austin_dern

Back to Closing Day at Cedar Point, with a guest. As mentioned the weather was just nice enough, and the staff just short enough, that everything was closed or crowded.

Worse, though, is that MWS started to feel pained, and went back to my car to sit a while and drink ice water while painkillers tried to do something for him. We couldn't think how awful it would be to have the first trip to Cedar Point in years have the center knocked out like that. (And he's had similar problems before, one day at Kings Island being knocked out when he was nauseated after an hour or two and had to go back to the hotel room to sleep for hours.) bunnyhugger worried that the day was a bust, but I kept my usual optimistic self and insisted that it was going to be fine. If nothing else it was going to be a day at Cedar Point, what's terrible about that?

And after about 6 pm the crowds did seem to be diminishing, with the line to Top Thrill 2 looking short enough to be worth trying out. So we did, stuffing all our things into the same locker and everyone relying on me to remember the number (I could remember where it was but had to reverse-engineer the number from that). And got into a line that didn't look much longer than what we'd had during our Halloweekends visit; we might have time to ride both this and Siren's Curse. Then the ride went down.

A good number of people jumped out of line ahead of us, but they never played the ride-is-closed-for-the-rest-of-the-day announcement. No real word will ever go out about how long they expect the problem to be, but we were heartened when a train loaded with people did go out and ride successfully. That turned out to just be discharging the people who were already loaded up and there was more maintenance to do. We kept an eye on the clock and on the eventually launched test trains and were on the brink of leaving when they announced the ride was open again, to great applause.

Then, of course, the Fast Lane --- which had been empty --- filled up, probably with parkgoers who saw the ride had been closed and had a minimal line-cutter's wait. So our wait kept on waiting. Finally the 8:00 closing hour passed. We would get one ride on this, our one roller coaster of the day, and that only if the ride didn't go down again.

It did not. We got up to the station finally, where as usual the ride operator was assigning seats. Within limits: he offered the people in front of us the choice of front seat or back on the next train. They picked back. So he gave the three of us rows one and two. Front seat. We both deferred to MWS for the front row; we'll likely have more chances for a front-seat ride than he will, for next year at least. I tried to defer the other front seat to bunnyhugger, but she took the second row, so, there I was, having my first front-seat ride on a coaster of this size since, probably, that time at Great Adventure we got to ride Kingda Ka (RSVP) repeatedly at the end of that night.

Top Thrill 2 does not have the single acceleration of the original Top Thrill. But it does have three linear induction accelerations, and a nice long hang after the reverse one, peering down hundreds of feet and, for me this time, nothing obstructing my view but the track. And when we crested the top hat it felt again like we were being pitched out of our seats --- no seat belts, by the way; the restraints are just that cozy and good --- and could see the whole park, closing up, in the darkness. Then a rocket back down and a brake to a stop and applauding for what a fantastic ride that was.

We staggered off the ride --- the ride photos booth was unattended and it turns out you can't just buy a ride photo anymore anyway --- before remembering that we had to get our stuff out of our locker. And then we also had to get MWS's milestone photograph. We had all forgotten to get a sheet of paper with 100 on it, but he was able to type out 100 on his phone in a big typeface --- the thing I'm told the kids do --- and we got to the entrance of Top Thrill 2 for the scene. They had already turned off so many lights that our pictures came out lousy, unless we turned the flash on, in which case they came out lousy in a different way. Still, he reached his milestone, and on a quite good coaster, and from the front row, in a way that has a story behind it. Great stuff.

Still, it was a day that saw us ride only a couple of carousels, and the loaded-to-capacity(!) train from back of the park to the front, and one roller coaster, plus eat some cheese-on-a-stick and fries. It wasn't the good low-key riding bonanza we had been hoping for. Maybe opening weekend will be different.

Now? I have a couple scattered pictures from April and May as I tried to talk Motor City Furry Con's lost-and-found into acknowledging my existence and returning my camera. Not enough to be worth sharing, though. Instead, here's the first couple pictures with my brand-new used camera, and I bet you can guess what's first on that new photo roll.

It's Athena! Who doesn't see what the point of this thing shoved in her face is.

