austin_dern

My brother and his wife adopted another Chinese orphan, their second child, maybe a year and a half ago. It turns out I'm the first of my brother's siblings to be able to visit, news I greeted with a silly, ``Yes! I win!'' And the nieces were eager to see me, the few moments we had Sunday morning before my parents and I headed out. But I figured that's just because it's always exciting to have something shake up the usual, especially when school hasn't started.

So anyway this is as close as I'll ever get to being Guest of Honor at a convention. They were thrilled I was there and I'm not sure if they were competing for my attention. But I had just walked down from another goopy shower when the elder niece (eleven years old, which is impossible, since I know when I last saw her in January 2014 she was six, maybe seven) handed me a picture, a folding-over picture of a rabbit eating vegetables I guess? It was also for Aunt bunny_hugger. Both nieces were thrilled to learn of an actual adult who doesn't like the taste of coffee. I did confound them by admitting that I do nevertheless get a cup of coffee about once a week when I go to the farmer's market, for vegetables for our rabbit, because it's free. That this is true does not make it less daft.

So my free day ended up including a lot of playing with the nieces and, yes, worrying about the cold I would be bringing home from them. (I didn't, and I didn't pass one on to bunny_hugger, it seems reasonable to say at a week's remove.) A lot of this was showing off toys, some of which I knew well --- they've got a lot of Legos --- and some from reputation --- Minecraft stuff --- and some because I exist at all --- My Little Pony merchandise. ``This one talks,'' my elder niece said of a really big Twilight Sparkle doll. ``What does it talk about?'' I said. ``Mostly My Little Pony.'' ``I have friends like that,'' and I'm pretty sure she thought I was joking.

``Do you want to play dragons,'' they'd ask, and it's not like they need to ask me twice. Especially as they have several dolls of Toothless. That much I was on solid ground for. Trying to follow an 11-year-old and a 6-year-old's narrative sense was beyond me. I did feel I had to point out you can't really consider it proved that the Mean Dragon is mean just because she took someone's fish; she could just be hungry.

To get some sense what I brought to the play table, besides the assertion that it takes more than being labelled to make someone the bad guy, my nieces have an old-fashioned 80s-style desktop telephone as a plaything. The elder niece pointed out how you press the little plastic posts to hang out. And I asked if she knew why that was surrounded by that plastic cradle. She understood that it was so the receiver didn't slip off. But I pointed out the cradle goes up high enough that if the phone tips over by accident, the hang-up posts are protected. You can't hang it up by mistake. And I went on, pointing out all the surprisingly many clever little touches of the old phone to keep people from making mistakes on it. They were intersted to know about the dial for how loud the ringing should be and figured out how to get the phone to reliably produce a little ding.

As the day wore on and they wore down, or their mother worried they were wearing me down, they watched a movie. Boss Baby, which I hadn't seen because um, yeah. The movie turned out to be less bad than I anticipated. Annoyingly it kept trying to be interesting, with the suggestion that the whole story is an imaginary tale the seven-ish protagonist dreams up to process his feelings about the demanding new baby messing up his life. The times the flights of fantasy are made explicit were the most visually interesting parts, yes, but also prompted my younger niece to ask if they were really happening. Her mother explained which parts were imaginary, and also that you watched this move a hundred times already. (In a final diversion from being interesting the movie throws in a bit near the end where Baby Alec Baldwin has to Learn the Power of Imagination, which doesn't come from anywhere or go anywhere but suggests someone threw a pile of notes on the film after they'd animated the first act.)

After dinner --- where I had to sit next to my elder niece, since I'd sat next to the younger at lunch, and realized how much I had forgotten about kid politics --- they wanted to show off what they called the funniest videogame ever. This would be Octodad, if I haven't got it wrong, a game where you play an octopus who's fooled people into thinking he's a normal human male and he's got a family and a job and all that. You have to go around doing normal human tasks like mowing the lawn even though you're very wobbly and have no fine motor control. It is, as they said, a funny idea, and there's a lot of nice physical comedy in the gameplay. I didn't get a turn, but was also pretty fine with that.

