 2005 ] have never flown in an airplane. Source: The Discovery of France: A Historical Geography, Graham Robb. The book was published in 2007 so the data is likely accurate to two-to-four years before that.

Currently Reading: The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore, Evan Friss.

Saturday afternoon, after ERR's Celebration of Life, was also a women's pinball tournament, which was about three hours or so, and saw me put back in the commentator's booth to natter about pinball or whatever came into mind. But that wasn't especially burdensome apart from sometimes it'd be nice to just go play pinball for three hours uninterrupted. I have the chance to do this most every evening and never take it, though.

Sunday morning saw our other big social obligation for the weekend. PCL, the most enthusiastic member of the league --- and the one who's set up the streaming rig for pinball events --- wanted to hold an end-of-season pinball party. He suggested a couple dates which all made sense, except ... a weekend bunnyhugger and I would be out of town. Another weekend we'd be out of town. Memorial Day weekend when everyone might be out of town. Finally this past Sunday, after league finals but before the end-of-season zen (split-flipper) tournament, was the pick.

He had it at his and his wife's house, the one we visited a couple months ago. He particularly wanted to show off his pizza oven, some portable porch thing that heats up to like a billion degrees and will cook the pizza in a minute or less so don't stop turning it. Also to show off his new King Kong pinball machine, companion to the Godzilla game he got a few months ago, and got delivered just last Monday.

It was a pretty good party, with a healthy number of league people attending. Including, in a surprise, SCS, one of our old pinball friends from Grand Rapids. He'd had a birthday party the day before that we couldn't make, but he said that was fine, especially as something like fifty people did. And despite that he had several boxes of leftover cupcakes to give; we had some with coffee break today.

Part of the event was actually rolling out and making your own pizzas, although even with as many people who were there there was more pizza to eat than there was time or stomach available. bunnyhugger ended up making a simple margherita-style pizza we took home. FAE and MAG were among the people who leapt at the chance to roll out their own dough and make pies as well, and they looked like pretty good ones.

As to pinball. PCL tried holding a closest-to-the-pin tournament on Godzilla, seeing who could get nearest to a given score (their house number, times a thousand) without going over. As seems to always happen at these someone (PCL) got amazingly close, within a couple tens of thousands, on a game like this so close it seems impossible to do better. And then MWS went and did better.

The most astounding thing of the day was when MAG and FAE, playing King Kong split-flipper, didn't just have a great game, but had a game so good they set the Grand Champion score. Luckily, PCL has his game set to accept up to ten-character high score entries. Unluckily, FAE made a typo while entering their team name and now it stands there, MAG AN. Happens to us all.

When we arrived we weren't sure how long the event would run or how long we should stay even given that. We ended up spending about six hours there, and don't regret it, except that it was a lot of time this weekend doing stuff out and with other people, and it's weird to have the start of the workweek be the break.

But now we get to another century-plus-old-ride at Kennywood. Know what it is?

This is not the wishing well, despite the stones much like the well was made of and the water much like you find in a well. This is an artificial waterfall that's part of the facade of the Old Mill, the tunnel-of-love ride.

Despite it being a quite hot, sunny day the line for the ride was ... not ridiculously long, really, and we went for it.

The Old Mill's National Historic District sign now reflects past names including Panama Canal, Fairyland Floats, and Garfield's Nightmare incarnations.

Thinking it over I'm not sure there's any part of the ride where you see the water wheel in full or doing work or anything. It's just an obscured prop.

Boats ready for the loading. They've got good capacity so if people didn't mind sharing boats you could get a lot of people on the ride at once.

And here we are ready to take the ride. (Which I didn't attempt to photograph; it's dark and we're always moving not-quite-smoothly.) Sky Rocket is the coaster in back; more on that to come.

Trivia: The handbill, The Vertue of the Coffee Drink, promoting the opening of London's first coffee house in 1652 explained coffee's medical benefits, claiming it to be effective against sore eyes, headache, coughs, dropsy, gout, scurvy, and to prevent ``Mis-carryings in Child-bearing Women''. It also noted that it would ``prevent Drowsiness, and make one fit for business, if one have occasion to Watch'' and warned ``you are not to Drink of it after Supper, unless you intend to be watchful, for it will hinder sleep for 3 or 4 hours''. Source: A History of the World in Six Glasses, Tom Standage.