With the flash you get to see her eye color and her concern that I'm covering part of the flash rectangle with my finger.

There we go, that's a slightly better camera flash. Yes, her food dish reads DOG.

She went upstairs in her hutch and sprawled out where she could look disapprovingly at me.

Got a little closer and got a slightly different look of 'what are you bothering me about?' picture.

I turned off the flash and turned up the ISO and got a more naturalistic view of our all-black rabbit in her hutch.

Trivia: The longest animation strike in the United States was the May-December 1947 strike against Terry Toons. Source: Terrytons: The Story of Paul Terry and His Classic Cartoon Factory, W Gerald Hamonic.

Currently Reading: The New York Game: Baseball and the Rise of a New City, Kevin Baker.

Another day without time to write so you get Christmas Day photos. Please enjoy!

Our Christmas tree at home, decorated --- we went with just white lights --- and gifts to give out to everyone.

We got out like five kinds of paper and also some of the nice little mini-greeting-card style gift tags. Also you can see our Stephen laser-cut wood ornament there.

The tree and a view into the dining room. The dining room is so bright because of a grow light there keeping an aloe plant from giving up on life altogether.

And our arrangement of things on the mantle, including a bunch of cards, pinball trophies, and the scented candle thingy that I got really into last year.

Now, Christmas day and the tree at bunnyhugger's parents. Not seen: cat wondering why she has to maneuver through all of this stuff to get at the sun room.

bunnyhugger sitting up and wondering where the coffee and pancakes are.

And here's Athena, wondering why she had to be moved from home for whatever this all is going on. Her first Christmas!

bunnyhugger's parents' dog, in her sweater, wondering why I'm Stitch's Girlfriend Angel.

And here she is sitting up on the sofa and looking very serious about everything.

Back to Athena. We gave her a couple presents, one of them this board with rope loops that she could pull and chew. We figured with her interests in pulling things and chewing them she'd love it, and she did, for minutes.

Here she is standing on it and investigating why I'm holding the camera at her.

Athena guarding her board. While she's never been wild about it, she has recently got more interested in it, or at least in chewing the rope loops open. I'm not sure what her favorite toy is, really, at this point.

Trivia: The United States Post Office was given control of both telephone and telegraph communications in autumn 1918 as wartime measures, ostensibly to prevent a threatened telegraphers strike and to keep private companies from managing secret government communications in wartime. Source: The American Mail: Enlarger of the Common Life, Wayen E Fuller. Or it was the peak of the Post Office's attempts to control long-distance communications. Take your interpretation.

Currently Reading: Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space, Adam Higginbotham.

So, the good news: the Lansing City County unanimously voted this week to declare us an ``LGBTQ+ Welcoming City'', passing a resolution condemning all violence, harassment, or intimidation against the community and reaffirming the right for everyone to live freely and safely in the city. It's also resolved to protect gender-affirming care, to prohibit the use of city resources to interfere with people seeking that care, and to develop pro-LGBTQ+ ordinances and policies. It's a good declaration, the sort of thing you need to be a healthy community.

The bad news is why they were moved to make such a resolution, even past the criminal behavior of the disgraced national government. I'm hiding that behind a cut because you can imagine what might have gone on, but not why it's something that comes to me specifically.

But, a small and better thing now. One of the members of our pinball league had been changing into dresses partway through, or after, the night, and this past week asked the league standings to reflect their new name, going from a male-coded to a female-coded name. Yeah, no trouble; it wasn't any work updating the spreadsheet for that, and calling her by the new name when drawing up groups for the night. And, goodness, but she was so grateful that we could be normal about this. It feels great right up until you examine why someone would think it worth saying how nice it is you call them by what they say is their name.

We're now getting into late November in photos and you know what that means: the eating holidays!

We had Thanksgiving at bunnyhugger's parents', so I'm sharing fewer pictures than usual to not give out too much of their lives like this. But here's the spread as we were getting ready for dinner. You understand why we brought A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. I forget why we brought the disc of 70s Charlie Brown specials, though. Maybe to have a backup copy of Thanksgiving.

Dinner started with potatoes!

