austin_dern | Entries tagged with parents

June 2025

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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.

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When AnthrOhio wrapped up last year with the declaration they were moving to a new hotel, I'm not sure it came with the news it was moving to a new weekend. We did learn about the move to a late-April weekend months ago, though, and were mildly irked that it would be coming so soon after Motor City Fur[ry] Con. Also that it would be coming in the late-middle part of the term. With bunnyhugger having Monday classes we'd have to drive home after closing ceremonies, not even sticking around for the Dead Dog Dance, to have a chance of getting her in bed in time. Or cancel classes, something she's most reluctant to do for mere fun.

And then came Pinball At The Zoo. This, the biggest tournament in Michigan, is always sometime in mid-to-late April and what do you know but it was set for this past weekend. As in, the same weekend as AnthrOhio. So we were stuck with the question of what would we miss, the furry convention that, despite outgrowing the cozy, intimate convention we loved, is still our favorite; or the pinball tournament that's so exciting and fun and social and competitive and that's become one of the Pro Circuit events where some of the best pinball players of the whole continent converge.

And then, eventually, we realized that it was also Easter weekend, a day --- often a weekend --- that we always spend with bunnyhugger's parents. There's no inherent conflict in going to Pinball At The Zoo, which ends Saturday, and to her parents for Sunday. But there's a compelling conflict going to central Ohio and mid-Michigan for the same day.

We did a lot of thinking out what was the less bad thing to miss. We finally chose to miss AnthrOhio, for me for the first time since 2012. We'd be glad for Easter with her parents. And we'd be glad for attending the least replaceable pinball tournament of the year. As long as we did well enough.

No pressure.

Now let's have a bit more 4th of July fireworks from the City of Lansing and from outlying territories.

On the left, I think, the city's fireworks. On the right, the fireworks of whatever town is north and west of Lansing. I'm going to say ``Delhi''? That sounds like a town that exists.

Here's a meteor seen just at the limits of sensor range while in warp.

Dutch angle! Fireworks local (on the left) and distant (on the right).

And here's the city or possibly the ballpark fireworks getting to the grand finale!

More finale, but this time so you can see colors and the shape of the cloud.

And this is no fireworks. This is traffic, cars driving back from downtown. We stuck around a good bit after the show because we figured why rush home.

Trivia: A conventional break-bulk cargo ship of the mid-1950s would typically require 150 or more longshoremen working for at least four days to unload and load a vessel's cargo; using $2.80 as a basic longshoreman's hourly wage, this implied over $15,000 in stevedore charges for a typical port call. Source: Box Boats: How Container Ships Changed The World, Brian J Cudahy. For perspective, that's more than a contestant might win on a whole episode of The Price Is Right --- when they would play for the full half-hour show --- of the time.

Currently Reading: Slime: A Natural History, Susanne Wedlich. Translator Ayça Türkoğlu.

PS: What’s Going On In Olive and Popeye? What’s this wrestling story going on? January – April 2025 finally, finally gets its turn.

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This weekend we visited bunnyhugger's parents. Unfortunately obligations on SpinDizzy Muck kept us from being able to go Saturday, and Sunday had the requirement that we leave around 10 pm to get us to bed soon enough. And we ended up late, in part because road construction has resumed and we can't turn onto US 127 south from the natural route. Can't come back, either; I discovered that in the night when the temporary barriers made the lanes even narrower than I'm comfortable with.

An hour or two after we arrived bunnyhugger went out to walk her parents' dog. Both usually enjoy this because bunnyhugger uses it for her daily half-hour walk and the dog doesn't often get to spend so much time in the nearby park and all that. This was a little less fun than usual because after quite a while of warm weather we were back to near-freezing and, turns out, raining, so by the end of the walk they'd both had enough.

I decided to go for a walk myself, separately. But after a couple blocks my bluetooth headphones died. Though I'd charged them up last Tuesday they went into the low-battery warning cycle, where every minute it interrupts the audio to tell me ``Cease Charging''. Cease doesn't make sense here but it's what I hear. Maybe they're trying to say ``Needs'' charging? Anyway, it gives these one-minute warnings when it's about five minutes from being out of battery rather than, say, giving one warning every five minutes starting from when there's an hour of charge left. With no podcast, and with a near-freezing drizzle setting in, this wasn't so much fun so I headed back.

I did along the way see an upright piano someone left on their extension. When I mentioned this to bunnyhugger's father he seemed stunned and disbelieving of the concept, and asked several times where it was, so there's something like a 35% chance he's dragged a lightly-rained-on upright piano from the next block over. (Maybe not that high. If he had bunnyhugger's mother would likely have said something to her and I'd have heard of the trouble I'd instigated.)

There were two substantial goals to the visit. One was eating all the reuben sandwiches. Did we succeed? No. Despite our best efforts bunnyhugger's mother made one more sandwich than we could eat, which we took home to be a lunch.

Ah, but the second and more important goal: playing our first round of Aftermath, the board roleplaying game that the guy who made Mice and Mystics did next. Did we succeed? No. This in part because of our late start and early end. But more that Aftermath comes with eight hundred thousand token things that need to be punched out of cardboard and put into the separate baggies for organization. (The game provides the baggies, which is a great touch.) Also many pieces that need to be assembled into dials with pointers and stuff like that. bunnyhugger needed an hour or so just to do that and there wasn't time for gameplaying given that. However, we did have the time to look at the game and marvel at how well-produced it looks. And to get some idea of what the goals of the thing are and who the player-characters are.

We're intimidated by one of the rules, that if we ever fail a specific adventure we're to restart the entire campaign. Given how often we had to replay Mice and Mystics chapters the idea of starting everything over and over seems un-fun. On the other hand, surely the game would be designed so failing out and restarting from scratch was rare but fun, right? Oh, did I mention bunnyhugger brought not just the book but also a set of annotated rulesheets that the board game fans pass around to clarify ambiguous or mysterious rules in the actual book? (You can also, of course, ignore the restart-from-scratch and the game even has official provisions for that.)

So maybe next time that'll be what we finish the night on.

And for my pictures tonight? Still more of Kings Island Wednesday, and pictures of the ongoing evening now.

Got back to that little park and I took a handful of more photos. Here I wanted the Racer-themed Miniature Miniature Eiffel Tower lined up with the antique carousel.

And a little father in is the Orion-themed Miniature Miniature Eiffel Tower.

Looking back the other way picks up The Bat and the ... uh .. I'm going to guess Diamondback Miniature Miniature Eiffel Towers.

And then we get to the setting sun and this wonderful triangle of glow above the midway.

View of the entrance gate, or the exit gate I suppose, in the evening sun. But what really interested me was this ...

Looking back at the Moon and the Miniature Eiffel Tower in the reflection of the windows of the main gate.

Trivia: Hours before WLW was to make its initial broadcast in 1922, owner Powel Crosley, frightened that the antenna location meant the station's new 50-watt license would not provide enough reach, had the antennas raised. Rounding up employees from the radio factory they added a twenty-foot section of downspout to each tower, elevating the antenna height to sixty feet, and added a counterpoise to balance the new structure. Source: Crosley: Two Brothers and a Business Empire that Transformed the Nation, Rusty McClure with David Stern and Michael A Banks.

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

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This weekend we hoped to visit bunnyhugger's parents, who both had their birthday this past week. But Friday's weather was lousier than forecast and with five inches of snow projected for Saturday we slept in sure that ... there would at least be some kind of precipitate that had fallen? At some point? Somewhere? So with Saturday's storm turning out to be nothing, Sunday's forecast --- clear apart from maybe a two-hour stretch in late afternoon/early evening when we'd be at their place anyway --- got us to say yeah, let's go.

It was snowing, insistently but not terribly, as we drove down, though the Interstates were clear and dry enough. All right. It would also snow insistently and annoyingly in the early evening when we drove out to the next town over to pick up Chinese food. The Chinese restaurant mildly impressed me by still working on the assumption there's an airborne pandemic on, with doing only take-out and having a couple seats for people to wait for pickup, each pair of seats a good six or more feet from the neighbor. They less impressed me with having groups waiting at all those table sets for food to be prepared; while we'd gotten there a couple minutes past the time they said it'd be ready, and it was a good twenty minutes after that before they had our food. It's hard not to wonder if they only started cooking once we were there.