Currently Reading: The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore, Evan Friss. It's (so far) a chapter each on the history of particularly key bookstores so there's a lot of detail about neurospicy people.

Back to finals, B Division. After the mishap on The Beatles and her 2-1 win over DJN bunnyhugger's next opponent was BJ, the last other player not to have lost a best-of-three match. Whatever happened both would take home at least the third-place trophy. bunnyhugger had pick of the first game, and chose Attack From Mars, and won. BJ had pick of the second game, and chose Stranger Things, which has pretty near the same layout and a very similar basic ruleset, to the point FAE accurately dubbed it ``Vaporwave Attack From Mars''. bunnyhugger won that game too, and came back to the scoring table --- where I, having no other pinball to play, was now routing traffic --- and misunderstood the standings online to think she had won the B Division.

Not yet. She had to beat whoever won the Second Chance bracket, and it was still possible she'd lose that round. But she could not do worse than second place, now. This involved some waiting. Lansing Pinball League has always had the Second Chance Bracket be best-of-three play; most other leagues use a single game. The result is there's always a delay for finals. Second Chance can't have a winner until the Winners Bracket has completed semifinals, and then has to play a best-of-three match.

Beating everyone else in the Second Chance Bracket was DJN, who'd been beaten by bunnyhugger earlier. DJN picked Foo Fighters, a potentially long-playing game, and won that. BJ picked Star Wars, very prone to being a long-playing game, and won that. DJN now picked Pulp Fiction, the retro-80s-style game, and won that, giving BJ a third-place B Division finish, and earning the right to take on bunnyhugger for finals.

If bunnyhugger won, the tournament was done, as DJN would have lost his second best-of-three match. If DJN won, they'd go on to a second best-of-three match. So he had to beat bunnyhugger in four games of the next six. Formidable.

bunnyhugger had pick of the first game, and finally used her chance to play Dungeons and Dragons, winning with --- I think she told me --- one of her best Town Celebration Multiballs ever. Then it was DJN's pick and he chose Deadpool, ordinarily a game bunnyhugger plays only under protest. But this time, Deadpool liked her better, and she swept DJN in this, finals for the B Division. She would be taking home yet another first-place division trophy.

This all wrapped up, of course, well before the A Division finished. I think it even wrapped up before the side tournament happened. It was about midnight when DMC finally beat RED, two games to one, to get into finals, and when FAE beat RED two games to one to win the Second Chance Bracket. At bunnyhugger's urging I went home to sleep, as I had to be up at 7 to be in to the office at 8 am. Already the bar staff was turning off games, as it was looking like a slow night and they'd want to be ready to close as soon as possible. (RED assured bunnyhugger it was fine to turn on games as they were needed, and yes, the staff was fine with that).

So here I leave behind the events that I witnessed, and move into hearsay from bunnyhugger. The event she most feared as that these two titans would play so long that the bar would close under them, foiling the entire point of restricting the A Division to eight players. They could manage it easily; if they split the wins right they could need to play six games and two hours is not really enough time for that. As it happened the first round was a 2-0 sweep, the shortest it could be. The catch is, it's FAE who won both Foo Fighters (a long-tending game) and John Wick (not generally, but a good player will spin it out a long while). If DMC had won the night would be over. Now, with FAE and DMC both having lost one best-of-three round they had to play one more, winner takes first.

And here DMC picked out the game bunnyhugger most dreaded coming into play: James Bond 007. If I can make a match on that game take 50 minutes imagine what two plausible candidates for state champion can do. But it didn't come out quite so long as that. And DMC won. FAE made a bold pick for the next game, Medieval Madness. Any good player can play this forever, but the best players never touch the game anymore because they know it inside out. And here ... again, DMC won, with some flourishes such as starting the rare four-ball Multiball Madness.

This all finished around 1:30 am, so there's a chance they missed Last Call. When I got home from the office bunnyhugger quizzed me on what I imagined happened and I was right in the main, with my biggest miss being I supposed DMC had picked Rush, a game he can play for longer than a Rush album. (In fact, DMC had picked Rush much earlier in the night, securing a win against JAB.) The important things, though, are that we got a winner and it didn't require stopping the match and picking up again sometime later.

