austin_dern

We have enough hay for a while. We'd had enough already, as we got fifty pounds --- something like a cubic yard --- delivered last year and while Roger and then Athena eat hay tolerably well, they don't eat it that well. And of course in the gap between Roger and Athena nobody had any hay.

Well, turns out that bunnyhugger knows a way to get hay rather cheaper, and that's to have it on a subscription plan. The longest time between deliveries is eight months for some reason, not twelve, and turns out when they were verifying whether we were ready for another delivery she missed the e-mail to postpone this one. So yesterday morning someone dropped off another fifty pounds of hay, and we've now got something like eighty pounds of hay in the basement.

Going to really count on Athena to step up her hay-eating especially if she's going to carry on not caring for pellets.

Now to some more of Kings Island pictures from the couple hours we spent there Thursday.

The horse with that PTC shield from yesterday. Plausibly a lead horse given that it's right behind the chariot.

I don't know who the JP of these initials are. It's possibly some reference to something else in the park, the way the Adventure Express signs reference current and past exhibits.

Cherubs on the chariot, carved with all the baby fat.

Here's one of the scenic panels above the carousel. I don't know if the Christmas tree scene is authentic to the carousel's origins or was a completely fanciful creation.

Last ride! We had overlooked the Backlot Stunt Coaster, despite it plunging out from its sign like this. So we made good on that.

Operator's station for Backlot Stunt Coaster, with a nice view of the control panel. It's not the most complicated of panels.

The ride's theme is that you're doing a race around a movie lot so here's the backlot version of the Los Angeles River.

Made it to the gift shop, as we'd hoped. The 16-bit Coasters Shirt was nice, and different to the one MWS has --- he got his the year Mystic Timbers debuted --- but we didn't need that this time. The photo book about Kings Island seemed nice too but not compelling to me.

Oh, and while we were walking out we encountered a couple enormous bees on the flowers. Not the little ones that occupied that drink stand at the Eiffel Tower but your classic bee the size of a softball, like this.

bunnyhugger gets her own macro photo of the bee.

And as promised, we leave the park early in the day. Note that WindSeeker wasn't out of operation even more than a couple hours after getting stopped with me aboard.

And a last look at the entry gate, which still has its classic 70s design. And the promise of the new family coaster, Snoopy's Box Car Racers.

Trivia: At the start of the Battle of Britain the British government asked phosphorous manufacturers Albright & Wilson to make a quarter million Molotov cocktails a week, using any bottles at hand, for defense against a Nazi invasion. The firm commandeered screw-top beer and milk bottle production, creating a national shortage. Source: The 13th Element: The Sordid Tale of Murder, Fire, and Phosphorus, John Emsley.

Currently Reading: One Heartbeat Away: Presidential Disability and Succession, Birch Bayh.

Second game of March Hare Madness finals. This was Stern's Kiss, a game I'm unaccountably fond of and that treats me well most of the time. FAE blew the game up, getting over a hundred million points, outstanding even for me. bunnyhugger had an okay game on this, using her second ball to start Demon Multiball --- the three-ball multiball you get form shooting Gene Simmons's head a whole bunch --- with Detroit Rock City and ended up with a respectable 27 million points. Everyone besides FAE finished at or below 28 million, so that when she started the third ball she had to do at least a little something to come in second. While her ball ended too fast, she did hit enough, and get an impressive four million points bonus, giving her second place.

So this time around, FAE finished in first, bunnyhugger in second, DMC in third and DG in last place. Which, if you have a long-term memory, you remember as the exact opposite of everyone's placement the first round. And if you have an even longer-term memory you remember this hitting bunnyhugger during playoffs at an RLM tournament a couple weeks ago. Everyone had either four or three points going in to the last game, Godzilla, which was the one of this set that DMC really wanted to play. Whoever took first place on this game would take first place in the tournament. It wasn't quite guaranteed that whatever their order last game was would be the order of the tournament finish, but it was leaning that way. And, remember, the cards were still in play. Shenanigans like what happened on Getaway, where two cards for swapping positions were played --- leaving the effect that three players rotated their positions --- were still in effect.

And yes, after ball one --- uncharacteristically weak for everyone, DMC included --- someone played the card to restart the game from scratch. DMC had a weak first ball the second time around too, weird enough you might wonder if he was demoralized. FAE had almost as bad a ball, as did DG, and bunnyhugger with a meager ten million points was ahead at the start.

It didn't last; DG played a card letting him swipe someone else's ball so she had to work from his lousy score. And DMC, maybe finally riled up, put up 100 million points or so. It wouldn't be surprising for anyone to catch up with that, though. Everyone else finished ball two at ten to twenty million points, and nobody played any cards to steal another's game at this point. Also nobody played the card that makes you stop right this second (getting a compensation ball as consolation). Still, DMC finished his third and last ball at about 130 million, solid but not unbeatable on one ball.