At one point we'd hoped that we might start playing a campaign board game, the one designed by the Mice and Mystics guy after he went to a new company. We've had it slated to start playing when we finally won the last Mice and Mystics chapter for years now. But with everything going on, and with our resolve to leave early enough that even if the weather turned bad we'd be home well before midnight --- I had Monday off, but bunnyhugger had her usual work schedule --- bunnyhugger didn't have time to learn the rules first, so she couldn't teach them. We tried to talk her parents into playing this board game simulation of pinball, and didn't. But bunnyhugger showed her mother how you would play it, going through one ball, and based on the questions asked her mother understood it all rather quickly despite insisting she couldn't understand a game this complicated. Maybe she'll be talked into it next time.

While not our longest visit with them, it was a good visit, and we ate way too much, and bunnyhugger took their dog --- in her new winter parka --- on a good long walk, so that was all successful.

When we drove back it was snowy again, the Interstate clogged with people driving at a reasonable speed for the conditions and then suddenly turning on their hazard lights to make things seem tenser than they were. This past weekend had the most annoying weather of all.

You know what photo roll we're in the midst of here. Please, enjoy Dollywood near as much as we did:

Just some of the walking path inside the Wilderness Grove. I love how lush and wet the place looks. Some of that might be from the rain but since that was hours before, more likely water is from fountains and cool sprays to deal with the heat.

A salute to fire fighters set up in the park. Also a TV screen offering estimates of the ride times at the major rides (and reports of which rides are closed temporarily).

Text explaining the Tennessee Tornado roller coaster's backstory.

And here's one of the Roadside Attractions. I particularly like how in this light it's difficult to see the support wires so they more convincingly just hang in midair.

Another angle on the noodles and, again, I like how obscured their supports are.

Rude!

This raccoon-wanted poster led me to expect more of a raccoon presence in miscellaneous park signage but as far as I saw, this was it.

Trivia: As early as 1700, miners in Brazil identified ``ouro podre'', ``worthless gold'', which was a naturally-occurring alloy of palladium and gold. When palladium was first isolated, it was from platinum ore. Source: Nature's Building Blocks: An A-Z Guide to the Elements, John Emsley.

Currently Reading: Barcode: How a Team Created One of the World's Most Ubiquitous Technologies, Paul V McEnroe.

PS: What's Going On In Dick Tracy? How old is Dick Tracy in-universe? November 2024 - February 2025 in recap, and my window of discussion lines up suspiciously well with the end of a story, so there's that!

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So before this continues you have to promise: you won't share a word of this with my father, all right? Because it would break his heart and you don't want to do that for a kind old man.

The sink. When last left, I'd broken the hot water shutoff valve and a professional plumber came in to replace it. And judged that he couldn't get the old faucets off so there was nothing to do but replace the old, broken sink with faucets rust-welded to the ceramic. With bunnyhugger's agreement I went sizing new yet cheap sinks. As you might expect for a vanity 33 inches wide --- you can find premade ones 30 or 36 inches wide, but never 33 --- the size was weird too, a couple inches bigger than almost everything in stock at Ace, Menard's, or Lowe's. Except for one, which, happy to say, was also the cheapest. We're happy for that not just for money reasons but also because we intend to do the big bathroom renovation in the coming year, after the big plumbing renovation.

And, sink replacement. My father was extremely happy with the prospect that I'd do something as plumbing-complex as replacing a sink. In principle, this isn't actually complex: unfasten the sink from underneath, pry it up, drop a new one in place, and reconnect everything again. Sinks are extremely standardized in pipe sizes and relative placement and where they aren't, it's in things like the service lines to the faucets that flex and can be easily fit to place.

But after the fiasco of my faucet replacement, my heart wasn't in it. I scheduled a plumber's appointment and we got him coming in a week ago Thursday. In the late morning, luckily away from any of my online meetings with coworkers. Also, awkwardly, about the time that bunnyhugger (who'd had a later night) got up and needed to use the lone bathroom, which was out of commission. (We probably could have asked the plumber to clear out a minute but at that point he'd been in the house long enough to make it awkward that she hadn't been obviously around all along.) She made it through with her dignity intact.

And not a couple hours later we had a brand-new, gleaming white sink with chrome faucets, something looking better than it ever will again. And it's so good. The water turns on, and off, easily and completely. The basin's more rectangular than the oval we'd had --- I couldn't find the shape of sink we used to have --- but it also seems a little deeper, and between the depth and the smoother flow --- no half-broken semi-rusted aerator turning our water flow turbulent --- I'm even splashing less water around. If you can imagine me leaving the sink not looking like an otter was playing there.

It's more than a week now and the novelty and smoothness and delight of it hasn't worn off. And, gads, it's so amazing how it is to first, have a longstanding problem solved, and so good it feels to have something be solved relatively easily. There's no spinoff issues, no side effects, just, things dramatically improved. Who knew that could happen?

And now I bring you pictures, as we get to the newest roller coaster at Dollywood:

And here's that promised roller coaster. At least, part of the entry, which has a theme of trying to find the big bear rumored in the area. Thus the sign promising the hint of a bear. The claw scratches remind me of those on Rougarou's sign, at Cedar Point, but that's probably because claw scratches all kind of look alike this sort of thing.

Big Bear Mountain roller coaster passing by a nice little hill.

Here's the queue, our longest wait for anything our whole one-and-a-half-days visiting. Even so the queue area wasn't filled up, testament to how lucky we were with the whole trip.

Part of the waiting area is a bunch of stuff about the big bear sightings and signups to go on the search for it and also reminders that you shouldn't be doing this for real, leave bears alone, they got enough problems.

Despite the sign pointing to the bear, they wanted you to go that way too.

And here's finally the station; there's a train just about to leave. And it's got headlights, to match the ride's offroad-vehicle-expedition kayfabe.

Trivia: In the 1761-62 sea trials of John Harrison's H.4 chronometer, sailing from England to Jamaica, the clock lost only five seconds on the way out, a navigational error of only one and a quarter nautical miles. Source: Time's Pendulum: The Quest to Capture Time - From Sundials to Atomic Clocks, Jo Ellen Barnett. Barnett says that including the return leg the clock lost not more than two minutes, and thirty miles, but doesn't say how much more. The phrasing does make it sound like the trip out got lucky.

Currently Reading: Infinite Cosmos: Visions from the James Webb Space Telescope, Ethan Siegel.

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Happy new year, dear bunnyhugger. Thank you for seeing the old one out with me.

Christmas Day started, as traditional, later than we meant. Also pushed a little later by miscommunications amongst us kids about who was showering and when. I ended up feeling surprisingly good about my sleep, which had been in a sleeping bag on the (padded) floor rather than on the air mattress in the second guest room. That was because bunnyhugger's had some trouble getting and staying asleep lately, and my extremely active sleep habits will catapult her off the bed and into the wall. So I volunteered to use the sleeping bag, for my first sleeping-bag experience in decades. I wasn't sure I remembered how to get into and out of one but did manage without losing much dignity. Also without doing my back any harm, to my surprise.

bunnyhugger's father made waffles for breakfast, something he was eager to do, though not so eager as to bring the waffle iron down from the second guest room before the night before, for some reason. This turned out well, though he refused to believe bunnyhugger's claim she likes pancakes better. You know how he is. He also disbelieves bunnyhugger's claim that she never sleeps well on the air mattress, because it's supposedly the highest-qualify air mattress on the market. She still has to refill it before every use.

bunnyhugger's father held off on his promise to start a fire until after the gift exchange. And the gift exchange was, once again, and against our protests, a very us-directed thing. It's very easy to find gifts to give bunnyhugger and especially to me (just buy me any book with a title like [NOUN]: The [CATEGORY] That Changed the World) and bunnyhugger is pretty good at putting out a wish list. Also, her family is altogether too generous. I tend to get two, maybe three things for everyone and bunnyhugger's brother alone will always say there's three more things coming but late. (They also tend to buy at the last minute, meaning, for example, that they were able to give bunnyhugger the new vinyl release of Jethro Tull's Christmas album, which only was released the week before Christmas.)

bunnyhugger's brother had an excellent idea to simplify Christmas this year and make more time: instead of baking something from scratch he'd spruce up a couple of store-bought lasagna pans. He did make some side dishes --- baked potatoes, green bean casserole --- but nothing that should have left us without time to interact and yet, somehow, we didn't have anywhere near the time we figured we might. While the fire finally roared in the fireplace, we ate to the point we were all asking: if we keep on eating, are we going to have room for pie? Or ice cream? (We kept time and volume for pie, but ice cream would not be eaten this day.)