Back home, Athena was curious what all this fuss was about.

She looks good loafing on the ground.

Or maybe she's decided there's something else she wants to do?

Yes: she wants to get underneath the sofa. She did not at this moment, nor for a while to come, but it's in her thoughts.

Trivia: ``Inane'' first appeared in English around 1662 as a serious term meaning ``empty, void'', as in the formless void of space; the word was borrowed from the Latin inānis ``empty, useless'', and often used as a noun meaning ``infinite space'' that century. Source: Semantic Antics: How and Why Words Change Meaning, Sol Steinmetz.

Currently Reading: American Scientist, July - August 2025, Editor Fenella Saunders.

Small mouse update. I mean the update is small, but so are the mice. After a couple days of the mice getting to be at peace with each other it was time to start adding toys, which bunnyhugger had.

The first is this wooden bridge, a set of small logs with a stiff wire connecting them so you can give it some shape, even if (as happens in our case) neither end is held to anything. So it's more of a thin, hollow hill than a bridge, but it gives them access to some height. This was a big hit, as the mice quickly examined it and decided they quite liked going up the hill, and down the hill, and peering down from the apex of the bridge. The eldest mouse also started to build a new nest under one of its feet.

The next day came a new toy, and a practical one. It's a balsa-wood house, two levels with a bunch of 'doors' and 'windows' all of soft wood that probably feels great to chew. This, set in the corner, was also a big hit right away and we got to watch a lot of excited mouse exploration of how to get in, how to get out, and how to squirt from the second level to the roof. (There's no direct way to get from the first level to the second, yet, but they can chew it open in time.) It was also fascinating watching them pull litter that bunnyhugger had tossed into it back outside and set on the bridge.

This morning they'd rebuilt things, building up bedding material to pretty near the top of the first level, making the ramp up there redundant. Also they'd taken some craft paper and pulled it over one of the entrances, which can now be used in privacy. So they seem to have things largely figured out. The next thing to add: a running wheel. This had been held back for fear that it would give them something to fight over as they establish the pecking order. If that's gotten established and they don't have serious cause to quarrel anymore, they can get to running.

And now, early November, you know what happened? We adopted a pet rabbit is what and here's the pictures from meeting her! Which I might have already run but ask me if I have the energy to check that when I can just upload a half-dozen pictures again.

Athena in her carrier, ready to be let loose!

And here she is, getting her first view of her new living space!

And here she is, running away from her living space!

No ... no, bunny, don't go wedging yourself into the labyrinth of cables from our component stereo! Not with your cable-eating habit!

There, we've dragged her out and coaxed her into trying out her pen, now at the cleanest it will ever be.

Finally I give in and take a flash photograph so she isn't just a featureless black blob, and you can see how she has eyes and everything! Isn't that adorable?

Trivia: In 1546, two Portuguese agents stationed in Venice reported that 650,000 pounds of spice, much of it from Aceh, had landed in Cairo, bound for Venice. This would be enough to supply Europe for a month. Source: A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped The World, William J Bernstein.

Currently Reading: Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition, Daniel Okrent.

My friend with the search for Parisian pinball arcades did get me to look at Pinball Map, just in case there were any in Rennes. It turned out there was a venue, Le Grand Huit, with a half-dozen pinball games and just on the other side of the train station from us! And in what they listed as a barcade. As far as I could tell from the web site it was a bunch of converted warehouses or something with a variety of amusement and arcade attractions put around. They even had a couple vintage fairground rides, although the hours when they were operating were vague. Pinball map suggested the pinballs here were new, or at least were first noticed just a couple weeks before we were in town. This would be a great place to spend the long evening after the conference ended Thursday! Except that the venue was closed for a special event Thursday. We had to go Wednesday evening, when we'd only have a couple hours, or else not go at all.

So and with rather too few coins in our pocket we set out and I led us confidently through roads that seemed a lot closer together in online maps. I was just getting worried we'd gotten lost, thanks to some construction on the south side of the Gare, when we reached a new corner and saw the big sign pointing to the new entrance! Perfect!