And indeed, FAE, pulling a Kaiju Battle into Godzilla Multiball ... did not beat that. Got up to almost 90 million points, so was within striking distance of taking first place, but not quite there. bunnyhugger got a bad bounce off of the Building that center-drained, leaving her --- never having recovered from DG stealing her first ball and the Kaiju Battle ready to go from it --- in fourth place. And while DG played a decent number of combos and made progress on starting multiball, he flopped at about 40 million points and third place.

The night before the tournament bunnyhugger cursed herself that, after making the first three trophies, she had a fourth she had yet to do. But she doesn't feel right giving out only three trophies when there's to be a four-player finals and, she told me now, she had a premonition that she'd be taking home the fourth-place trophy for the second year in a row. She'd made it using the only rabbit figure left over, a small hare in resin that we'd gotten a couple years ago but not used for a trophy, and which had been hanging around our home as a tchotchke. She resigned herself to losing that by reminding herself being a trophy topper was why we ever had it, and, have to admit, I felt a little relief that it was coming back home with us.

Fourth place advanced bunnyhugger a little bit in the rankings for women's state championship (open); not enough to get her above the top-eight cut, but enough to lift her above the person who's (at the moment of writing this) in 11th place. Third place --- taking DG's position --- wouldn't have got her above the cut either, although DMC's first place would have. And there's more open tournaments to come. Pinball At The Zoo is next month and is everyone's chance to upset everything.

I tried to close off my pinball-stream commentary by saying that for the CBS radio network I was Ray Goulding reminding you to hang by your thumbs, and turned to PCL saying he was ... not aware we were going to be making up names for this. I told Chat (nobody was chatting) to tell PCL who Bob and Ray were, and also for Chat to look up who Bob and Ray were. I know I got the line wrong but I also figured nobody was going to call me on it.

We got home past midnight, needing to eat quickly and pass out.

Back now to the Kings Island postscript to our trip.

Banshee was closed as expected. Here's the start of the hilariously long queue to The Bat, made in a fashion that can only be described as ``Roller Coaster Tycoon player getting the hang of the queue system''.

Here's the path going down the hill and leading over to the launch station.

And here we are looking up at the braking run; the station's up those stairs in the foreground on the left.

Noticed underneath they had not just a boom but an Ultra Boom.

And here's The Bat doing that swinging that makes suspended coasters like it and Cedar Point's Iron Dragon and Chessington's Vampire and Canada's Wonderland's Vortex so much fun.

And here's a good look at the track above The Bat's train, and how it's held on tight and there's little bags to scoop any grease or whatever that might be squeezed off the track by the wheels.

Trivia: After local Boston radio, Bob and Ray appeared on NBC, then ABC, then Mutual, then CBS, then NBC's Monitor, and finally on NPR, a circuit of all network radio Source: On The Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio, John Dunning.

Currently Reading: Seriously Curious: The Facts and Figures That Turn Our World Upside-Down, Editor Tom Standage.

Finals. bunnyhugger had drawn up three banks for the March Hare Madness finals, so that the top seed --- DMC --- could pick a slate of games, not just three that he could blow up that would go on forever. He picked the bank with Godzilla, which we should have expected, and other people picking what order to go in made the mistake of forcing him to go first, so that he couldn't have a walk-off last ball on that game. Meanwhile PCL and I set up in the ``booth'', the long table upstairs, with a couple laptops and camera setup to do commentary for the live stream. This time we had headphones with microphones poking out, so between that and my trying to enunciate better I could be heard nattering away, my voice sounding like a nonspecific Muppet. (Boy, remember when Nonspecific Muppet's first EP came out and it was all anyone played that summer?)

The streaming gear was inviting enough that a couple guys came over and asked if we were doing a podcast. I was content to allow it as yeah, might as well be a podcast, but PCL explained it in enthusiastic detail. They asked what our subject was and weren't satisfied that we were talking about the pinball game --- Getaway, a very short game to balance the long-playing Godzilla --- going on maybe fifteen feet away. They suggested talking about relationships or mushrooms or who would win, Godzilla or King Kong. They stuck around only a few minutes, bestowing the advice to ``stay positive'', and looked like they were having fun.

While they were visiting we were distracted trying to follow the actual game --- we were also suffering lagbursts not on the recorded stream --- and missed bunnyhugger trying to use the strategy she'd deployed well in Grand Rapids, of letting the ball save build progress on Getaway. The first deliberate drain worked perfectly, but the second one the game recorded just too late for the ball save, and she got cheated out of a second ball. Can't say for sure that if she'd gotten this ball to play she'd have done better than third place, but it can't have helped.