We also lost our chance to watch any DVDs --- not Scrooge (the 1951 Christmas Carol), not the Muppet Christmas Carol (a gift from me to bunnyhugger), not A Charlie Brown Christmas or anything else. Instead, and facing the planed ``head home at 11:00'' we started a game of Parks, playing with bunnyhugger's mother, brother, and his partner so for the first time ever we could use the five-person rule set. (It's not very different from the two- and three-person rule set we normally use.) This despite bunnyhugger's repeated worry about how late I would have to stay up to finish the game, working as I did (from home) Thursday morning. We failed to finish by 11:00, or even near 11:00 --- it was more like 12:30 before we were done --- but at least everyone who insisted that I was running away with the game was proved wrong, when I came in second to bunnhy_hugger. I did a better job collecting visits to parks, the main goal of the game, but she made up points in the side quests of taking photos and her personal objective, so all my engine-building might, and all the times I snagged a piece of gear she was figuring on, went for nothing. The game is really fun with five people, by the way; the big crowded trail makes everything more strategic and also meant I could take the time to figure out my move while other people were going, rather than do my overly-clever-thinking while people were waiting for me specifically.

So it was that altogether too near 1 am we were finally packed up and ready to leave and hugging everyone and regretting that we didn't have more time for, you know, everything. Next year I've got to take Boxing Day off too.

New year, new park! We're on the second of our amusement parks from this summer's tour, in the very western edge of West Virginia, and a location you might know from its representation in the Fallout line of games.

bunnyhugger getting everything organized to go into the park. Huh, wonder what that sheet of paper she's got in her right hand is about.

Camden Park's welcome sign, a great neon-y thing that unfortunately we weren't there late enough to see lit up, if it still lights. The clown is an actively used icon for the park, and the sign is available in replicas and as magnets and T-shirt designs and such.

bunnyhugger getting a snap of the sign from the other side, the side we actually approached the park from.

And here's the unassuming entry gate to the park. I trust that the park was a free-admission park until pretty late in its existence and the conversion to the pay-one-price model meant stuff like the entrance was made out of whatever space they had that wasn't awful for it.

Which is why rather than a grand midway you enter the park to facilities buildings on the left. It turns into a food stand, though.

And here's a park map, one that we'd discover is a little out of date. It still shows a RoundUp ride, for example, that's been replaced by a small roller coaster not working when we were there.

Trivia: One of the Sanskrit words for 'Sunday' was 'Rivivara', and did honor the Sun. Source: Mapping Time: The Calendar and its History, EG Richards.

Currently Reading: American Scientist, November - December 2004, Editor Fenella Saunders.

PS: What's Going On In The Phantom (Sundays)? Why is the Phantom in the 16th Century? October - December 2024 as we look to 1591 for a story of a story.

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Our usual plan for Christmas is to go to bunnyhugger's parents and spend a couple days there, along with her brother and (often) his partner and play board games and watch some Christmas specials and eat far too much. This was going to be spoiled a little bit by scheduling. bunnyhugger's big end-of-the-year pinball tournament needed to be Thursday if ever, and that meant we couldn't stick around the 26th. Also I needed to work the 26th; I surely could have taken the time off but I didn't think to ask for it. But between that, and the need to get some Christmas shopping and wrapping done the 23rd, meant we couldn't leave before the 24th and we would have to leave the 25th. We did miss out on some of the holiday routines, most importantly watching specials --- no Charlie Brown, no Emmett Otter, no Scrooge --- but we did find time for important things like eating far too much.

It didn't help that we got off to a later-than-planned start, a combination of needing to sleep after everything that was going on, making the last attempt at getting fish in for the year, getting the bird and squirrel feeders topped up, and other little chores getting the house ready to ber let alone. Also catching Athena for her first trip to bunnyhugger's parents and meeting the space that she'll go when we're out of town for a couple days. We were a little concerned about her being in a place with a dog and a cat --- there's fair reason to think she had bad experiences with them when she was living on the streets --- but, well, you know the kinds of neurotic dog bunnyhugger's parents attract. Their cat meanwhile wanted nothing to do with anything and spent the whole time we were there being as inaccessible as possible.

In the hopes of saving some time and giving bunnyhugger's brother and mother the chance to do something besides food prep, they didn't make food this time. Instead we got Chinese food, picked up from ... well, a town twenty minutes away, because it turns out there's none in the small but still college town bunnyhugger's parents live in. This was a great choice, though, providing us with a lot to eat and somehow not actually any more time for doing things. We did well in the Fortune/Not-A-Fortune game, though, with the cookies mostly providing actual fortunes. bunnyhugger's father got one cookie that had four slips of paper inside, two fortunes, one not, and one marginal. (Some ambiguous thing about it being a time you could take a trip or something.) Mine promised I would do better in real estate than in stocks, which is unambiguously a fortune of some kind. I note that this fortune does not promise that I would actually do well in real estate or poorly in stocks.

After dinner and even after dessert, and after ragging on bunnyhugger's father for not living up to his promise of a fire in the fireplace, we once again failed to coax bunnyhugger's parents into playing a game of Betrayal at the House on the Hill. The original edition, though we talked up the Legacy version. I ended up being the Traitor this campaign and we ended up in a haunt that ... seems to have been inadequately play-tested, if you can imagine. There was an important element where we had to move a person and it wasn't at all clear how to do that and, in fact, whether I could at all. Although my play was --- if I may say so --- quite clever, I made a mis-step that, combined with a weird series of bad dice rolls, made me lose.

And after that ... well, bunnyhugger had to work more. She hadn't had time to wrap nearly anything, and we had brought not just the gifts she was giving but also our big canvas bag of wrapping supplies, a thing that impressed all her family. It was a nice Bed, Bath, and Beyond purchase years ago so if we ever break this one we're in trouble. But her wrapping things when everyone else had gone to bed was our least-bad option and it forced her to another late night up alone, just this time in a different house than usual.

And now, the last day of the year, the last pictures of Kentucky Kingdom from our trip back in June. Makes you think, doesn't it?

We headed back for the main body of the park, on the rumor that some rides there were still running. Here's a snap of a small river underneath the Roller Skater that we saw on the way.

This is Scream Extreme, which spins the riders in a circle and rises up so they're spinning at, Wikipedia says, 25 miles per hour, some sixty feet in the air. That ... sounds less extreme than you'd think. We've been on carousels that are faster than 25 miles per hour, although shorter than sixty feet off the ground.

Well, all the rides were shuttered so there was nothing to do but walk back to the car through ... sunny, cloudless skies.

Here we are back at the park entrance and, again, does this look like a thunderstorm is going to hit the park soon?

You can see why with skies like this they didn't want to leave the park open for the twenty minutes or so left to the end of its normal operating day.

bunnyhugger can't believe this is the end of our day already. Ah, but at least we got out ahead of the extremely light rain that eventually drifted around.

Trivia: Ray Bolger was billed in vaudeville as ``Rubberlegs'' Bolger. Source: The Encyclopedia of Vaudeville, Anthony Slide.

Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine, Volume 52: There's a Hole in the Bottom!!, Tom Sims, Bela Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle. So after like a year of Popeye searching in vain for his Poppa, who's gone off hiding so far as to chop up navigational signs and pretend to be a mermaid to decoy everyone, Poppa just shows up on Yapple Island talking with Popeye's Mom like it's nothing and he explains it as he changed his mind and on the one hand, that's an incredible anticlimax even for the most anticlimactic story strip ever and on the other hand, yeah, that's his character all right. Nailed it.

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Christmas tree shopping. And chopping. As usual we went the weekend after Thanksgiving weekend, getting to the Tannenbaum Farms a little after noon when the place was so busy you'd think there would be nowhere to park, and yet we always do find somewhere. We were a quarter-hour late or so; bunnyhugger's parents had already arrived and bought the first pre-cut tree they saw, and they haven't as of this writing, to my knowledge, said how they think it isn't drinking and they bought a bad tree. So there's traditions being kept.

One tradition not kept: the little shop up front didn't have any doughnuts to go with hot cocoa, just (homemade) cookies. That's all right but when your stomach is set for doughnuts, you know what getting cookies is like. bunnyhugger got the last of the chocolate chip cookies of the bunch. I got an oatmeal raisin, or as bunnyhugger quipped, ``the worst cookie''. I like oatmeal raisin but I understand people feeling disappointed.