The collection of stuff at Le Grand Huit feels a little like What If Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum ran a barcade? It's not so crowded as a Marvin's thing would be, but it's also got more space than Marvin's old holdout-of-the-mall-food-court space would have allowed. They had some stuff that it sure looked, in the photographs, that adults might get to ride, including a swings and maybe a carousel that looks like a solid mutt of different mounts put together, but we were there by like 9 pm and they had long since stopped running rides for the day. The place has a couple salon carousel gondolas as dining booths, and has one carousel elevated, rotating eternally, passenger-less, fifteen feet above the dining floor. It's a pity to have a carousel be unusable for riding but it is also a heck of a thing to see it from that angle, without the platform always underneath. They also have a robot bartender, a coin-operated mechanical arm that the web site claims once did industrial manufacture stuff and that now will make a drink for you, but only on the weekends, which we were as far away from as it was possible to get.

And then, yes, pinball, two tables put next to each other beside the robot bartender, almost a normal arrangement, and four tables put way off (but near the actual bartender), radial spokes around a center pole beneath a canopy. It's an unusual but attractive arrangement. And the choice of games was ... wow. Weird. They were all old games, and not as some venues might have representing pinball's diversity of eras (electromechanical, early solid state, late solid state, dot matrix, LCD screens). No, they were all games from about 1989 to 1992, a range so tiny it seems like it must have been an aesthetic choice, but what was the aesthetic? It kind of smells of ``someone was given €15,000 and told to make it weird''.

The most normal games they had were Lethal Weapon 3 --- a slightly annoying game but one you can still find in tournaments --- and The Party Zone --- I've never seen this in tournament play, but it's a fun one. Also Riverboat Gambler, which you never see places. Gilligan's Island, which has some of the best integration of the theme into a game ever but that doesn't have much depth of gameplay, and has a little pranking move where you can give all your opponents points that makes it a courageous choice for tournament play. Surf N Safari, a water-park-themed 90s Gottlieb game so it's kind of fun but also not well-balanced a table. And ... Class of 1812.

Class of 1812 is another early-90s Gottlieb game so it's a little ramshackle in its design and rules. Its theme is that you're at the graveyard, digging up a comical-horror family, each of the major areas corresponding to one of the family you're recovering. Yes, there is a rapping granny. The most delightful piece, though, is that when you start multiball, which the game gives you eight billion chances to do, it starts playing The 1812 Overture. And after one round of the famous theme it goes back and starts over, only this time with chickens clucking the tune out. This is why people love the game, even though like nobody has it (The Pinball Arcade has it in simulation, though, and it's worth it). We had to play that.

So we did. I had an okay game; bunnyhugger nearly broke ten million, a great score. We played again and while I did better, she did better yet. She got a replay score at least once; I got a match, and we got to play another round. For only about three games each we were doing very well. For a time on our last game I started thinking one of us might reach the high score table but it turns out it started somewhere north of 35 million points, well beyond us. But for only a handful of games in a completely new venue? We had little to complain about.

But we had less change, our euros now exhausted. We thought a bit about getting a drink from the bar, and more change, and playing on ... but ... it was also getting closer to a time when we should be responsible and get to bed. So, regretting that the venue was closed for a private event Thursday when that would have been perfect for our needs, we made the sad way back to our cozy hotel.

Had enough rabbits yet? Of course not, but we will run out of Calhoun County Fair rabbits soon. In fact ...

Another Californian loaf looking suspiciously at me.

Rabbit conference threatening to get out of hand when one rabbit has the insight: you can just step on the others!

Rabbit wondering if anyone else knows about this ``just step on them'' move because it will change everything!

Here's a chicken stunned by the stepping-on action.

This kid was proud of his chicken and wanted us to take pictures of him with them and did not care that neither of us knew the other and we'd never get pictures to him. So, here, in case you have a google face alert going. I think it's a pretty good picture at that.

Here's one of those rare chickens that can lay an egg through their own bars, which is what gets you best-of-class.

Trivia: New York City radio station WEAF (later WNBC, now WFAN) aired its first paid advertisement in August 1922; by late 1923, the National Carbon Company sponsored the Eveready Hour, promoting its batteries. Source: Wih Amusement For All: A History of American Popular Culture since 1830, LeRoy Ashby.

Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine, Volume 64: Olive Oyl's Dilemma!!, Ralph Stein, Bela Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle.

Thursday all I managed was to get one game in on everything in Main and Classics. bunnyhugger had a similar strategy, but she was further divided by the need to enter Women's, and I believe she ended up not entering games on all six Classics tables to clear time for Women's. Nor did she end up focusing on Main very much. In this she seems to have been like most of the women playing at Pinball At The Zoo. You can get into the women's championship with a strong finish in women's-only events, or in open-to-all events, and there's big open-to-all events you can get five or more ratings points in every week. Women's only events with this kind of rating are Pinball At The Zoo and that's that.

For a while she was up top of the rankings, but as the day wore on and more people showed up she dropped lower. By the end of the first day qualifying she was tied for 14th, with the top 16 players going on to playoffs, and despaired that she would make it when everyone playing Friday entered their games. I countered that given how busy Thursday was, it was likely that most everyone who was going to play at all had put scores up. My prediction was that the roster of finally qualifying women would look a lot like the people who currently were there. The positions would be scrambled, surely, but probably 90 percent of the people currently above the cut would be there in the late morning Saturday when women's finals began. The discomforting thing to answer that is that wouldn't the people most likely to drop below the cut be the people in 14th and 15th and 16th place?

Well, I thought to save a screenshot of the standings after the first day and can tell you: I was wrong that 90 percent of the top 16 would be there at the end of qualifying. Only twelve of the top sixteen made it. The interesting thing is that three of the women who didn't make it were in the top eight after one day. The other was the woman who was tied with bunnyhugger after the first day.

My strategy for Friday --- when FAE couldn't come with us, owing to work --- was going around playing the games I thought I could most likely improve my standings on. For example, my Thursday game of The Shadow had been a disaster, three rapid drains. Surely I could do better, by ... no, that was another three rapid drains. All right. And then The Shadow went down so solidly that I gave up on the idea of ever getting back to it.

In Classics I got back to Jungle Queen, putting up a more okay-ish game that still wasn't in the top 60 of players. I tried Golden Arrow, especially after listening to some better players about how they got their scoring strategy together, and somehow did worse than I had done before. At this point, I gave up on Classics and focused on Main, so far as I played at all.

Particularly, like, their Iron Man pinball. Their table was prepared for tournament play by a simple strategy to make it harder, removing this pop-up post that stops the ball in the middle of an orbit shot. The better players weren't thrown too badly by this. I was completely beaten by it. There was in the free-play area an Iron Man that I was able to use and practice things like ``how can I make the skill shot without that pop-up post?'' and ``what exactly do I do to start the Iron Monger Multiball again?'' and armed with this knowledge, was able to nearly quadruple my score to 97th best among the entrants.

The one where I kept figuring there'd be a breakthrough was Metallica. It's a table I know quite well, and that usually treats me well, and it wouldn't be hard to break through on it. The median score was about 30 million points and that's not at all hard to hit; just get two multiballs on a game that has seventy multiballs. A hundred million, which would be unlikely on a tournament game but hardly unthinkable, would be a top-15 score. So I spent most of my Friday --- and Saturday --- entries crashing up against that, somehow failing to start the simplest multiball, the Sparky electric chair, over and over and over until my final game started in the last minutes of open qualifying on Saturday. That one, finally, I managed a partial breakthrough, getting one multiball started and getting to about 16 million. About half what I thought I could reasonably get, but still, far better than I'd been doing, and beating even skilled players like MWS or MAG.

Reader, I failed to make playoffs again. Even with B Playoffs taking a largest-ever sixteen players (and that after A Playoffs took a largest-ever 24 players), I finished in ... 41st place. Just behind MWS, PH, and BIL, which I have to say is at least really good territory. PH I'm sure was was so far out of contention only because his responsibilities running the tournament --- and fixing games, especially the often-broken Shadow and Bobby Orr's Power Play --- ate up his time.

And now a last half-dozen pictures of Roger and his birthday present.