And as our guests were leaving a weird event happened. FAE played a card to shake the game, giving DMC a tilt warning. After FAE shook and the game warned, Getaway launched the ball, which quickly drained, and I had to leave to make a ruling on this. That DMC would receive a compensation ball was beyond question. The issue: International Flipper Pinball Association rules say that a player is disqualified if they cause another player to lose the ball. That is, literally, what happened, but the Critical Hit card specifically allowed FAE to take the action which caused the loss of ball.

Fortunately we had the stream so we could go back and check a key issue: did FAE tap the ball launch? Because that would collapse the question to a simple played-out-of-turn matter. It took a little fussing around but we could see on the captured stream that FAE's hands had never been near the ball launch.

So the closest model I could find to the published rules covering this is that accidentally causing the loss of a ball, or losing the ball because of a tournament director's instructions, doesn't disqualify a player. Following the instructions of the card seemed to waive the issue of playing out of turn objection, and as nobody had the faintest idea that Getaway would launch a ball on a tilt warning --- if it does do that consistently and this weren't just a freak event --- it fits as an accident.

DMC grumbled, as is his wont, but accepted this. But he did use his own version of the shake-the-game-to-give-a-tilt-warning against FAE, shaking hard enough that the game tilted. FAE would get a compensation ball too, and DMC had to pay a penalty (letting FAE pick one of DMC's remaining cards at random), but that settled that.

In the end, FAE lost, taking last place on a game I had confidently explained to the streamers had a special understanding where FAE would win every time. bunnyhugger as mentioned came in third, DMC second, and DG would get first place, the first time all night that DMC didn't win his group.

Two games to go.

Now let's close out that visit to Kings Island Wednesday night. We expected just to drive home the next day but, you know what? We had thought about what we might do in the area.

Here's the Eiffel Tower by night, with a small nova going off on the observation deck.

As we walked toward the front of the park the Grand Carousel stood out like a jewel.

Here's the ride set to bed for the night, though if you look you can see like six park people standing around discussing whatever it is they discuss when the carousel's been finished for 45 minutes.

And here's the Grand Carousel's sign holding the flashlight under its chin to tell a spooOOooOOooky story.

Just a nice view of the base of the Eiffel Tower with the International Midway and the exit gate in the background.

Here's the reflecting pool, with the park exit in the distance.

A last look back at the Eiffel Tower, with bunnyhugger in some weird distorted perspective as if I had a wide-angle lens or something.

And a last, postcard shot, from the front of the reflecting pool, with the spotlights on the Eiffel Tower not at all making it look like the eyes of a very tall killbot.

Trivia: The March of Time newsreel, from spring 1935 through fall 1951, published only one reel per month. Typical newsreels would be published twice weekly. Source: The American Newsreel, 1911 - 1967, Raymond Fielding.

Currently Reading: Seriously Curious: The Facts and Figures That Turn Our World Upside-Down, Editor Tom Standage.

This week we reached the median of a seven-week block of pinball events on Tuesdays. It started the last week of February with pinball league, and then the first week of March with the Dungeons and Dragons launch party. Then pinball league. Next week is pinball league again --- it's the second and fourth weeks of the month --- and after that, the 1st of April, the charity tournament in honor of ERR. And after that, pinball league once more and then finally we have a nice relaxing Tuesday with nothing to do but our taxes.

And this week was the charity tournament, March Hare Madness, one of the four quarterly tournaments raising money for animal care. This is the one dedicated to Stephen, the superstar Flemish giant, and supports the rescue from which we adopted him, Penelope the Californian, and Fezziwig the mouse.

The format: Four-group matchplay, yes, but with the Critical Hit deck. This is a bunch of cards for casting ``spells'' that add weird and wacky things to your pinball game. Like, one card lets you steal a different player's game after ball one or ball two. Another lets you make them stop playing that ball right that second. Another covers up the score display, which does more than you'd think to mess up your modern game with complicated rules and much information that needs to be tracked somehow. Given the general no-shenanigans nature of the International Flipper Pinball Association --- they won't sanction tournaments where, say, you play with hands on opposite flippers or other simple ways to make a familiar game weird --- it's amazing they allow this. It seems like the lingering remains of an old joke never pulled out again.

It also seems likely they figured the Critical Hit games would not be a lasting problem. The cards were issued in like two small runs, years ago, and as cards went missing the remaining decks would be used less and less. After years of success we lost four cards last year and bunnyhugger was ready to give up on the format. But the Critical Hit deck got a re-issue, and she got a fresh deck, and now there were enough cards to feel comfortable using them.

In past years the format has been to give out two cards to everyone at the start, and then to give people another card when they earn an extra ball, which most games make practical at least and some games make inevitable. I had a thought and bunnyhugger liked it: what if we also gave out an extra ball to whoever finished last in a group? With more cards in our nearly-two-deck set we could certainly spare them. And having more cards put into circulation might get people to use them more. The fun of this format is throwing down cards and launching chaos and people who have only a couple cards save them like JRPG players. It usually gets better in the latter rounds when people figure they're out of time to use them; could we inspire that chaos earlier?

bunnyhugger approved, and then dove in to making trophies, using some past bowling trophies donated by MWS, sawing off the plastic bowlers and replacing them with resin bunnies. All she had to do was actually run the tournament.