Also disappointing: they didn't have any Scotch pines. Or pines of any kind. The person giving directions said they were cleaned out this late in the season. We know that Thanksgiving was as late as it gets since the Republicans went absolutely nuts back in 1939-41 (check out Alf Landon's going off calling ``move Thanksgiving one week up'' Hitlerism). But it doesn't seem like it's that late. Maybe someone made a bad call about what to plant ten years ago, or however long it takes trees to grow up.

We ended up hunting around Concolors and Frasier furs, and were able to find a couple trees that, having just their lights strung on them as of this writing, are doing nicely. bunnyhugger's parents came back to see our house and meet our new rabbit, and so her father could inspect the wall repairs. This spun into bunnyhugger making some ramen for a late lunch for everyone, and then before we knew what happened they were leaving for home.

But that's the basic story of our getting our trees for this year.

Afterward, I popped over to the Quality Dairy and got some doughnuts for our coffee break.

Anthrohio Sunday began with me getting up early for the inflatables meet-and-greet. Ready to meet some inflatables? Take your shoes off and put any sharp objects off to the side and look at this ...

And this is what it looks like! A bunch of really big inflatables, full up, with people approaching and taking pictures with them and all. The pink dog here kept deflating and I'm not sure if that was because of a problem or because the owner was trying to leave early.

A couple dragons and a skunk here. Also you might be able to see a sign offering a chance to try out an inflatable suit. I didn't sign up for one. This time.

This large sea dragon you were allowed to climb on the back of and either ride bareback or lean back and enjoy the ride on the biggest air mattress you've been on! Except you'll probably slip and fall off because it turns out to be very hard to hop up with enough energy to get up there but not so much energy you can stop.

More accessible was laying on the paws or underneath the mane of this Chinese dragon that goes on considerably far back. Young kids, being possessed of mountain goat powers, would leap onto its back and climb up the fifteen feet or so before someone came over to get them down before they hurt themselves, as if you could hurt young kids with energy.

Here's your buff werewolf inflatable toyfriend looming over you.

And here's a very accessible inflated alligator that anyone could sit or lie down on.

Trivia: Processed cheese is mainly cheddar cheese pasteurized at 70 Celsius to deactivate the fermentation bacteria. Adding about 2 percent disodium phosphate emulsifies the cheese, keeping the butterfat from separating. Source: The 13th Element: The Sordid Tale of Murder, Fire, and Phosphorus, John Emsley.

Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine Volume 49: Look Out, Lummox!! or Who Slew Hillary Hee??, Tom Sims, Bela Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle.

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Oh yeah, I forgot to start writing up Thanksgiving Day. For the first time since the catastrophic tire failure of '017, instead going to bunnyhugger's parents, as they were not sure they could deal with the road construction that's blockaded our home. Fair enough.

Once more we arrived to find her parents had emptied seven family-size bags of potato chips into a bowl to eat while we got ready to eat later, and we ate the whole of it even though we always regret filling up on greasy salt instead of, you know, food. But after that bunnyhugger and I went for a little walk, taking her parents' dog for what is --- for her --- an unusually long walk around the park and a small slice of town. This all went well, and we didn't even have trouble when the dog saw another dog eighty times her size. When we got back her father asked about that house with the projection over the river that got smashed by a tree, and bunnyhugger reported that of course it was in the same shape it has been ever since it was smashed by a falling tree. I had failed to notice, myself.

Dinner was a couple Quorn roasts, which were themselves something of a struggle to get. The health food store we always got them at closed this year, forced out by a Trader Joe's opening right next to the Whole Foods that opened next to them. And turns out none of the other health food stores, nor the Whole Foods nor the Trader Joe's, carry Quorn roasts. Luckily there's ... uh ... the Meijer's chain that's meant to compete with Whole Foods, that forced Goodrich's Shop-Rite out of business a decade or so ago so it could open in that space, and they had Quorn roasts. From what we gather in Internet comments the roasts were rare on the ground this year. Might be a market in drop-shipping them.

Also brought from our house? A cheesecake. bunnyhugger made it from a mix that I bought from the son of one of my coworkers as some fundraising drive. She made it with a store-bought almond-nut pie crust that was fantastic and got better every day it was leftovers. Especially as she made some caramel to drizzle on it and it turns out caramel is surprisingly easier to make than we imagined and incredibly good to have. We're probably going to be making excuses to put caramel on things. Her parents protested that they had store-bought caramel and we didn't need to go to the bother. So it turns out, but we didn't know that when bunnyhugger made the decision to make some.

After the large but, somehow, scaled-back-from-previous-years dinner --- during which her father discussed how he could not believe that two of his friends didn't like Safety Not Guaranteed, a movie he pressed them into accepting the loan of the DVD for --- we got to the annual watching of A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. With her father asking if we'd seen it before. Yes; we're in danger of gathering some traditional jokes to make while watching it.

(On Safety Not Guaranteed: it's a pleasant enough movie that her father's inexplicably a superfan of. He even printed out and pasted to a door a picture of Aubrey Plaza from the film, and it so happens that before dinner I looked at it and wondered if he was still into the movie. Turns out he was.)

Somewhere along the line I found time to call my parents, as it was my mother's birthday. She's doing well, and she and my dad have moved into their new apartment, this time going for as far away from the garden level as they can. They're on the fourth floor in an apartment complex that's almost completely unpopulated. It's a bit wild. The weird off-level place I lived in as my first non-dorm apartment was never more than three-quarters empty.

Also something got bunnyhugger's father talking about his old interest in stereographic photography and he pulled out the viewer and some pictures he'd taken back in the day. Here he told us that the reason he sold off the camera and got out of the hobby was he couldn't find anywhere to develop the photos anymore (besides the trouble of developing film, you also had to have a place that understood no, these were not duplicate prints, they were subtly different ones to provide parallax). I'm aware there are digital cameras that can do stereographic pictures. Back in the glory days of the '000s there were even digital cameras with two lenses at once, but these days I gather you take a picture and then follow directions where to move the camera to take a second picture. That might be fun but I imagine he wouldn't be interested in getting a camera that did that, nor in the trouble of printing out the small-size photographs needed to fit in his viewer.

We ended up leaving a little past 10 or so, surprisingly early for us. This was probably as well; when I got home I staggered around a while and then went to bed for a solid twelve hours, getting up still feeling full. Might have overdone the eating a little, but you know how that sort of thing goes. Can't wait for Christmas.

Next up? We're into May already, and that means Anthrohio! From the Thursday night and Friday of the con:

The night before. In a dozen hours this hallway would be stuffed full of people wearing fake fur.

I forget why there were little plastic ghosts --- they're about the size of a penny --- scattered around as decorations but here's some of them.

And here's a bunch of little ghosts standing in a not at all suspicious circle around two fallen comrades.

I guess this guy's thing was why the ghosts were around. We didn't get to the Ghostbusters panel, though.

Something about the extremely dull, utilitarian nature of this schedule caught my eye. You know what I'm like.

And some more bits of the convention gathering with the promise of imminent fun. I don't think that Jenga tower is supposed to be an optical illusion but it's looking close to one, isn't it?

Trivia: The first edition of The Rough Guide to Greece was dedicated to a nonnuclear future. Source: On The Map: A Mind-Expanding Exploration of the Way the World Looks, Simon Garfield. I assume a future without a nuclear war (the first edition came out in 1982) but can't swear it's not non-nuclear-power.

Currently Reading: Poincaré and the Three-Body Problem, June Barrow-Green.

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There may be rabbit news in these pages soon. Stay tuned.

Meanwhile in rabbit news that there is not, while visiting bunnyhugger's parents yesterday her father revealed he had hatched a cunning plan. He was thinking, if we didn't find a rabbit soon, that he would buy a Flemish giant from a breeder and then tell us he had caught it running wild in their yard. When he saw how badly this plan landed he tried to grin a little and pass it off as a joke but then admitted it had crossed his mind, and bunnyhugger's mother said she would have killed him if he'd pulled that stunt.

It's not necessarily that finding a domesticated rabbit in the yard is that implausible. Our pinball friend JTK and his brother spent a solid hour or so trying to catch one that was in his yard, a couple months back. But her father has got the poker face of a seven-year-old told that now that he's overheard he has to keep the surprise party for his little sibling secret. If we accepted the claim to start with he would have reiterated the incredible chance that this was until we caught on, and then everything about the rabbit would have been spoiled.