Roger leaping back into his pen. It happens he caught his foot doing this, so when we first worried about his mobility issues I thought it was that he'd wrenched his foot a moment before this picture.

He had grabbed the 'pie' shell and carried it off to eat. Note that his hindleg is a little damp from the condensation on his freeze bottle.

That's not going to slow down his eating, though.

And now here he is having a bite of pie shell.

Just a nice picture of his eye. He looks wary or concerned or unhappy but that's just bunny face, you know?

Slightly different framing of his profile and he doesn't look quite so disapproving of all these goings-on. For now.

Trivia: The + shaped direction pad for the Nintendo Famicom controller was derived from the controller its lead engineer, Gumpei Yokoi, developed in the late 70s for the Game & Watch LCD games. Source: The Ultimate History of Video games, Steven L Kent. If I'm not being misled from what I can find about these games, it looks like no Game & Watch game used a + controller before 1982. But it would need development sooner than that to be consumer-product-ready, of course.

Currently Reading: Force: What It Means to Push and Pull, Slip and Grip, Start and Stop, Henry Petroski.

I forget when on Saturday at Motor City Furry Con this happened, but it was sometime over the day: bunnyhugger asked if I had thoughts what it meant that her parents hadn't sent a report about Athena's eating. I laid out my reasoning: if she had not eaten at all they would have e-mailed to say a crisis was potentially developing. If she had eaten all her pellets they would have sent the great news that she was feeling well and eating plenty. Therefore, she had to be eating indifferently, probably eating her vegetables and hay just fine and her pellets maybe if you held them up to her mouth so eating was the easiest way to get them out of her sight. This was her interpretation too, and it would transpire that this was correct.

Since the convention Athena has been eating much more reliably, touch wood, and we think we've found a possible explanation for the problem. We'd been giving her as much food as our Flemish Giants got, and, for example, Roger was about 50% more rabbit than she was. We cut her pellets down to half of what she had been getting and she had no trouble finishing that. Then bunnyhugger read the pellets bag estimates for what rabbits should eat (by weight) and we found we weren't feeding her quite enough. With meals in-between too little and too much? She seems happy with that now. If we'd gone and checked instead of just feeding her like she was a larger rabbit we might have avoided a lot of stress on everyone's part.

It's still odd that she was happy to overeat for months before turning off it. Most rabbits, like most humans, are happy to eat until the food is gone. Stephen would in his youth leap up the coach and the hutch to get at the pellet bag and dive into it never to emerge again. Also it's odd that she was overeating for months and not gaining weight. But she's young and maybe could work off the extra calories.

After the variety show I know we did go to the Dealers Den, finally getting in. We'd gone at like 6:30 the night before to find the place closed and surprised because we would have sworn the schedule said it was open to 7 pm. But this puts me in mind of a thing that happened Sunday, when we were sitting in Hospitality. We overheard someone on con staff discussing how annoyed they were that they had to have someone sitting guard at the Dealer's Den entrance --- it was housed in an outbuilding, just behind the patio, probably well-positioned for doing wedding receptions and the like --- because people would not stop coming up and trying to open the door. The person he was talking to asked, well, did you have a `CLOSED` sign up? Something with the hours posted? No, because of the high winds --- the whole weekend kept trying to be a severe storm before the severe storm actually rolled in --- any sign they tried taping to the door would blow off. I felt like they maybe hadn't considered taping something to the inside of the glass door. Also if both bunnyhugger and I mis-read the Friday night schedule the same way maybe there was something wrong with how the schedule was laid out.

On looking at the pocket schedule now I'm thinking I mis-understood the Con Store's opening hours to have been the Dealer's Den. But I'm not sure how to fix that; it's not like you can just leave the Con Store off. The pocket schedule organized things by what floor they were on, with the outdoor pavilion grouped with first-floor things and the Con Store with the second-floor things. The choice is compellingly reasonable. Maybe the best alternative would be to have swapped colors; Con Store was in bright while Dealers Den was in turquoise. One was more compelling to my eyes, but you can't count on colors for critical information.

bunnyhugger had brought her sketchbook, in case she found someone whose art she wanted to commission, but she didn't find anyone that time around. Similarly in going through the Artists Alley, back in the main hotel on the second floor; shame to go without getting a commission but that's all right. It's not a tradition to get one at every con, just a common thing to do.