And in photographs: moving now into the last night of our big summer trip last year. What'd that look like at Kings Island?

Midway switching on its lights as the evening sets in. At this point I think we got a meal and so the next picture is ...

... Fully night! And I love this stuff, all sorts of difficult color and shade variations.

We went in for the end-of-the-night ride on The Beast and here we are underneath the fireworks-and-drone show again. I guess someday we could not get a ride on The Beast and see what it actually looks like but who wants to run that risk?

Anyway here's the drones coming together again for the Kings Island logo. Last picture I think was in-between formations so if you didn't recognize it that's normal.

The Beast's station getting ready to dispatch trains again. I like the Moon being juuuust off to the side of the structure.

First train loading up, I think it is, getting ready to resume riding.

Trivia: The first maneuvering of Gemini 3 --- and the first maneuvering of any spacecraft on orbit --- was an approximately 75-second burn of forward-firing thrusters 11 and 12, which brought the spacecraft to a nearly circular orbit within two miles of the planned parameters. Source: Gemini Flies! Unmanned Flights and the First Manned Mission, David J Shayler.

Currently Reading: Seriously Curious: The Facts and Figures That Turn Our World Upside-Down, Editor Tom Standage.

The next full week of my arbitrary and capricious comparisons brings some surprises! Here's my humor blog for you:

• MiSTed: The 72 Hours Saga, Part 31
• March Pairwise Brackety Contest Thing: Nostalgia versus Radioastronomy
• Statistics Saturday: _Star Trek_ Theatrical Movies by Political Affiliation of the US President at Release
• March Pairwise Brackety Contest Thing: Kansas versus Countershading
• March Pairwise Brackety Contest Thing: Cabotage versus Film Photography
• What's Going On In Mary Worth? Why is Popeye in repeats? December 2024 - March 2025
• March Pairwise Brackety Contest Thing: Being a Liquid Goo versus Win/Win Scenarios
• MiSTed: The 72 Hours Saga, Part 32

Last we looked at Kings Island we were looking at the Flight of Fear ride. How'd that turn out? We had just stepped into the flying saucer and you can see ...

Continuing aboard the USS Discovery Flight of Fear queue. It's pretty nice how they have an interesting curve for the queue within the saucer.

More atmospheric stuff to make the queue interesting.

Here's the best picture I could get of the window? Viewscreen? Space thingy.

And finally, the actual launch station! The ride dispatcher gets a pretty nice throne to sit on here.

And there's the cryonic stasis tubes or whatnot for the aliens.

Train getting back. It's a linear induction motor launch, so it goes from zero to fast in no time flat and without a lift hill, and the trains have five cars, but it still seems like it takes a while to cycle the ride.

Back outside. We went back to the vicinity of Banshee, on the supposition that whatever closed things wouldn't last. Here's Invertigo, a Vekoma Invertigo-model ride, which is basically the Boomerang shuttle coaster except that half the seats face backwards.

Oh, the shoot-the-chutes, I wonder what's going to happen here?

I should have guessed this was coming next!

So there's Banshee, still shut down, and we didn't hear what had happened yet.

The evening sky had some gorgeous cloud cover, though.

And here's the Eiffel Tower by evening glow. Note there's a drinks stand at the base. The fountain drinks were fine but the place had been taken over by bees who were not aggressive per se but could leave you pretty darned nervous. The operator offered to pour drinks for us but we were confident it wouldn't be that bad. There were way more bees than we were counting on. We got through un-stung, though.

Trivia: François Jean Dominique Arago, director of the Paris Observatory from 1830, resigned his post rather than swear allegiance to Louis-Napoleon when the president became Emperor Napoleon III. Napoleon III refused the resignation and left Arago in place until the astronomer's death in 1853. Source: In Search Of Planet Vulcan: The Ghost in Newton's Clockwork Universe, Richard Baum, William Sheehan.

Currently Reading: Seriously Curious: The Facts and Figures That Turn Our World Upside-Down, Editor Tom Standage.

So how did bunnyhugger do at RLM Amusements? She won her first game, Robo-War, with a killer score, her best score ever on that table and good enough she felt embarrassed having won by that much. She won her second game, too, on the electromechanical Fast Draw. And then on Space Shuttle, beating one of the other women at the thirty-person tournament. And then on Total Nuclear Annihilation as well. She took a loss on Dungeons and Dragons, knocking her out of the tie for first place, but her winning ways resumed on Dracula and on Avengers: Infinity Quest.