But for whatever reason the plan didn't come to pass, and we don't have to deal with any of that. As said, there may be news to come shortly.

And now for Motor City Fur[ry] Con Sunday, and you know what that traditionally means ...

... The heck is the YouTube Fire Department doing here?

That's right, for the second year running someone called in a bomb scare and the con hotel had to evacuate and things get all disrupted, mostly cancelling the early-morning stuff people might have otherwise enjoyed.

Fortunately it was a lovely spring day, sunny and comfortable, and they let even people like us who'd stayed in the overflow hotel walk up to join people sharing the rumors they'd heard.

This was a chance for all the gophers in the fandom to show up and claim they just misread the sign, but as far as I know there aren't any gopher suiters.

Of course everyone was obeying the ``no walkers'' sign by just milling around instead.

And just like that, the hotel was cleared and people started streaming back in!

Trivia: Between five and six hundred sheets of paper on which the sculptor Michaelangelo drew are known to us. Many have written on them poems, personal letters, notes, and finance details. One has a drawing of the resurrection of Christ and also a shopping list. Source: Paper: Paging Through History, Mark Kurlansky.

Currently Reading: The Life of Lines, Tim Ingold.

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My father made it through surgery, and is as I write this just hanging out in the hospital room overnight, being observed. Trusting they can still see him tomorrow he'll be sent home to have a break from packing for five days or so, because did I mention they're moving to a new place end of next month? That's still on, and he did his last boxing for a while yesterday evening. So that's nice to have cleared up.

And now in the photo roll? This may look like just a bunch of pictures of our house at the holidays ... but it's our house at the end of the holidays. That's right: we've made it to Twelfth Night and are looking at pictures from the current actual factual calendar year of 2024! Hooray!

Our living room tree, with the tied ribbon topper rather than the taller and fancier ones. We'd gone to the ribbon one year when the tree was a little too tall for the other toppers and discovered it's pretty nice like this, actually.

Some of the special ornaments here, such as carousel horse (12 o'clock), a transparent carousel (center), Santa playing pinball (about 7 o'clock), and one of the Hallmark carnival set of ornaments (about 4 o'clock).

A reminder of the dear rabbit we lost at the beginning of 2023.

The ornament for the dear rabbit we met in the spring of 2023 and ... uh ... we don't know what happened with the personalization at Bronner's.

What the tree looks like illuminated by itself. Uh, also by the holiday music channel on the TV. Sorry about that.

And how the tree looks lit by itself as seen from the dining room.

Oh! Now what is this big ball of sniffing white fur?

Yeah, it's Roger, who having established what my deal is and that it didn't involve feeding him settled back to being invisible against the fleece underneath.

The upstairs tree, in the little corner of the bedroom where we block off attic access just when we need to be moving stuff up and down.

By night it isn't just beautiful but throws these puddles of light all over the room that are so lovely.

Here's what just the ceiling looks like, illuminated.

And a last view of the tree in full livery. Happy 2024, everyone!

Trivia: Gadolinium, discovered in 1880, is four times as abundant in the Earth's crust as tin. Source: Nature's Building Blocks: An A-Z Guide to the Elements, John Emsley.

Currently Reading: Nose Dive: A Field Guide to the World's Smells, Harold McGee.

PS: May I interest you in learning What's Going On In Mark Trail? Why is Mark Trail in a lion house? July - September 2024 took Mark Trail some odd places.

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holidays,
parents

Enough about bunnyhugger's parents. How about my parents? There's a little bit of news there. The one that's going to be dominating their late October: they're moving. It turns out that, in South Carolina, the builders of a new apartment complex give you about two years and then raise the rent enough that it's cheaper to pack up everything and move over to the new apartment complex that opened since the last one did. Anyway I'm glad there isn't a housing bubble and that it isn't going to destroy the economy as soon as some algorithm at Chase Banking Products LLC hiccoughs.

On a more alarming note, my father's heart is doing a thingy and the doctor wants him in for a procedure. He's had this sort of procedure before and it went fine so I'm sure it's going to be fine now that he's eighty years old too. As traditional, he's having this heart procedure two days before my birthday because for some reason my parents always have procedures on their hearts or on their brains right around my birthday. I don't know what this signifies. Anyway I'm taking my lead from him and from my mother, the former nurse, who both see this as eh, an annoying long day at the hospital but so what.

Finishing off that walk, now, Christmas day night:

Christmas tree downtown that's maybe had a bit too much eggnog and is tipping away from the road.

But from farther away --- and over the river --- it looks much more approximately straight. They repainted the old Coca-Cola sign there so the town could look more authentically like itself.

Trees on campus, showing off the colors.

The clocks on campus. You might dimly remember that Easter when I walked by these clocks were nowhere near the correct time. Well, according to my camera, this picture was taken at 6:27 so ... uh ... it's possible I never took my camera off Daylight Saving Time. Hm. Sunset would be a little after 5 pm, so it should be civil twilight if it's 5:30, but all these pictures sure look night or at least astronomical twilight. Well, no way of knowing.

Oh, hey, here's that album cover you were looking for.

And here's the cover for your Christmas album.

Trivia: Immanuel Kant wrote three papers about earthquakes in the aftermath of the Lisbon disaster of 1755.Source: The Culture of Calamity: Disaster and the Making of Modern America, Kevin Rozario.

Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine Volume 43: The Cheerful Earful Club, Tom Sims, Bela Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle. Sims and Zaboly really overestimating here how delightful was re-casting the comic strip as ``Popeye keeps a college football team'' together.

PS: What's Going On In Prince Valiant? Wait, Prince Valiant's been to North America? June - September 2024

Tags:

holidays,
parents

While at her brother's, bunnyhugger had and enjoyed some Impossible meat hot dogs. Her parents heard about this and were curious so asked us to pick some up and we could have a grilling-and-chilling day Labor Day weekend. (They really wanted us there Labor Day itself, but we hoped to go to Michigan's Adventure that day.) We did our best, going to a couple different stores, and could find no trace of Impossible Hot Dogs in the state of Michigan. Possibly the Impossible Corporation thinks there's no interest; possibly bunnyhugger's brother is in a test market. (It happens. Lansing occasionally gets use as a test market.) What we could find were Impossible Bratwurst, which is roughly as good.

Also which is why as we were driving down to meet them --- and we had started ten or fifteen minutes late for reasons I forget but that were likely my own doing --- bunnyhugger gasped with the sudden question: did I remember the bratwurst? I did not. We remembered to bring Mice and Mystics (which we didn't end up playing) and a coffee mug that bunnyhugger had borrowed earlier but the bratwurst, defrosted in the fridge, escaped both our thoughts until we were halfway there. I was ready to drive back but bunnyhugger forged ahead, on her tiny phone, to establish that the Meijer's we passed before getting to her parents' home carried Impossible Bratwurst. And that would certainly be faster than going back home and coming all the way back down. It was closer than should have been, though. This Meijer's was arranged quite differently from any in the Lansing area so I didn't know where to go to find the vegetable-based meats. I asked one of the guys working the refrigerated-meat shelves and his best guesses were (a) the frozen foods section that didn't have any bratwurst and (b) ask this other guy who knows where everything is. Other guy didn't know, but went in back to check, eventually coming out with Italian sausages right after I'd spotted where the Impossible Bratwurst were.

Once we finally got there, at least, things went pretty well. It was a great day for hanging out outdoors letting the grill get to temperature, and her father made the bratwurst really, really well. Like, with a casing --- real casing! --- that was a bit hard and had to be chewed through. And bunnyhugger's brother called while we were visiting so she got an extra, always welcome, chat with him. Turns out besides his new house he's just bought a new (used) Prius and is going through the phase of being way too into maximizing gas mileage. (I didn't really go through that phase, probably because September 2021 was so unmitigatedly awful.) So that's fun.

The side effect was that we had to eat the already-defrosted bratwurst over the last week, before it spoiled, so we've had a lot of simulated casings lately. It's not been bad, just been a lot of that in short order.

Continuing with Christmas photographs: some more pictures of Roger and then of bunnyhugger's parents' town Christmas Day night.

This delivery of sweet food was a hit with our sweet-toothed bunny.

Also he liked eating most anything he could eat so he was ready to devote all his attention to this.

Now for a walk around town. Here's a nicely decorated home in the area.

Downtown lit up the main drag pretty well and the light rain, though not snow, made it look all cinematographer-prepped.

Angels leaping out from the sidewalk theater.