So that's how the day went. The next morning I'd had to get to the airport, so we didn't have time for a further play session. They did want me to know I should come back soon, though, which is always glad to hear.

When I got to the gate for my Baltimore to Newark flight there was ... nobody there. Nothing. Even the TV screen that normally says when the flight will be taking off showed nothing but a message to please restart the computer. We got pretty near boarding time before anything happened, which was, someone coming out of the jetway to say that hadn't anyone announced the flight was going to be late? That the pilot hoped to take off around 2:00? ... Which would be a jolly exciting time for me since the flight from Newark to Detroit was supposed to start boarding at 2:20. Baltimore-to-Newark is a surprisingly short flight --- the reverse direction Saturday had been about 35 minutes in the air --- but still.

Eventually, around the time the doors were supposed to close, someone came to announce the flight was leaving late and to start dealing with people who were missing their connections. She also arranged a backup flight for me just in case I somehow wasn't able to get off this plane and to wherever the next plane was to leave from in the maybe ten minutes between our arrival and the doors closing on the next flight. The whisker-thin margin evaporated on the ground in Newark, since for some reason we were unloaded on the tarmac and had to take a shuttle-bus to the terminal. ... The correct terminal for my next flight, but still. Other people had it worse; the last half of the short flight one of the attendants was going back and forth to a passenger whose connecting flight was to Hong Kong. I wanted to offer my experience, which was that long-haul flights like that will hold a reasonable time for a passenger with delayed arrival, but (a) my experience is a decade-plus out of date and (b) the fact the attendant wasn't able to confirm that right away indicates my experience might not be relevant anymore.

The connecting gate for my backup flight was the lone one in that part of the terminal being renovated, so there was no space to sit around while waiting for any news about what might go wrong. Nothing did go wrong with it, happy to say. And I did get the promised seat for the backup flight.

So I got home at a little after dinnertime, as bunny_hugger was preparing for the school day the next day, and that was the end of a week I guess I had expected to have but without quite knowing when.

Trivia: A 1901 Christmas advertisement for Frederick Loeser's proclaimed it had stocked four million handkerchiefs for the holiday season, ``four for every man, woman, and child in Brooklyn''. Source: Service and Style: How the American Department Store Fashioned the Middle Class, Jan Whitaker.

Currently Reading: To The Great Ocean: The Taming of Siberia and the Building of the Trans-Siberian Railway, Harmon Tupper.

More pinball in Traverse City. The same pinball, but more of it.

View of more of Comet's layout. The center ramp represents the Comet roller coaster of the game's title, and the game's sequels of Cyclone and Hurricane have a similar center ramp. On the right there is another ramp which plunges into something they didn't do in the sequels, three holes of decreasing size but increasing point value. When lit.

The top hole promises the ``FIRST EVER ONE MILLION PINBALL SHOT''. It's not. There were some electromechanical machines with million-point shots, although those were also games that were ``really'' three-digit scores just inflated way up. But for solid-state pinball? Yeah, strangely enough. This shot was ``really'' worth 200,000, but you could get the playfield multiplier up to 5x so that it'd then be worth a million points, as promised. Given the helix ramp's brokenness we couldn't get the play field multiplier going and so never had a chance at the million point shot.

Renowned crazy person Python Anghelo did the art for Comet and he filled the playfield with a remarkably consistent bird's-eye view of an amusement park. Here's a shot of some of the crowd art including what's thought to be the first appearance of Pin-Bot on a game.

While the alarm didn't go off at 7:30, I was awake. My brother too. I'm all but certain he had an alarm set on his iPhone. At least it started making this noise like rocks battering together. We didn't go to breakfast, a decision I thought sound at the moment since I still felt full from the previous night. My evaluation changed an hour later. I had made it through the wake and dinner the previous night without staining my good suit. On driving to the funeral home my mother noticed a little white streak on my pants. Source unknown, but rubbing it with the condensate from a small water bottle she'd taken from the hotel's breakfast removed it.

