Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

Happy birthday, dear bunnyhugger.

With the hour of early admission we got we headed first for Top Thrill 2. This rebuild of Top Thrill Dragster officially opened last year, but spent all but parts of two weeks down for Problems. After a shaky start this year it's been running decently, but we were in the strange position that we had ridden the next coaster --- Siren's Curse --- before we ever got on Top Thrill 2. We hoped this Halloweekends to ride Top Thrill 2 at all, and to ride Siren's Curse at night, and to save you many paragraphs, we succeeded.

Now to give you those paragraphs. When we got to the Top Thrill 2 entrance --- an oval, like you're entering a portal but without being transformed into sehlats or something cool --- the queue sign promised a wait of 0 minutes. This seemed optimistic but we figured it couldn't be too bad. The coaster, like Siren's Curse and Steel Vengeance, allows you to have nothing on but your clothes, and has small lockers you can put stuff in for free. So we tucked everything away, went through the metal detector that confirms you didn't keep anything on you but your metal belt buckle, and waited in a line maybe twenty minutes long. We realized we hadn't ridden Top Thrill at all since before the pandemic began and maybe not since 2018, if not longer ago. And we had a nice chat with some people near us in line about just what was changed and how it might be different.

The big difference is that instead of one huge burst of speed getting you up the top of a 420-foot tower, you get three bursts of speed, one getting you a fair bit up the top, then fall back downward and get another burst of speed sending you up the reverse spike, then fall back forward and get a last burst of speed to hurtle over the top. There's minor differences that I like. Particularly, you load in the station on a track that switches into the main back-and-forth segment, so that a train can launch while another loads and a third unloads. This combined with the nothing-in-the-pockets rule mean it can handle people really fast and that promises to maybe keep the line going well.

And the ride ... well, the acceleration is nothing like what the original Top Thrill, or Kingda Ka (RSVP) had. It is strikingly like what Wicked Twister had. (Though Wicked Twister's top speed, about 72 miles per hour according to the Roller Coaster Database, is what Top Thrill 2 manages in a single burst.) But it also adds these moments of being vertical --- facing upward, and then facing backward --- and floating, hovering weightless in the seat waiting to fall back down. Weightless moments haven't been in fashion for roller coasters for a while, but Top Thrill 2 and Siren's Curse both feature it and wouldn't work without it. I'm really glad to have it again.

If that weren't enough the top of the hill feels faster than Top Thrill Original offered. Certainly you feel more like you're in danger of being thrown out of the seat which, by the way, doesn't have a belt. Just a sort of barebones cage around you that nevertheless feels quite secure. bunnyhugger tells me this is because the new trains ride higher on the track than the old, so there's just this extra burst of centripetal acceleration on the top of the hill and, particularly, on the spiral as you start heading back down. It feels great.

The new Top Thrill is a remarkably better ride than the old. In many ways it feels like the good parts of Wicked Twister merged with the good parts of Top Thrill 1. The old Top Thrill we were content missing if there wasn't a short enough line; this, I think we're likely to find reasons that the wait isn't too long for us. There will be a sequel to this essay, don't worry.

Next up? ... Kind of a slow spot for photographs, actually, even before I lost my camera at Motor City Furry Con. Our next big event was getting our first pet mouse since Fezziwig's death and the first pictures are of her arrival.

When Crystal first arrived she quickly set up a small, uncovered nest to figure out where she was and what might possibly be safe. So we got to enjoy a few rare moments of a mouse curled up unprotected.

Here she is, making almost as small a bundle as she knew how.

That's not to say she can't be long!

Meanwhile Athena didn't see what all the fuss was about when it wasn't about her.

She takes a curious sniff and listen at my camera.

And she decides she's out of here. Bye!

Trivia: In 1540, Vannoccio Biringuccio summarized the explanation of how gunpowder propelled projectiles: fire took up ten times as much room as air, air ten times as much as water, water ten times as much as earth. So when earthly powder turned to fire, air, and moist smoke, the elements immediately expanded, exerting pressure on the ball. Source: Gunpowder: Alchemy, Bombards, and Pyrotechnics: The History Of The Explosive That Changed The World, Jack Kelly.

Currently Reading: Comic books. And speaking of reading the comics ... What’s Going On In Prince Valiant? Why is _Prince Valiant_ in reruns? I give disappointing answers to this and more!