Reverse angle on the angels. And hey, oh yeah, remember how the Wonka movie last year brought a hurting nation together and gave us a shared experience we all delighted in? ... Yeah, I don't remember it at all either but Wikipedia says it made $632 million, which is like three times as much as even The Emoji Movie did so I guess that's nice for them?

Trivia: A 1725 Act of Parliament imposed a fine of £100 on any tea dealer or manufacturer who adulterated their tea leaves with ``any other drug or drugs whatsoever, or ... any leaves other than the leaves of tea''. In 1730 the fine was increased to £10 for every adulterated pound. In 1766 imprisonment was made a penalty. Source: Tea: Addiction, Exploitation, and Empire, Roy Moxham.

Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine Volume 43: The Cheerful Earful Club, Tom Sims, Bela Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle. Yes, I finally got enough reading time done to see R 101 crash! The book was a pleasant and easy read, I just could not find time to sit with it in hand is all.

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Next big event after our anniversary was the 4th of July, which was a day off for me. Next regular public holiday: Labor Day. But the night before, as had been our custom, we drove down to bunnyhugger's parents, to take in the fireworks they hold there on 4thmas Eve. Here I pulled off an extremely minor coup, parking my car in the not-quite-enough-space between her father's car and the sidewalk, forcing the choice of my driving us to the park where we'd view the fireworks from. bunnyhugger has lost confidence in her father's driving --- he's always been nervous but now he's nervous and failing to notice things like pedestrians, and he came terribly close to hitting some people walking back from the fireworks when we went in 2021. (And worse, didn't realize, taking only with great skepticism our word that there was someone giving him a New Jersey salute.) [*]

I tried to frame it as doing a favor to someone who's doing us so many, and he at least claimed to accept that, and we have eleven months before we have to revisit this specific issue in this specific context. He was not at all sure I could find my way there, unaware that once I've gone somewhere like four times I remember the path automatically and also that I could reason ``every car in town going off the main drag to these neighborhood streets'' probably have motivation.

bunnyhugger's mother again stayed home, pleading that she needed to watch over the nervous pets and all, and we allowed that. It was a pretty solid show, with the fireworks launched from a slightly different spot from what we all remembered --- and what we'd advised people before the show started --- although in a way that made less of it obscured by the park's trees.

Back at bunnyhugger's parents' home we did the usual sorts of evening things like eating ice cream and then setting off our own fireworks. bunnyhugger had brought some from Meijer's and her father had gotten some the sizes of carry-on luggage so it looked to be a promising night. Also, a kid who'd been staying at the house down the block wandered over, with permission, to watch; I don't know his exact deal but he had apparently been there a couple months and was being moved away as the least-bad available option of some family crisis I didn't understand and will not speculate about.

The home fireworks were a good bit of show and fun, right up until bunnyhugger's father brought out one called ``the taco''. This was a semicircular one that he set down, semicircular arch vertical, that is, so that the top of the fireworks package was horizontal, and facing us. Also the driveway and his car. My home-grown wariness of fireworks and tendency to stand just a little farther back was justified as great showers of many bright colors shot right at us. Also, I point out, at bunnyhugger's parents' car. I ducked behind the side yard fence, accidentally setting my foot in the dog's water dish. bunnyhugger and her mother cowered against the small front porch, wanting to hide in the safety of indoors but not willing to get the two feet closer to the fireworks that they'd need to open the front door.

Obviously, none of us were set on fire and the car was not blown up by this, and with it all safely in the past we can safely tease bunnyhugger's father about does he not know what a taco looks like and how it is generally held? ... But he would offer excuses the rest of the night about why he was mistaken regarding what way was up. I sincerely hope he hasn't felt hurt by all this.

The 4th, ourselves, we ended up not using to go to an amusement park or anything. It was nicer just to sleep in and putter around the house, puttering being an underrated pastime. bunnyhugger did put together a coronation-chick'n salad, though, made into sandwiches that we used to bring a picnic to a park near the Armory. From there we watched the City of Lansing's fireworks, as well as a nearby show that we're pretty sure was the ballpark's fireworks. We also saw miscellaneous random other bits of fireworks that were probably from surrounding towns such as whatever the heck ``Dimondale'' is. Also people setting off their own fireworks, including some folks right at the Armory who were setting off container-cargo-sized arrangements of fireworks that may not have been strictly legal. As nobody ended up hurt that we saw, this was the wise and correct thing for them to do.

Also while in the park, sitting around, waiting for the city fireworks and watching the wildcat fireworkers, we saw people launching lantern balloons, over and over. The balloons turn out to be larger than we had envisioned. They're three or four feet tall and about that far across, and filling them up looks a little like the trick of opening up a garbage bag by swinging it back and forth in the air, and it takes some experimenting to see whether there's enough hot air in the lantern to set it aloft. That alone would have been worth going out to see, besides the cozy air of the whole neighborhood come out to just mess around in a pleasant cozy summer night.

[*] I will know when bunnyhugger has read this entry by when she cracks up.

Next up on my photo tours: it's bunnyhugger's birthday and that means taking a trip somewhere special ... somewhere wild ... somewhere you can dilute! dilute! OK?

Now where would you get an array of flags like this and why am I going and filming it at a weird angle? Besides that this way it's an interesting picture and arranged right it's not?

That's right, it's Bronner's Xmas Wonderland, the biggest [ qualifiers ] Christmas store in the world and the natural center of shiny, sparkly things in eastern Michigan! ... Note how people are dressed for, like, 60 degrees instead of ``early November weather''.

And here we are! Is that a heap of sparkly lines or what?

The back end of the line either for ornament personalization or possibly Anthrocon registration. No way to tell.

Scoreboard set up above the Sports ornaments section. Do you get it? ... Because I do not know what 'Home 36' signifies. 12:25, and visitor '1' sure, but is this like the whole, huge family is home for Christmas?

Little cityscape setting with figures that dance in magnet-enhanced circles around a Central Park Skating Pond.

Trivia: India's field hockey team, which had begun international play in 1926, swept the 1928 Amsterdam Summer Olympics and started a 30-game winning streak that would not be broken until six Olympics onward, and a a 1960 finals match against Pakistan. Source: Encyclopedia of the Modern Olympic Movement, Editors John E Findling, Kimberly D Pelle.

Currently Reading: Miscellaneous comic books, as mentioned.

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Last year I felt myself new enough in my position I didn't want to take more days off than I absolutely had to. Also I needed to replenish my poor savings account. This year, I'm in better shape all around, and could take off both the Thursday and Friday before Memorial Day, to attend Anthrohio. Get ready to hear all about it. In fairness, it was a great con, lots of stuff to do and nearly all of it quite successful.

With Thursday off I got to skip out on a production push which, that's fine, there'll be others, and I don't mind avoiding hard work while I can. The question was when would we set off for Columbus. The answer would be around 11:00, so that we could get to bunnyhugger's parents around noon, leave our pet rabbit with them, and take off about 1 pm. Why 1 pm?

That would be for Coon's Candy, the candy shop in Harpster, Ohio. It's an hour or so north of Columbus and we had gotten into the habit of stopping there for the sorts of treats we can't get at home so easily. The catch is they're closed Memorial Day, so ever since Morphicon/Anthrohio moved to late May we haven't been able to get there. But if we got there around 4 pm we could have an hour or so before they closed at 5:00 and all's well.

We got off to a late start, as we always do despite our best efforts. And got to bunnyhugger's parents late, and left them late. Not very, maybe ten or fifteen minutes, but an amount that shaved margin off our time at Coon's Candy. Blame our late start, and our trying to eat all the pasta salad bunnyhugger's mother made. Also bunnyhugger realized she forgot the battery for her big digital camera, and we spent some time trying to track down where we could get another. She's needed a backup anyway. The trouble is the only place that sells one is the Camera Mall in Ann Arbor, which we'd be driving past --- but it would be a ten- to-twenty-minute delay. Go there and we might not make Coon's Candy at all.

We chose Coon's Candy, although it wasn't an easy choice. The place looked much as it had our last visit, most likely in 2018. The thing most quietly distressing to me is that they'd replaced a framed vintage (local) newspaper, a front page from the assassination of McKinley. They also seem to be putting in a new logo, one that's got a nice 1950s spaceship-screen style and that I'd like if they didn't have a perfectly good raccoon baker they could have used. (But then maybe they're looking to sidle away from racist interpretations of the family name.) The noteworthy thing is bunnyhugger got some chocolate-covered potato chips, a thing she's wanted to try forever.