The funeral home was there for one last bit of people gathering to say goodbye. And for us as pall bearers to gather and start taking instructions, which the funeral director and assistants were good at delivering. My capacity to self-distract is boundless. By the water cooler (my uncle warned about drinking too much, since there's no bathrooms at the gravesite, and then patted my shoulder, chuckling but also offering that there was a bathroom at the church) I noticed old photographs of Island Park, and the wooden roller coaster at it. I didn't know of any amusement parks in Rhode Island. (The coaster --- named Bullet, an unusual choice --- and park were destroyed in the Hurricane of 1938, which I ought to have guessed.)

They had us stand in the entrance way for the last mourners to leave the viewing room and only accidentally block the bathroom (we let people through). Then they had us gather in the hall by the door leading directly out from the room. The funeral home attendants did the last cleaning-up of things, including ratcheting down the inclined bed of the coffin. They used a large metal socket, almost as if they were getting the lug nut off a stubborn car.

They wheeled my aunt's coffin out on a dolly to the small anteroom. There we all took a spot and lifted up the coffin, and stepped out the room and down the wood steps that suddenly seemed unnervingly slick. An illusion, surely, caused by my not wearing dress shoes often anymore. We set her in the coffin without incident and each of us went to our cars with instructions to, at the church, come right up to the hearse.

My brother and I rode together; my parents took their own car. We also ended up somewhat far back in the funeral procession. At the church the procession ended up in this long thread snaking around the parking lot, while one woman went slowly through each car giving some instruction. My brother asked if there were any reason we shouldn't just, you know, park. I couldn't think of any, so we did. After the service started I realized the reason: the procession would pick up again, leaving from the church and going to the graveyard. I didn't mention to my brother so don't know if he had the same realization. We did have to fumble our way back into the line of cars, which had (mostly) been left just snaking through the parking lot through the service.

At the hearse we gathered again to slide the casket out. It rests on rollers, so this is not as challenging as you might imagine. Then up the stone steps of the church, which again brought out my worries about the slickness of my shoes. We set the coffin on another dolly and stepped back for the sprinkling of the casket with holy water and the placing of the white shroud over her casket.

Friends sensitive to such things may have noticed that I'm that kind of apostate who grew up Roman Catholic. My aunt, my godmother, was still actively so and thus that's the mass which was read. I haven't gone to mass regularly in decades, and even intermittent masses have been rare things. But all that childhood training pays off: almost as soon as the priest began reciting the pieces common to ordinary masses it all came back to me. I could feel confident that I was respecting my godmother's memory, snappily answering offers like ``The Lord be with you'' with ``And also with you'' and the discovery that apparently they changed this to ``And with you in spirit''? This was unsettling.

There was a small missal at each pew, offering the prompts and responses and general order of mass. I kept not reading it, though, out of a sense that I should pay attention to what was happening rather than read about what was happening. I think that I carried through acceptably. Granted, it's hard to notice if someone isn't saying the right thing in this setting. The only real slip made where someone would notice was at the Eucharist, where I forgot to cross myself after taking the communion wafer and wine. And was in the first row so that I didn't have the prompt to this thing I'd forgotten; I could just watch (nearly) everyone else do it instead.

That's getting a little anthropological. Let me think more about the personal. I'd expected to tear up through the funeral and these moments came. At the singing of Amazing Grace, for example. At the singing of Ave Maria, and again at the recessional. Also at the eulogies, particularly talking about my aunt's commitment to what the priest described as the true Christianity, that determination to be kind and supportive and giving, which my aunt was. The singing of the Prayer of Saint Francis may be traditional. It also felt true to who she tried to be (and, honestly, to what I try to be). And was again hard to stay composed through.