Enough looking around the pinball arcade at Indiana Beach. Let's ... look at it just a little bit more and then move back into the amusement park proper.

Candy crane machine in the pinball arcade, with fun candies like Munch, Iceese's, Giggles, and 4 Icekteers.

And noticed this fun bit of game detail on Roller Coaster Tycoon: the promise that Pinball 1 is fun, just like you'd get some Peep's thoughts.

Back outside here and enjoying the look up at the sky ride.

The evening shadows haven't quite gotten to the water park or the eastern end of the boardwalk.

Always going to appreciate seeing the Fascination parlor and its signage.

And this is a look up at a Flying Bobs that used to be at Coney Island C'town.

Trivia: The Soviet Union's 1929 attempt at calendar reform had five epagomenal days, days not part of any week or month, so that the rest of the calendar could be twelve months of thirty days each. The days were chosen to commemorate various facets of the revolution; on the Gregorian calendar, they appeared on the 22nd of January, the 1st and 2nd of May, and the 7th and 8th of November. Source: Marking Time: The Epic Quest to Invent the Perfect Calendar, Duncan Steel.

Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine Sundays Supplement Volume 15: 1953, Tom Sims, Bela Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle.

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.

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?

Athena's finished getting her injections, and she agrees she's finished with them, although she's been mostly very patient about them. SHe'll try to tense her skin up, making it harder to make the injection, but she doesn't try to launch herself out of range or anything. The meloxicam she's not enthusiastic about, but she's willing to take, if it's dribbled out a little at a time. This allows us the chance to see her lapping up the medication, her tongue twitching like hummingbird wings, occasionally flipping to the opposite side of her mouth and then back again.

Critical Care she remains very critical of, not just resisting the lure of food shoved into her mouth and not just wriggling her head out of the way, but using all her young-bunny strength to squirm out of the way. Wednesday night we'd taken to the Bunny Burrito, wrapping her tight in a towel, to avoid this, and Thursday it failed entirely. She worked out how to liquefy herself and squirt out at an instant. I've gotten good at grabbing her after that, but she's not willing to stay held. Last night she leapt out of my hold and was flying at bunnyhugger's face when I snagged her midair. bunnyhugger was getting ready to be seriously hurt by an eight-and-half-pound rabbit with a temper and was glad she was not. Me, I thought of that as ``the last thing a banana sees''.

Still, the morning, she got around to taking a couple mouths full of pellets. She hasn't finished the bowl, as I write this in the morning, but she's not refusing them either, which is progress. Hopefully we won't need to force-feed her tonight, or at least won't have to do it much lon

Enough looking at the history of Kings Island. Now it's time to look at stuff we did there.

Now here's the real actual Eiffel Tower at Kings Island, a one-third scale replica. My recollection is that it was closed when we visited, but the drink stand at the base was open, but swarmed by bees.

Quick look back at that garden because this stone sculpture, I'm told, used to have a small waterfall in it. But that got renovated out of existence and looks like they're not planning to bring it back, a shame.

At the far end of the main reflecting pool is this stage. We were there as a show was going on --- I forget what about; I'm going to guess it celebrated songs of the 80s --- and while it looked interesting we moved on and failed to catch any of its eighty repetitions the next day. Maybe it only ran once the next day. Don't know. We didn't see it.

Here's one of the roller coasters new for this year, and new since our last visit. Not Pigpen's Mess Hall; that's a restaurant. But this is Snoopy's Soap Box Racers, which had opened May of last year and so was about two months old when we visited.

Here's the lift hill for the ride, which is a shuttle coaster and starts by pulling you back and letting go.

And you do go up this hill, which rises up high enough that you can't actually go off the edge, but that sort of stunt is fun.

Trivia: Benjamin Franklin's 1750s post office reforms allowed for the paying of sending charges by the sender (rather than the recipient), albeit not at the rates specified by the Post Office Act. Source: The King's Best Highway: The Lost History Of The Boston Post Road, The Route That Made America, Eric Jaffe.

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