Making it to Coon's Candy before 5 pm meant we got to Columbus, and the Crown Plaza Or Whatever hotel that Anthrohio's been at since 2018 when they finally gave up on the now-lost Holiday Inn. And this gave us plenty of time to go through registration --- no line --- and settle into the hotel room and decide we weren't that interested in going to the MST3K event. And that we could get to another night's karaoke. (We would not.) Mostly we wanted to get something to eat, and found the Weird Subway from last year was closed despite their online hours saying they were open, and their having the lights on, the door unlocked, and the illuminated sign reading 'OPEN' in the side window. All right. So we went to White Castle instead, finally making good on the plan to get some that had failed for Motor City Furry Con and for the Eclipse Trip to Cedar Point.

While we hadn't actually done anything besides get our badges and con book, we were settled in to one of our favorite places, ``vacation at the con''. Sure to be a good weekend, right?

Enough almost-congoing. How about that Michigan's Adventure, at the close of the regular season last year?

That Dutch-angle photograph I take every trip of the Shivering Timbers station. The crowd there is the only line, for the front seat.

And Wolverine Wildcat here, along with those storage bins they put in at the end of 2022 for little obvious reason. I guess to keep people from the lone train from having to fall over other rider's stuff as they leave.

Wolverine Wildcat. Wonder where they're going.

Oh, they're going here! Fun!

We took a rare ride on Logger's Run. Here you can see the old, original ride sign, faded but still recognizable after a quarter-century of Cedar Fair ownership.

Logger's Run boat #17 here given a kick-start.

Trivia: Large-scale phosphate mines were first established in South Carolina in 1867, allowing for the considerable improvement of phosphorous-poor soils of Georgia and South Carolina. For a while. Source: Down To Earth: Nature's Role in American History, Ted Steinberg.

Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine Volume 37: The Lost Bomb Islands, Tom Sims, Bela Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle.

PS: What's Going On In Alley Oop? Why didn't they just time-travel out of the time loop? March - May 2024 as yet another piece of media does the time loop story.

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Total Eclipse of the Point saw only a small segment of Cedar Point opened, but enough for a couple hours to spend there. The first few days a park is open are notorious for operational issues --- mostly, everyone's out of practice --- but we didn't notice any serious issues with the operations. The only hang-up was that the Wild Mouse stopped several times over the day, sometimes long enough that people applauded when it started running again. But that's also something endemic to new roller coasters, and at not quite a year old Wild Mouse is still new.

And there was a treat at Wild Mouse besides that it was up and running most of the day. Outside the ride are panels showing each of the six mice. For the day, these panels had eclipse glasses on.

The park had some educational stuff set up, with posters explaining things like Bailley's Beads and shadow bands and such. Near GateKeeper also was set up a huge table with a craft project, a dozens-of-feet-long coloring-book style rendition of their Total Eclipse ... logo, and the crayons for people to color in. Many of the adults (bunnyhugger included) took on themselves the task of coloring in the fiddliest boring parts of the outlines, leaving the easier and more fun segments for the kids who were sprawled out over the project.

Most of the midway games were not up and running. There were a couple, though, offering eclipse novelties. These were even set up as play-until-you-win games, ring-bottle tosses and the like, which makes it just a purchase with a game attached. We didn't get to any of those but bunnyhugger did see and buy one of the novelties. This is a tiny plush of their Steve Seagull character. (In the past couple years Cedar Point has started marketing a doll based on the seagulls who are happy to snag fries, or whatever other foods you have. They've gotten a Squishmallow of Steve, which bunnyhugger has, fries in beak; there's also trading buttons with the theme of Steve photobombing the regular button.) The novelty here is that the doll comes in two parts, with a small magnetic base that fits under your clothes so this Steve sticks to your shoulder. Not well enough to endure a ride, no, but well enough to walk around in. Steve has, back home, become part of the small collection of things attached to the fridge and I'm sure he'll get some other outings.

Speaking of fries, we did wonder what food at the park was going to be like. Mostly it was closed, with only the Boardwalk Pavilion open. And there we learned that our season passes were not good for food or drink purchases. (They did offer a discount on merchandise, though, such as the magnetic Steve doll or a hypothetical t-shirt.) The main restaurant on the first floor was badly overloaded. There were snack stands on the second floor, though, offering moon pies and eclipse cakes and stuff like that, which we would end up eating at. Also selling pop.

I think it was while we were atop the Pavilion, seeing how much space had been reserved for people (including news crews) with serious cameras, that we first looked at the sun through eclipse glasses and saw the sun was chipped on one side. The eclipse was really happening, and we could see it.

Fooled you all with the talk about pinball tournaments and amusement park trips. The next thing on my photo roll was our trip to the Gilmore Car Museum so please be ready to see a lot of picture of cars you'll never know anyone who owns!

Going inside. The place turned out to be larger and better-furnished than I expected. You see what a substantial building just the entrance center here is. You can maybe notice how elaborate the brick work is, decorative touches authentic to the early-20th-century era that reflects most of the cars inside this particular building and that an architect of today would probably do without.

Here that cartoon kid from the Fallout video games encourages us to get a museum map. Fair enough; there's a bunch of buildings to see.

They call this exhibit Supercars but I don't remember any of these from any Gerry Anderson show.

I think we all remember this vehicle from the Monopoly board piece.

This may seem like quite a lot of patents to be bragging about on your car frame but please remember that in the early days of auto companies the only revenue stream was suing each other for Selden patent violations.

Either the heavily-patented car from the previous image or possibly a prototype for the George Pal Time Machine.

Trivia: In 1877 --- five years after Western Union implemented a system to transfer money by telegraph --- it was used to send almost $2.5 million in 38,669 separate transactions. Source: The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's Online Pioneers, Tom Standage.

Currently Reading: The Diplomacy of the American Revolution, Samuel Flagg Bemis. Sorry, the book mentioned John Adams's ``umbrageous'' experience wirg Charles Gravier de Vergennes and my goodness how have we not done more with that word over time?

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Terrible news, regarding pet health. Not for our pet rabbit, but for one of bunnyhugger's parents' dogs. The rest is hidden behind the cut because if you don't need terrible pet health news in your day you shouldn't have to have it.

( It's grim. )

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parents,
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Easter this year didn't see us making the usual two-day, overnight-stay trip to bunnyhugger's parents. This was mostly an oversight; bunnyhugger signed up to work at the bookstore for what she didn't realize was the day before Easter. The day was busy anyway; it started with her doing the Bunny Hop 5K run (or, walk) at the city zoo and, to great consternation, she somehow lost her headphones there. She's been dealing with wired headphones while managing the twin facts that her old headphones were the best model of their kind ever manufactured and the company discontinued them last year and nothing remotely like it is made anymore.

Still, this did save us --- and our pet rabbit --- the bother of packing up our pet rabbit to be moved down there for a night's stay. Instead come Easter Sunday we got our chocolates and egg-dyeing kits together and visited and ate twelve bags of potato chips and nachos. And some non-eating-related things too, such as dying the three dozen eggs we had between us. I, left in charge of the egg-buying, got what turned out to be small ostrich eggs, things large enough they'd overwhelm the wireframe holders used to dip an egg partway into dye. More importantly, they were way too big for the plastic shrink-wrap patterns that shrink to fit the eggs; we had to save those for next year.

Also, taking a stroll around town, I discovered at the park near bunnyhugger's parents' house a small retaining wall and what looks like some sort of picnic area with a curious ring of stones inside a larger ring of stones. Neither of them had any idea what this thing was, which makes me feel better about having not noticed this part of the park before.

After dinner bunnyhugger thought it'd be nice to play a three-player game of Parks with me and her mother. (Her father doesn't like the game, possibly because there are no dice in it.) She figured, reasonably, that this would be a nice way to pass an hour or so before we needed to go back home. What she didn't count on is that three players is much more complex than the two-player games she and her mother enjoyed. Also that she was playing with someone who would over-strategize every single freaking little thing, coming in the last turns of the last rounds to acquire credit for something like forty parks and winning after she had been ahead the whole game. Look, it happens.

So we set out for home later than would probably have been wise, but it was a fine day altogether. Later we would realize we hadn't seen It's The Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown. Maybe for Orthodox Easter.

Now let's return to looking around the Calhoun County Fair from last year. Nice place.