Still, Saturday I did quip to someone that league finals just ended ``25 minutes ago'', and was believed until bunnyhugger explained I was just doing that thing again. Well, it could have happened if the bar opened early enough on Saturday.

You know what was open a much earlier Saturday, back in July? The Noah's Ark ride at Kennywood. Want to see how that developed from yesterday's pictures? Look on ...

Huh. Wonder what a silhouette of animals leaving the Ark signifies in the Noah's Ark ride.

Oh. We're done and back outside again.

The new National Historic District sign for the Noah's Ark. The previous one didn't reflect Blackpool Pleasure Beach closing their Noah's Ark ride in favor of security theatrics.

The Lucky Stand, unexplained survivor of the 1930s, did not have its National Historic District sign replaced, which I choose to believe is a sly joke on the park's part.

What do you get to if you're going from the Noah's Ark past the Lucky Stand? Why, the Turtle, of course.

The new National Historic District sign also reflects the loss of the other operating Tumble Bug. It's a little weird there isn't a modern version of the ride being made, unless the Tilt-a-Whirl is meant to take its place for rotary motion on hills.

Trivia: In the fall of 1818, the United States Treasury ordered the Bank of the United States to deliver three million dollars in gold to the French government, as payment towards the principal on the Louisiana Purchase (as specified by the 1803 purchase agreements). At the time the Bank had total specie of about two million dollars, and had to turn to the London credit markets for the remainder. Source: Wedding of the Waters: The Erie Canal and the Making of a Great Nation, Peter L Bernstein. The Bank would go on to demand hard money from its creditors, resulting in, among other things, the Panic of 1819, the United States's first home-grown depression.

Currently Reading: Miscellaneous comic books.

Have to interrupt narrative for breaking news. Last night we got some major, major storms in. Like, Motor City Furry Con weather. Severe storms were forecast for the night but the forecast kept getting bigger and more threatening as the weather approached.

About an hour before the storms were due bunnyhugger, worried about hail, asked my help in putting fleece blankets over her car. Cover is the way to minimize hail damage, after all, and while we lack a proper car cover or even enough of the heavy moving blankets that are ideal, the fleece we have for rabbit run areas would be better than nothing and probably adequate for pea-sized hail. While outside putting this on bunnyhugger worried what the neighbors would think and I assured her, they aren't looking and they don't care.

Later, the forecasts were for worse weather and hail maybe up to baseball size, and a couple bits of fleece won't help with that. What they might do is wick rainwater into her car interior, since they were pinched in the doorframe to tie them to the car. And that would lead to a mildew smell from the next forever. So, assuring bunnyhugger that it was dark and the neighbors would not see that we were undoing the work we had just done, we went back out to take the fleece off and discovered the neighbors had draped blankets over their better car too. I said ``This is going to start the weirdest feud with the neighbors.''

Still there was the question how to protect bunnyhugger's car. (I decided to just risk it, for my car, although I would park it way up in what I guessed would be the lee of the house.) She quipped about taking it to the vaguely creepy self-serve car wash to leave it under the overhang through the weather. I offered the Lansing Center, the convention center downtown with a large basement-level covered garage, where we always park for Silver Bells. After reassuring her I was in earnest, we went there, where her Insight and one cute sportscar were sitting out the storm, and drove back as the first raindrops were falling.

Then inside we got back to watching the weather, and the first cracks of lightning coming in. Also texts from JTK in Grand Rapids. About 11:30 the Emergency Alert System kicked in, including alarming my phone, with the word that we had a tornado warning and should shelter in the basement. bunnyhugger picked up Crystal's whole cage and moved the mouse downstairs to sit on the washing machine. I grabbed Athena from her cage and put her in the pet carrier where she sulked about what nonsense was this. After yanking out all the plugs of our electronics, including the RunDMD pinball clock, we sat in the basement watching weather maps and then the channel 6 live stream (their weather equipment was struggling to come back online after problems), and listened to lots of thunder and what might have been the tornado sirens never ending? Not sure.