At this point she got called up on Baby Pac-Man, against one of the strongest players, the one who'd finish qualifying in first place. Despite my attempts to give her advice she didn't win or even make a convincing showing. She also lost on Buck Rogers before taking a win on The Uncanny X-Men. Then two more losses, on Iron Maiden and on Tales From The Crypt, the last apparently cheating her out of a multiball, the second time in a week that's happened. But then she won on Getaway using that same ball-saver strategy we've just been learning about. And then on Labyrinth, with a quite good game versus a merely okay game by one of the other women.

She ended up with nine wins, a great finish by any count. She qualified for finals in sixth place. Had she gotten even one more win she'd have been in the tie for a first-round bye. She hadn't known; she hadn't been following the standings and before her last round expressed to me worries that she was not going to make it to playoffs. She usually plays with less stress if she isn't thinking how she has to win this game and here's a fine example of that.

So she was in! After a bunch of ties for the last playoff spot and for the last first-round bye were settled four-player groups were drawn up, for PAPA-scoring qualifying. This would be a set of three games, the winner of each game getting four points, second place two points, third place one, and last place zero. The two people who get the highest number of points from the three matches move on to the next round. And bunnyhugger, as one of the high seeds, got the choice of what games they would play. This is known as driving the bus, and bunnyhugger kind of hates this, since if she flops on a game she can only think how she drove the bus off a cliff. Still, her fate was now in her hands.

Continuing at Kings Island on our Wednesday visit, through to a shocking moment.

Diamondback splashing down at just the right spot for the spray to reveal the Eiffel Tower within. (The train's moving away from the camera here; there's baffles on the back to make a huge spray that doesn't affect the riders.) You can see the next train on the lift hill, to the left.

And another shot of a train just splashed down, here with the flume shooting in the direction of the lift hill.

And now ... mmmm. WindSeeker. I made good on my resolve to take a ride on it, since it's been ages since the ride was getting stuck at the top of the tower and it'd be great to see the park from that high up, right?

So after we were stuck at the top of the tower and let down very slowly they closed the ride, of course, and you can see people doing inspections and, I assume, diagnosing what the heck went wrong. Racer's in the background; I got a lot of views of the trains far beneath running like toys and I'm sorry I am a responsible enough rider that I didn't take out my camera to photograph or film that view.

After this we considered going to The Beast --- you see the tracks in the tiling leading up to it --- but the line was fairly substantial so we went over to Banshee and The Bat instead.

Evening silhouette photograph of Diamondback and the Backlot Stunt Coaster props.

Trivia: When he set off to France in February 1778 as one of the diplomats representing the United States, John Adams had no knowledge of European politics or diplomacy and could not speak French, the language of diplomacy; nor had he ever seen a King, Queen, or Foreign Minister of any great power; nor had he ever set foot in a city of more than 30,000 people. Source: John Adams, David McCullough.

Currently Reading: Seriously Curious: The Facts and Figures That Turn Our World Upside-Down, Editor Tom Standage.

PS: What's Going On In Mary Worth? Why is Popeye in repeats? December 2024 - March 2025 plus some stuff about Popeye.

After beating KXL on Deadpool bunnyhugger would go into four straight games on Dungeons and Dragons. By then there were three players left, so she would have three of those games against MKS, one against KXL. After losing one game to MKS and then beating KXL --- knocking KXL out of the tournament --- it was down to two games against MKS, bunnyhugger needing to beat her once to win. In the second of bunnyhugger's matches against MKS a freak event happened. On the second ball bunnyhugger shot the ball up to the gelatinous cube in a move that should have started Dragon Multiball. But she also tilted, the game being prone to weird random instant-tilts where it gives the first and second warnings at once and then shuts the game down on you. Lousy but that happens.

Next ball, though, ball three, she approached the table to find the game telling her, before she plunged her ball, that she was in Dragon Multiball. This confused us all but bunnyhugger plunged, supposing that the game would start multiball when she plunged. Instead, the game only shot a single ball out, as far as we could tell in the multiball rules, but without the ball saver or at least not enough ball saver. Her ball ended, pretty far behind but not more than it was likely she could have made up in Dragon Multiball.

So I jumped out of the booth to look over the IFPA rulesheet, figuring that bunnyhugger was on her way upstairs to ask me for a ruling. PCL and MAG switched the stream away from showing the game to talk over what they saw and also to tell me roughly eight hundred times that I could call RLM and ask his advice what to rule.

But then ... eventually ... we realized it had been way longer than it took to get upstairs and ask me whether bunnyhugger should get a compensation ball. I went downstairs to check what was going on --- I imagined she and MKS trying to reconstruct just what the heck happened --- and it turned out they were playing the next game, having started the follow-up round which would be between the two players who had both lost three games each at that point. I was spared having to make a ruling.