The second eulogy, that by my aunt's son, had an odd personal surprise. He was talking about my aunt's desire to be interested in everyone she knew, and brought up me as an example. I'd given her a copy of one of the textbooks I wrote. He explained how she sat down and read every page of this book meant for upper-level or early-grad-school mathematics and physics majors, despite the main text getting pretty impenetrable, but just because she wanted to be a person who'd read my whole book. I had known she wanted to do it. One thing I didn't know --- and learned at the lunch afterwards --- was she handed the book to her brother-in-law, who did have a bachelor's in mathematics, to ask if it made sense. He thought it did. (This is all the feedback I've ever gotten on it.)

The funeral director's assistants wheeled her coffin back to the church's entrance. We pall bearers lifted it up and brought it back to the hearse. And then the funeral procession resumed, going through the twisty paths to a grave site that more than one person commented they didn't even know was there. My uncle said that when they were planning this, even the Catholic priest said, you know, there's no problem burying you in the Episcopalian graveyard. She wanted a Catholic one and that was that. As we were driving we passed the crushed remnants of one of the small, magnetically-attached flagpoles from some other car. My brother mentioned how he wouldn't really know if ours had fallen off, after all.

And the gravesite service was the last time we were tasked with lifting my aunt's coffin, and moving it places. The priest said a few words on this sunny, nearly cloudless Rhode Island day. And the funeral director reminded all that they were welcome to a luncheon in her honor, at another of her favorite restaurants. The moment broken, we all took our last looks and hugged whoever it felt right to, and got back to our various cars.

On the drive there my mother asked if we pall bearers had ever actually carried my aunt's coffin. Well, she had mostly seen funeral home staff wheeling the coffin along the inside of buildings. I affirmed we had, and that it was less heavy than you might imagine. Although having five other people bearing the load makes it less hard.

Trivia: As late as 1897 sailors in the British Navy were forbidden the use of knives and forks, as prejudicial to discipline. Source: Food in History, Reay Tannahill. (I ... would like to see this corroborated but don't have the energy to read an Aubrey-Maturin book right now.)

Currently Reading: To The Great Ocean: The Taming of Siberia and the Building of the Trans-Siberian Railway, Harmon Tupper.

PS: Friday in Omena opened with our stopping in Suttons Bay and that Radio Shack that was inexplicably still there. Also having lunch with bunny_hugger's brother.

80% off is a fantastic deal on stuff you didn't really want in the first place. Note the wireless microphone up front. To the left of the picture was a rack of Assorted Cables, $2 each. Also a popcorn machine.

Oh man, for 80% off of forty dollars and without the use of any tools you could use a space-age computer control to make your car annoy the entire neighborhood and run your battery down to zero when a branch of the tree you're parked next to brushes the rear passenger door!

Guys! I found just the thing to record all those Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes on in SLP!

So my Aunt Evelyn died last week. She was my godmother, one of my mother's core college friends. The second to die. It wasn't unexpected. She'd had cancer, and it had been getting worse. A few weeks ago they took her off treatments, and brought her to hospice. I'd tried to call her, to say something, but she wasn't able to answer the phone when I did call. I sent a card, thinking as I picked it out and wrote it that a get-well card, or get-well wishes, were just ... absurd. But I did anyway because what's there to do otherwise?

Last Friday I got e-mail that my uncle wanted me to be part of the ceremony. This shifted my thinking about going to the ceremony from ``could I possibly?'' to ``could I possibly not?'' and I figured, no; this is what I have savings for. I e-mailed bunny_hugger, then at work, to tell her of my plan and let her protest if this were impossible. And then in a tortured phone call with my mother worked out just how I might get to the Rhode Island ceremony. Flying to Providence was expensive. Flying to Boston and having my brother there pick me up --- oh, he's in Amsterdam this week on a family holiday. Flying to Newark where my other brother was, to visit friends, and riding up with him --- oh, Newark's crazy expensive. Flying to Baltimore, that brother's home, and riding up with my parents who were driving up from Charleston? That's possible and much more affordable. The flight went through Newark.