But by a little past midnight things had settled down. We waited for the 12:15 expiration of the alarm anyway, and resolved to get some second chair that we could keep in the basement that would be okay enough. (bunnyhugger sat on a small stepstool.)

And with the promise of not much more happening I offered to drive bunnyhugger back to pick up her car, and this seemed better or at least cheaper than waiting until morning for it. (Even after midnight they charge $2 an hour.) This was ... not too bad going out. Lot of fallen branches, lot of trash bins knocked over, but we didn't pass anything too catastrophic. On the way back, a slightly different path because of the one-way street grid, we went past one blacked-out traffic light. And saw some pretty substantial-looking hail in the street, justifying bunnyhugger's caution even if it missed us by as much as three-quarters of a mile.

There was a lot of storm damage around town, not just the hail. Flipped 18-wheelers and a collapsed building on the westside. Trees falling through roofs, including one on a street nearby us. Possible tornadoes. Local weather people saying ``tornadic activity'' which I guess is a word but it sure sounds like it shouldn't be? Lot of power outages. I assume the only reason bunnyhugger's parents haven't called to tell us they're okay is because their power is once again out and they're cell-phone-averse. But, no significant harm to us, apart from shorting my night's sleep a bit. Once again we've turned out lucky through all of this.

That said, let's enjoy a little more Kennywood photography. No storms, just sun and heat this time around.

First room inside the Noah's Ark is a bunch of supplies, everything you need to survive forty days and nights of rain, like potatoes and wine and cats. Another bin offers 'skunks' and invites you to smell it.

Tried my hand at photographing some of the darker showcases despite the boat rocking. So here's one of those river attractions. I can't make out what the feature is.

You get a brief moment outside, so here's a look at the whale and the queue and the top of that ice cream stand that's not there anymore.

Back inside here now. You can see a bunch of rabbits, Noah's Wife, and Dr Zaius.

And here's some kangaroos. Not Kenny, probably.

Hmm, well, this sign looks inviting. Wonder what might be there? The answer should come tomorrow!

Trivia: Famous Funnies' Heroic Comics adapted the story of 13-year-old Lansing resident Hugh Decker's rescue of his seven-year-old brother Theodore from the Grand River. Source: The Bicentennial History of Ingham County, Michigan, Ford Stevens Ceasar. I must note that I can't find this issue in Heroic Comics, though it's possible they published it under a fake name. There's a lot of stories of rescuing kids from rivers there. Like, the September 1950 issue has stories of kids rescuing another from the Gooden Creek in Vassar, Michigan, which turns out to be a place that exists, and the Aberjona River in Aberdeen, Massachusetts, and at least three stories of grabbing kids out of frozen rivers or ponds. There is a story in the May 1951 issue of a kid saving his brother Teddy on the Grand River (Adrift In A Rowboat, page 45), but the other names are different.

Currently Reading: Miscellaneous comic books.

Three weeks ago the 22nd season of the Lansing Pinball League had its eighth and final regular-season meeting. Yesterday being the second Tuesday in May it was time for finals. This season the top, A, division was shrunk from its ``half of all eligible members'' to ``eight people'' in the hope of having finals that could wrap up by the time the bar closed at 2 am. One consequence: while I finished in A again, I was one of the two weak links. Not much hope of advancement, unless I got lucky and some of the real power players had bad nights. But that does happen, so, while I was up against FAE in the right round of the double-elimination tournament, it wasn't absurd to think I could win.

In fact, the first game --- The Addams Family --- bode well for the night. FAE put up a major lead on the second ball, managing to get the high-scoring modes of Hit Cousin Itt and The Mamushka going simultaneously, as well as getting some nice extra five-million-point shots on the Swamp and Thing and such. But my second ball I managed to get a good rhythm going of shoot the ramp, start a mode, and even collected a big points payout in Fester's Tunnel Hunt, a mode I never do anything with. In the end I caught up to FAE, on the bonus of my last ball, and took a surprise-to-me win. Good start for the night.