Well, this final match MKS did win again, bunnyhugger never really having got things back in control after her unexpected multiball loss. bunnyhugger took a heartbreaking second place in the tournament, losing a good number of the ratings points she needs to compete in the women's state tournament next year and, she feared, making herself look like an amateur. And on camera, in front of anyone looking at the stream. I can't dispute the loss of points --- had she gotten first place she'd currently be above the cut line for an invitation to women's finals (granting, with over nine months of tournaments yet to be held) --- but an amateur? Hardly. Even if you lose the final match, it means you're good enough to be in finals, and so good enough to win them.

Still, hard not to think about had that unfair tilt not happened, or if she had appealed and it seemed consistent to rule that a compensation-ball matter. I have heard through the grapevine that Dungeons and Dragons is known, at least in that code revision, to have a bug with tilts at the start of multiball starting the next ball in an unplayable condition. We didn't know of it or have any reason to suspect the bug existed, though, and I don't know that it could have mattered at all if we had known it could happen. Or how to treat the problem of that Dragon Multiball starting as a single-ball thing. Hoping it doesn't happen again.

Really would be nice if pinball manufacturers could wait until the code doesn't have easy-to-create bugs before shipping.

And now some more wandering around Kings Island on a nice June day.

American Coaster Enthusiasts landmark plaque for The Racer, noting the ride's importance and how it was in an episode of The Brady Bunch that I never saw, and along the way implies the Coney Island park of C--------i closed in 1972, which it didn't really exactly.

Racer ridden (both sides) we went to Woodstock Express, which also opened in 1972 and is a quite good wooden roller coaster, though I repeat myself.

Loading station getting ready; you can see they were running two trains despite (or causing) the lack of any wait.

The queue goes on this bridge over the track so you get nice views of the coaster coming to you or being right underneath you, if you wait.

Fiberglass(?) Snoopy statue of him sharing a cookie with you, the way Snoopy did all the time in the comic strip. Also Woodstock with a much smaller cookie.

This isn't a particularly important part of the park, but I do quite like how the Woodstock Whirlybirds track makes this soothing wave across the picture.

Trivia: During the Harlan County (Kentucky) coal strike of 1931, the county's Red Cross chapter --- controlled by the coal companies --- refused to provide aid to striking workers. Exceptions were made only for miners who had some plot of land to grow vegetables, who could then be aided as farmers rather than mere victims of industrial downturns. Source: A Square Meal: A Culinary History of the Great Depression, Jane Ziegelman and Andrew Coe.

Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine, Volume 57: Pails of Pearls, Tom Sims, Bela Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle.

So, thing to know about work is that while I go to a state-owned building and work for a state-employed boss doing work for a state agency touching a state computer, I'm actually a contractor, employed by an agency ... uh ... somewhere in the Detroit area, I guess. Area code 248, anyway, which I guess is the ring of cities around Detroit that white people went to so as not to have to have a Black person as mayor. That area, anyway. Doesn't matter.

What does matter is this is a small company. And it has some of that looseness of a small company, like, they've been happy to work with me entirely over the phone and by e-mail. I haven't had any in-person meetings, or even video chats, with any of them, nor any kind of review past them sometimes calling and asking how I think it's going.

Thing is they also have, like, zero chill. So when there is something needing my attention and response, it won't be just an e-mail to me, it'll be an e-mail, and a simultaneous phone call, and maybe a follow-up phone call if I haven't responded in two hours, even when it's a day I'm in office and they're calling my home number. One of those instances happened last week, although when I was at home so I was able to pick up the phone for them. Someone I hadn't heard of there was calling to ask my mailing address which, yes, is the same address they've always had on file for me. I'd barely got off the phone with him (and wondering if I just fell for a phishing sceme, although a mailing address is pretty small potatoes) when my regular manager phoned and e-mailed with the same request for information.

All this, though, is for good news. One is that I now rate benefits: a week of paid sick leave. This they explained was to comply with state law, so, thank you, Governor Whitmer, and a Democrat-held legislature going off and making good things happen. (Also a thing I hadn't heard about, so credit to my employer for not trying to make it sound like they're just being nice.) The other benefit is I can now sign up for a 401K, which is what they needed to confirm my address for. Tuesday or Wednesday I got the packet of forms to fill out and return to them, to sign up for this. And hey, great timing; they say with stocks you should buy on the dips and a Vichy grifter administration is full of nothing but dips.

Anyway yesterday they called to ask if I'd received it and if I could fill it out and return it to them. Guys, relax, I've been busy working, I'll get things done when I have a minute.

Today from Kings Island I bring you photos of the travel posters set up as decoration along the queue into Adventure Express, the roller coaster.

Oh, shame, anyone going on Adventure Express hoping to see the Cobra Caverns is out of luck!