Wall of midway game prize Care Bears. I could name ... uh ... two of them? Maybe? I didn't know the one with lollipops was a real character and not a fan-made thing.

The art here is going for friendly hangout rhino but they hit ``stoned''.

Getting to more dramatic views of the Ferris wheel here.

Silver Streak here up to full speed but only gathering a short line yet.

The bungee, the drop tower, and the fun slide make for a nice layering of stuff in here.

I believe I've caught this Gravitron in the act of spinning but admit I can't quite prove it from the light trails.

Trivia: In 1851 some 76,000 men and women in Britain described themselves as schoolmasters/schoolmistresses or general teachers; there were another 20,000 or so governesses. Source: The Age of Revolution, 1789 - 1848, Eric J Hobsbawm.

Currently Reading: Deck Us All With Boston Charlie, Walt Kelly.

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Last Saturday we went to bunnyhugger's place for a couple of reasons, among them picking up on the final bonus chapter of Mice and Mystics, the cooperative roleplaying board game we've been at since ... uh ... 2017? Something? I don't remember when we played last and as it turns out, this would be a problem.

Normally at the end of every session we record a 'save state', writing down on paper who's playing in the chapter, what equipment they have, how much cheese (the mana of the game), how many wounds, what room they're in, et cetera. We even do this at the end of the chapter so we don't get confused about where we are and why. But this time we couldn't find a save sheet for the last time we played. The most recent one we could find was dated about a year ago and referenced being midway through the second bonus chapter. We know we finished that, and we could swear we had started the last bonus chapter, but could we find a scrap of evidence to support that? No.

We couldn't even get a clear hint from the bags with every player's cards and stuff. Like, none of the characters we would be playing had any cheese or wound markers --- unlikely, but not impossible, especially if we'd been lucky at avoiding wounds but unlucky at getting cheese. But some of the characters we were not playing did have cheese. What explains this? As she looked through the description of the adventure bunnyhugger was sure we were partway through it --- one page had a gimmick in it, barrels rolling out of control --- that was very familiar. But there've been similar gimmicks in other chapters over the many years we've played the game.

After much debate we gave in and accepted, we were going to have to start from scratch. Disappointing since it meant likely we wouldn't be able to finish before we'd have to go home. As it turned out, we couldn't finish because of a string of bad luck rolls in the second room, which ate up both game time and real time, bringing us to a failure only halfway through. We weren't even able to get to the point where bunnyhugger's father notices he has cards for two different hammers and wonders why and we explain. (One gives you more dice when rolling to attack an enemy in the same space as you, the other gives you more dice when rolling to attack an enemy in an adjacent space, and since he's only in it for the dice-rolling we house rule that he's using whichever one gives the more dice at the moment.)

Disappointing to not get further, although going through what we were able to visit convinced me that we read the introduction to this chapter without actually playing it. Can't prove it, though.

After failing, we removed the items that we had acquired over the game and put everything back without making notes of what the game state was.

Now, let's enjoy pictures from that day at the beach!

Someone's sandcastle, complete with stone ceiling and flowers out front. Nice bit of work altogether.

The sandcastle, but photographed at my usual goofball angle, so that I can get a little view of bunnyhugger in the water. Also, I like how this picture looks.

Park bench in front of the swings observing the memory of Sharon Claus, who I hear loved swings.

Charmingly handmade sign by the bathrooms asking us to be nice and ... wait a minute, enhance.

Yeah, there's birds that set up homes on the signs in here. Totally understand their reasons, too, since this is in a hallway open on either side but sheltered against the rain and other unpleasant elements. I wasn't sure if there was an actual bird sitting in the nest while I was there but looking at the picture ... I'm still not sure.

Well, back to the beach, and to a sandcastle that's got a moat, but no stones or flowers.

Trivia: In support of General William T Sherman's Atlanta campaign the Louisville and Nashville Railroad ran an average of 160 cars over its single line of track (and supporting tracks) for two hundred days, bringing the Union supplies. Source: The Story of American Railroads, Stewart H Holbrook.

Currently Reading: NACA To NASA to Now, Roger D Launius.

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Next thing we got to in September (so you know how far behind I'm still running) was visiting bunnyhugger's parents. Their town was having a festival --- and the college in town having a homecoming that seemed like one to two months early --- and even better, they were willing to go to it. So after a little while in their home we drove the mile or so to downtown (not snarking on them here; I don't find that a long walk but I'm sure when I'm thirty years older I will) and started looking around.

The fair promised food and there was a lot of it. Almost all of it was barbecue, which none of the four of us were really up for. So we ended up walking around looking at all the grease trucks and finding somehow they're all doing ribs? Was this a ribfest mislabelled? We eventually found something but I don't remember what it was, just that it was at a place popular with swift-moving lines.

Then we walked up and down the main street in town, which had been blocked off for sidewalk sales and displays and such. bunnyhugger bought a cautious couple dollars' worth of Mexican(?) candies from one, to her later regret as if she'd known how much she'd liked them she'd have bought more. Along the way I discovered another historical plaque the town's erected to support its claim of being the origins of T-ball. And we got into a talk with some of the older ladies who're poll workers, looking for more people. As we don't live in that county, we were excused, but they did point out every county needs people. Unsaid, and maybe not meant by them, is especially now that Republicans are trying to end voting.

After this bunnyhugger's parents drove home. bunnyhugger and I figured to walk home, after we spent a little time on the carnival rides brought in. There was a roller coaster there, yes, a Go-Gater (do you get the pun? I did not) that kept closing down for repairs even in the short while we were there. We didn't go for a ride on it; if adults are even allowed on it, it's a very slight thing and we don't need every possible credit. Did like its cute alligator logo, though. And there was no carousel, if you can imagine.

They did, though, have a Heart Flip, a flat ride nearing extinction. It's a sort of rigid swing ride, with the twist that at the end of each arm is a heart-shaped cage with two seats, facing each other, and the riders can use it to twist themselves around as they're spinning. We thought hard about whether to ride it, although in the end we couldn't find any evidence that it was sized for grown-ups to sit in.

So instead we walked home, along the way discovering that that house with the smashed-in garage overhanging the river has finally had some work done to stabilize it. At least there was what looked like plywood walls covering the spot that had been wrecked. Since our understanding was that the city wasn't going to permit rebuilding the part overhanging the river we don't know what all was going on here. But since our understanding was also that the homeowner and the city were fighting over who to blame for this (it was one of the city's trees that smashed it) maybe something was worked out. More on this as it comes to pass.

Meanwhile in the past, here's the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk for you to enjoy looking at.

And here's the Sea Serpent on the tracks, giving you a nice view of what's appealing about this small knee-banger of a coaster.

So this is what you see if you look at Wipeout! from the outside. It doesn't give any hint what's inside, which is part of the thrill of this sort of hidden ride.

And here's what you see if you go into Wipeout!. No on-ride pictures, of course, so you don't can't see the strobe effect or the ultraviolet-painted figures on the backdrop art.

Cute little sign pointing out where Sea Serpent is.

Sea Serpent photos includes a new model for the sea serpent, one that looks a bit more appealingly pudgy.

And here's how Sea Serpent looks from the station, peering out over the lower section of the boardwalk. You can see the kiddie-size drop tower in the background.

Trivia: Doctor Willard Bliss, physician in charge of President James Garfield's post-shooting care, blamed Garfield's death on a broken backbone, and not a massive blood infection. Source: Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President, Candice Milliard. Again, while he was more or less a doctor by 19th century standards, his first name was Doctor, because the 19th century was just like that, you know?

Currently Reading: The Tale That Wags The God, James Blish. Editor Cy Chauvin.

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Page Summary

Lift Up Your Hearts and Sing Me a Song That Was a Hit Before Your Mother Was Born
This Indecision's Bugging Me
But the neon lights keep flashing, come in and see the show
I would like you to dance
It's so much fun to hum a happy working song
There's nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be
It's Christmas Eve and I can see we're in love
Later we'll have some pumpkin pie and we'll do some caroling
Every year it's the same routine all over, all over
You can't hide your lyin' eyes
Now Mister Lang is very old so they call it Old Lang's Sign
I haven't told the landlord but I'm moving today
Aroma rising from the ancient coals has turned you into someone very bold
Sandy, the fireworks are hailing over Little Eden tonight
You dream of Columbus
Every now and then I get a little bit nervous
Make time stop and listen for our sighs
Where they use the slide machine, where the gods of gold are heard
You never put anything in its place
You still got the sun and a river full of fun

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