As loser of the first match FAE got to pick the next game, and chose The Beatles, which you'd think would be a gift to me. It's one of my favorite games and I'm one of the few who regularly plays it. I can almost anytime put up two to three million points, often enough to win a head-to-head match. Except. The Beatles was also the side tournament game that I played before finals started, in a group with FAE, and they'd seen something horrible: I didn't have it today. Sometimes you just don't have the timing right on a game, and I did not have The Beatles right, at least not soon enough, and played a lousy game in the side tournament. I would do the same here, putting up a better game but still not breaking two million, not enough to win.

So my pick of third, tiebreaking game. I'd been thinking of Cactus Canyon, but chose instead Metallica, a game that usually treats me well. Based on FAE's first two balls, I made a good choice as they were not doing very well getting a game together. Unfortunately, neither was I; it took me to the third ball to get the Sparky Multiball going, and that's usually something I can get ball one. When I finished there was still a slender hope that FAE might have a poor ball, but they didn't, and they won and knocked me into the Loser Second Chance Bracket.

After a while I got my first opponent in the Second Chance Bracket: BMK, who by the way is one of the 700 highest-ranked players worldwide, these days. BMK chose The Simpsons Pinball Party, which left me feeling pretty good; this is another game that I often do well on. I'd need luck on my side, but not outrageous fortune. BMK broke six million points on the first ball, while I didn't get more than a half-million, but that's not an insurmountable difference. No; insurmountable is the 35 million points he put up on the second ball, and topped on ball three with another twenty million. It would require the best ball I had ever had, better even than the killer game I had on The Simpsons at Pinburgh in 2017, to catch up. But I put up that killer game on The Simpsons on a Pinburgh-grade tournament and Lansing Pinball League has much more forgiving tables. Well, I managed to beat the replay score, at least, but didn't come near BMK's finish.

So my pick, and I needed something I could win on. Or at least would have fun playing on. I picked James Bond, maybe the only modern Stern Pinball game that I can seriously compete with the likes of BMK on; somehow, I just know it. Except this time around I seemed unable to even make the skill shot, putting up ten million points in two balls while BMK got to around 350 million.

And with one ball to save myself from elimination, and the need to do four things --- start a Villain mode, start Jetpack Multiball, start Bird One Multiball, and then start the James Bond 007 mini-wizard mode --- what else was there to do but not lose the ball? (The mini-wizard mode also requires starting a Henchman mode, but I had managed that, and fortunately it doesn't require finishing the mode.) And the funny thing is, I managed it. Got a Villain going, brought Jetpack Multiball into that. Got a Q Mission going, which isn't necessary but can give you a bunch of points. Got the Bird One Multiball going. Along the way sometimes I got playfield multipliers going and turned the points I was earning into double or triple what it would have been. I had a lousy James Bond 007 mini-wizard mode but, you know? That didn't matter. I put up over a half-billion points that ball, and got a 200 million point lead on BMK that he'd have to make up on one ball. Not bad.

Well, dear reader, he did it. The clutch performance that got me a half-billion points was a good one, and let me salvage some pride out of my night's performance. But I was knocked out of the tournament, first one in A Division, and would finish in the bottom of the bracket. Some seasons are like that.

Here's a different season --- last summer --- and some more Kennywood pictures, from the old owners.

As a Saturday in late July it was busy at Kennywood and here's how busy: the carousel queue ran past a full ride cycle. Those grand carousels have enormous ride capacity --- a typical one can fit something like 496 people at once --- so when you have more people than can fit on at once you've got a lot of people in the park.

Tracking shot of the tiger in motion. Despite this being a very bright noontime picture there's some effective blur.

And here we are getting ready to ride the carousel or, as you see while on the ride, views of lots of rear ends.

Or you can get side-eyed by the horse looking back at you and totally not judging you.

Nice look back at one of the horses. Note the face in the breastplate there.

And a more usual side view of the animals.

Trivia: A letter from Pope Leo X to the English court, in 1514, appealing for astronomers or theologians to advise on calendare reform, included the lamentation that ``Jews and heretics'' were laughing at the flawed Christian calendar. No reply from the English monarchy is recorded, and Leo sent three more letters on the topic which are archived. Source: The Calendar: The 5000-Year Struggle to Align the Clock with the Heavens --- And What Happened to the Missing Ten Days, David Ewing Duncan.