Ah, but at least there's the scenic Amazon Falls. Amazon Falls was the name of the Shoot-the-Chute ride when it opened. When the park was owned by Paramount it got renamed Congo Falls, as a tie-in to the bad but enjoyable movie Congo.

And here's the Forbidden Temple and a great idol figure with absolutely nothing about its design to make you think of racist old movies and stories and stuff. Anyway, no seeing that on this ride!

I do not know what's teased here by the Southern Yellow Overlook, although I see that the Son of Beast roller coaster had a height of 218 feet so maybe that's the reference. (I know what you're thinking and the park's Eiffel Tower is 314 feet.)

Wild Animal Habitat was the name the Action Zone had when the park opened,

Ah, now here's some dramatic arches that you will definitely not be seeing if you ride Adventure Express.

Trivia: In his 725 book De Temporum Natione, written in part to prove Celtic Catholics wrong in their calculation of the date of Easter, the Venerable Bede provides primers on how to read Greek and Roman numerals, the list of units of time as they were known (from moments and hours through to centuries and ages), and also how to count to one million on one's fingers. 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: Lost Popeye Zine Volume 56: Uss vs Themm & Thees & Thoos!, Tom Sims, Bela Zaboly, Editor Stephanie Noelle.

First, some rabbit news. With Athena not being all that interested in eating again she got a vet visit. This was during my office day at work, so bunnyhugger, on her Spring Break, took her in.

The verdit is we don't know why she hasn't been interested in pellets. It turns out she has some points growing on her molars, the kind of thing that could be an early stage of malocclusion, teeth missing each other in a way that makes it painful to eat. Which would explain her not eating, but is inadequate to explain why she's happy to eat hay and vegetables and treats and cardboard and wood and power cords. The gastrointestinal incident would explain her not eating, but not why the disinterest in eating has lasted given she's definitely not still in it. She's far too energetic (and her droppings too healthy) for that to be the case.

So with medicine once more giving way to idiopathy we're left with some guesses. The first, to Athena's great relief, is that she's off Critical Care. The vet thinks it's not likely to be giving her nutrition she's missing, and having the food shot into her stomach might keep her from feeling like she needs to eat anything. Also, she hates it and if we keep force-feeding her she's likely to seek revenge. She is going to be getting some shots of the gut-motility-increaser, three jabs a day in the scruff of her neck. But while she tenses up at that she doesn't get stressed by it, and she's quick to forgive of that insult to her dignity.

In the meanwhile, she's got a couple days to start eating pellets before another follow-up. And she did eat some pellets when she got home. Just not all of them.

Second, some mouse news. bunnyhugger had opened Crystal's cage to give her a treat and then, distracted by something or other, forgot to close it for an hour or more. Had we lost our mouse? There was an excellent chance we hadn't, since her cage is on top of the rabbit hutch, four feet or so off the ground, and mice do not go plunging into the unknown depths if they can avoid it. But sometimes there isn't any avoiding it, and if she were feeling unusually adventurous she could climb down the hutch or to the record player tower beside it. All we could do is wait and see if we'd ever see her again.

Or we could go looking, and bunnyhugger decided on looking. She poked into the lair Crystal has made of the bedding material in her cage and found it surprisingly solidly packed, resistant to the damage of her fingers intruding. And then that there was at least one empty space inside, with the soft feel of a mouse suddenly having a very annoyed day in there. With the mouse proven to have stuck around bunnyhugger stopped her intrusion, and left a treat, that Crystal was in no mood to stick around for. Pretty sure if there were any more litter left to use she'd have used it to build an even more impenetrable fortress by now.

Very likely that, originally, Crystal had taken the treat and retreated to her lair to eat it or cache it, and never went back to discover the door had been left open. But we can't rule out that she didn't explore how far she could go outside and then returned to the safety of home, rodents being as they are fond of checking back in at home a lot after exploring a tiny bit away. So, we have a mouse who's at least happy enough with where she is to stick around there.

You saw yesterday me closing out the last pictures of our Tuesday at Kings Island, so what was there to see next on the photo roll but our Wednesday at Kings Island. Here's how it started:

Parking lot shot. The Kings Island sign you can kind of see in the middle is about where we parked the night before, to give some idea how much busier it was even though it was early in the day. Mind, the day was also 2,850 degrees Fahrenheit and muggy.

Near the bathrooms up front and about the same location where I took those photos of the guy photographing the reflecting pool that you saw yesterday.

There was a staff-members-only door open nearby and I got this view of the Hall of Fame, which they appear to expect will be expanded upon.

Sculpture of Don Quixote alongside the International Midway. bunnyhugger found that it is based on a specific real Don Quixote sculpture but is, remarkably, not a copy. Just a variation on the idea.

bunnyhugger goofing around with Don, possibly pleading with him to leave the windmills alone, they have enough problems.