Flight booked, with a scary lack of comment from bunny_hugger (she was already heading home and didn't see my e-mail) I got to essentials. I have one good suit, the one I got married in, when I was six years younger about 25 pounds lighter. It still fit. My shirt fit too. My tie --- I didn't think a purple paisley tie would be appropriate. At the funeral my uncle would wear a dark purple paisley tie. But I knew one place to get a Good Quality Tie, the Men's Wearhouse on the east end of town. They were having a buy-one-get-one-free deal on ties. I couldn't imagine needing two black ties, but felt like, well, free tie? I got one that's completely smooth, and one that has a subtle diamond patterning. The clerk said they were lovely and asked what event I was buying them for. I felt trapped between my compulsion to answer honestly and not wanting to dump bad emotional stuff on someone who has to deal with the public. And then before working this out just said the honest, ``My aunt died and I need it for the funeral.'' She didn't act startled. They probably get a fair number of people coming in to make emergency purchases of grown-up clothing ahead of funerals.

I also popped into the Meijer's opposite that mall, there to get travel-sized toothpaste that I didn't end up using, and travel-sized deodorant that I didn't end up using (had enough left over from previous travels) and a little bottle of Listerine. I drove back, arriving home less than a minute before bunny_hugger, who it turned out had been at the same Meijer and the same time getting something from the Pharmacy department which, you might ponder, is pretty close to where you get travel-size toothpastes and deodorant and Listerine. Also while driving home we both listened to the same episode of the same podcast. Yet somehow we technically weren't there together.

I'd leave Saturday. This would cancel my attending a trivia-night league finals. MWS and his family go to restaurant trivia nights, and we sometimes go along, and they had made it to season finals. They needed a fourth for the event and thought I'd be perfect for it. Instead bunny_hugger had to go, messing up her plans to prepare for the coming semester. They didn't finish in the top ten, where the money prizes were. But not for bunny_hugger's participation; she kept a log of the questions and we worked out that, all else being the same, there was just one question she didn't know that I did, and she was more confident of the right answer on several questions than I was.

Also that I'd miss Sunday: pinball league finals, in Fremont. This would be another high-value event, although not so high as the Baby Food Festival whose story I'll get back to after all this. bunny_hugger and MWS would go to it, and she'd get a fourth and a sixth place in the two events. The fourth place should give her a good lift in the state rankings. The sixth place, eh, a slight boost. On their way back they were besieged by a massive storm, a nightmare of low visibility and downed branches and a storm that kept acting like it might let up and not doing so. I'd miss driving through all that, being, instead, at the wake and then a dinner afterwards at one of my aunt's favorite restaurants.

My aunt had a reputation as a Rain Goddess, as for a while in the 80s and 90s heavy storms and, in one case, a hurricane converged on events she was planning to attend. It's a bit nice to imagine she was thinking of bunny_hugger.

Trivia: In September 1803 Sunday was restored as the day of rest in France. Source: Mapping Time: The Calendar and its History, EG Richards.

Currently Reading: America's Humor: From Poor Richard to Doonesbury, Walter Blair, Hamlin Hill. Most startling minor discovery to this: 19th-century examples of an uneducated-westerner-type saying ``mistopher'', just like Snuffy Smith says. Like, it's not some weird comic strip convention apparently? Huh.

PS: Reading the Comics, August 24, 2018: Delayed But Eventually There Edition, getting me up to last Saturday on the comic strips at least.

PPS: Some more Northport.

And the waterwheel, which isn't functional, but which I think I remember bunny_hugger learned had never been functional and was just a bit of scenery for the attached restaurant.

Old style car, one of several parked at the edge of town. Going ahead and guessing my father owned one of these back in the day, but that's just playing the odds.

Approaching the old mill pond at the north end of Northport.