Currently Reading: The Greatest Invention: A History of the World in Nine Mysterious Scripts, Silvia Ferrara.

Yesterday, as Mother's Day, we spent with the nearest available mother, bunnyhugger's. Not to worry, I did call my mother in some spare time and learn that the church she volunteers for and kind of runs has only got temporary pictures of the new Pope up. They hope to have the official pictures soon. Also she's making progress in her bridge ranking and needs only a few more Masters Points and Silver Points to reach the next level, with the twist being that Silver Points are only available at a couple select events, which fortunately are coming up this month.

But to the parents we were with. bunnyhugger's mother insisted on making dinner, grilled cheese, and while I'd rather she didn't go to that work on a day in principle celebrating her, I also like the grilled cheeses she makes. She's good at getting the cheese melted in a way I'm not. And her father, after interrogating me about whether I'd ever read Modesty Blaise --- having forgotten that he gave me two collections of Modesty Blaise books --- disappeared into the other room a minute and then gave me a third.

He also, on hearing again that we have a spring-based kitchen scale that can measure in either grams or ounces, offered a counter-balance scale that he took out and explained he had just found it recently while looking for something else. He also discovered, from looking at pictures of eBay sellers, that the scale was missing a leg, so while we were out walking the dog, he constructed a replacement out of popsicle sticks or something. And then, after that, decided he didn't like that and made a new set. I reflected how we were probably fortunate that he didn't have a 3D printer.

After dinner bunnyhugger got out the new campaign roleplaying game, from the designer of Mice and Mystics. This is Aftermath, animals working on a colony and their own side projects in a world where all humans have mysteriously vanished, within the lifetime of a guinea pig. The catch is that the designer of Mice and Mystics has not the slightest idea how to explain his rules. The always slow parts of playing your first couple rounds were even slower and more confusing than should have been. Not helping matters is that, for example, some of the cards you're dealt have a little shield on them, and the more defensive characters have a symbol on their character card with a little shield on them. So how do you defend against an attack? Is it based on what shields you have and can put together? No, it is not! And there's other little ``do you know how to communicate with people?'' design issues, for example that the symbol for ``range'' for ranged weapons means different things for players and enemies.

After a couple go-rounds and some false starts we were getting the bugs worked out and almost had our first encounter done. But also by that time bunnyhugger's mother was anxious that we get going lest I get to bed too late for work in the morning (I got to bed on time) and her father was anxious lest we not eat overly large slices of key lime pie. So we ended up ditching the session, I'm confident one round of play before beating at least the first page. Hopefully we'll get it together for next time we play.

And that was our Mother's Day.

New event on the photo roll. What's the next thing we did? You'll get a strong hint from the establishing shot here ...

As the picture of bunnyhugger putting on sunscreen tells you, it's an amusement park trip! But what amusement park is there even in frame, much less one that has an escalator at the parking lot?

There it is, well down the valley: Kennywood! Phantom's Revenge is the tall coaster on the left; Steel Curtain, the non-operational roller coaster on the right.

And yes, I tried doing a panorama of the valley from our position in the second level of parking lot.

We didn't remember the escalator to the parking lot. Turns out no, they replaced the ski lift --- which we never saw operating but which was, in principle, a Kennywood ride you didn't need to enter the park to take --- after 2019.

Did I mention it was a Saturday and those are always busy days at amusement parks? Because it was a Saturday and that's always a busy day at amusement parks.

There's the carousel sculpture that's been the signature element of the entrance of Kennywood's chain's amusement parks --- as of when this photo was taken. Since then, the Kennywood chain was bought up by Dollywood's owners, so who knows how things have changed?

Trivia: Jack Pepper (1902 - 1979) was a juvenile comedian who worked vaudeville as a fresh-faced college boy singing a falsetto ``St Louis Blues''. He worked in movies starting in 1929 (Metro Movietone Ruvue #4) and continuing through the 1970s in minor parts. He also had bit roles in seven of the Hope-Crosby-Lamour ``Road'' pictures. Source: The Encyclopedia of Vaudeville, Anthony Slide.

Currently Reading: The Greatest Invention: A History of the World in Nine Mysterious Scripts, Silvia Ferrara.