The German/Bavarian area of the park has dwindled to an Auntie Anne's, but at least pretzels are a German thing. (There's a few other spots but the original premise that there was a touch of World's Fair to the place is all but gone.)

Trivia: The Dutch West India Company in 1630 chose as its main base in the New World a set of delta islands on the Brazilian Coast, on which they would build Mauristaad, modern Recife. Source: A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World, William J Bernstein. (By 1654, with the Portuguese revolt against Spain, the Dutch colony was taken over by Portugal. Which seems odd to me as the Dutch were busy revolting against Spain themselves at the time.)

Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine Volume 56: Uss vs Themm & Thees & Thoos!, Tom Sims, Bela Zaboly, Editor Stephanie Noelle. Done with Yapple versus Napple and we get to ... somehow ... another College Football Season story?

Last Tuesday we had the official launch party for the new Dungeons and Dragons: the Dragon's Dungeon pinball game, fresh from Stern. bunnyhugger had called it off the day before, on the grounds that our venue didn't have the game yet, and then one arrived at our hipster barcade just hours later and everything was on again. (Between league meetings, and this tournament, and the charity tournament next week, and the ERR memorial tournament in early April, we're looking at seven Tuesdays in a row committed to pinball stuff.)

When we got there, first, I complimented RED on going over and swiping Grand Rapids Pinball League's Dungeons and Dragons game. He didn't hear me at first (he has a bad ear and I always talk into that) but when he got what I was saying he liked and riffed on that. Second, although we'd been warned to expect a game leaving the venue because there's no place to put in another, guess what? RED made the room, squeezing together five games until there was room for a sixth in the row.

The format was four-strikes, maybe the easiest tournament format to run that has room for real drama. The game computer at Matchplay.events draws up pairs of people on games randomly drawn (although one of the matches would always be Dungeons and Dragons), and everyone plays until they've lost four times. Except one person, who's the tournament winner and goes home with the plaque. Stern Pinball took to sending out plaques with the championship logo not attached to the wood backing; bunnyhugger has taken to attaching those herself because she knows how to do it right.

There were 17 people there, enough that for once I was not in the homewrecker match against bunnyhugger. We never played each other. Instead, CST --- returning for the first time since Silver Balls in the City --- and his wife got one head-to-head match. (He won.) I did play CST once, on Tales of the Arabian Nights, a game that he knew well from his time as perennial Lansing Pinball League champion. He put up a meager 1.2 million; a normal game would be easily five times that, and his level something like ten times that. Not that it did me any good, as I failed to break a million points on it.

Other than that, though, I had a really good run: I ended up lasting ten rounds and going out, beaten by RED on Dungeons and Dragons on the live stream to ... some ... number of people on Twitch. bunnyhugger had a pretty good night herself, lasting eight rounds and only being knocked out by the combination of FAE on Scared Stiff and DMC on AC/DC.

It was RED had the best night of all, though, never once losing a game of Dungeons and Dragons, which was really good for him as the last rounds all ended up on that game. After I handed him his last strike --- on Cactus Canyon, one of the games somehow I'm the only one who knows how to play --- he went on to knock me out of the tournament on Dungeons and Dragons, and then he knocked out DG, a solid player who was having a better-than-average night. And then, in two matches in a row, beat CST, taking what turned out to be his first-ever launch party win, and only his fifth first-place finish ever (discounting the small-potatoes Tuesday Night Smackdown games). If bunnyhugger or I couldn't win, it was pretty nice that he could take it.

When last we looked at Kings Island photos we were underneath the cover of The Beast's queue and seeing fireworks. You know what else goes with fireworks?

Yes, they had a drone show, the bread crumbs that extend the meatloaf of the fireworks! Can you make out the formation up there, through all the slats making a shading cover of The Beast's line? (It was the Kings Island logo.)

bunnyhugger was lightly annoyed that I could work out what all these drone shapes were and she couldn't, what with her being so much farther from the drone show and all.

Fireworks over, drone show over, we're on the way again to The Beast. Here's the station by night, with WindSeeker in the distance. Last time we were here, Vortex would have been blurrily in frame.

People done with their ride for the night. The illuminated white arch in the distance is the Racer, and the blue lift hill Orion, which doesn't threaten the seclusion of The Beast as much as we'd feared.

Did not expect that Older Young Sheldon would be in line behind us! Let's have a big hand everybody!

And here we are leaving after our ride. That's Diamondback (which we didn't ride in the few hours we had) on the left there, and the park's Eiffel Tower in the distance on the right.

Trivia: Between 1815 and 1865 roads in France improved enough that the average load pulled by a single horse rose from 1400 pounds to three thousand. Source: The Discovery of France: A Historical Geography, Graham Robb.

Currently Reading: The Secret of Apollo: Systems Management in American and European Space Programs, Stephen B Johnson.