Halloweekends began for us Thursday, at least measured by when bunnyhugger and I were in the car together going somewhere. I'd taken our pet rabbit and mice down to her parents' the night before and introduced them to the mice. This I'd done with the mice in the pet carrier because I supposed that one put back into their bin they'd disappear under the litter and in toilet-paper tubes rather than deal with all this bother.

We left a bit before noon because we had to run a small errand at the bookstore where bunnyhugger sometimes works, and start off a bit slower than we'd have liked because of the dense construction zone around our house blocking off immediate access to highways. And for all that, we still arrived at Cedar Point almost exactly at 4:00, just as we'd have hoped. It would be too much to credit that for my big innovation this trip --- I had got exact change for the Ohio Turnpike fares and put them in a plastic bag on my divider console --- but that innovation was also very good. We also got really lucky in the parking spot, maybe the third or fourth spot closest to the front door of the hotel, the kind of spot we usually grab on Sunday after everyone's checked out and I move the car closer so it's easier to load up. We would lose that spot Saturday to go to the Merry-go-Round Museum in downtown Sandusky, but the replacement we got was almost as good.

We got once again a room on one of the wings off the rotunda, which are ones with single beds and therefore less likely to rent to families with bunches of noisy, squealing kids. So we have no explanation for why one night there seemed to be a family down the hall with kids doing footraces outside the door. They were quiet by the time we went to bed, anyway, and if they made noise early the next morning I didn't hear it. I'm sure that means everything was good.

I was a little confused at check-in about whether we needed early-admission tickets. Starting next year season passes aren't going to get you early admission to parks, a bonus we have used at Halloweekends and pretty much nothing else. But staying at the Hotel Breakers gets you that, and I had learned from bunnyhugger about this change and failed to process that we didn't have to worry about getting early-admission tickets until next year. If the policy lasts, anyway. The Six Flags/Cedar Fair merger has hit some rough spots, with --- particularly --- some of the parks having to give up on the new policy of charging admission to the haunted houses. (Not Cedar Point, though, at least this time.) Many things might be changed to win back goodwill or because someone tells them it's a way of stave off bankruptcy.

But we got everything settled in our room, dressed up as warmly as we could, and got into the park. Cedar Point had a roller coaster that officially opened in 2024 that we had never yet ridden; would we get to it this weekend?

And now, a quick dash through the end of the Michigan State Women's Pinball Championship, because I'm sparing you pictures of backglasses and of people you don't know facing away from you.

Gladiators is a surprisingly fun game for a 90s Gottlieb and I play it often in simulation form. This was a rare chance to play the actual table, where I ... don't know what the replay value was.

bunnyhugger with her megaphone, giving instructions to the competitors. After this there's so many pictures of people standing at pinball machines and ignoring the camera, you have no idea. You can see the pinball flyers lining the dor in the background.

Over by the food counter there's a couple board games you can play, including, oh yeah, the Pac-Man board game. I had that as a kid.

Tile art on the wall shows beloved video game character (look up video game characters before publishing) posed so you'd think they were playing Lost World, a game that sad to say wasn't in the tournament.

And now we're zipping ahead to the end of the night; Ypsi Pinball Podcast is gathering up their gear and bunnyhugger bows out.

Last picture of the venue; the podcasting 'booth' is in teh background. The food is way off past even that.

Trivia: The Champagne Fairs, held once or twice a year through the 12th and 13th centuries, gathered merchants in each of the four towns of Troyes, Lagny, Provins, and Bar-sur-Aube, and gained prominence from the protection the Count of Champagne offered to merchants travelling to and from the event. Source: Gold and Spices: The Rise of Commerce in the Middle Ages, Jean Favier. And yes, I'm irked that I did not realize this before we were in Bar-sur-Aube (briefly and for other purposes) earlier this year.

Currently Reading: Comic books still.

At the shabbaton I led a text-study session that I called "Avram before Lech L'cha" (which was the week's portion). It was designed to be interactive, so this is a summary of how it went. Don't expect answers here, just interesting observations.

I started by saying that in the first three torah portions, God singles someone out for assigned tasks. The first is Adam, and there were no other options yet. The second is Noach, who was "righteous in his generation", a qualified statement. (Best of a bad lot?) Then comes Avram, and it just says God commanded him but the text doesn't tell us why.

We had a discussion about possible reasons, and then we looked at the first source. Almost all of what I brought is from Bereishit Rabbah (roughly contemporary with the g'mara, c 300-500 CE). All translations are from Sefaria: ( Read more... )

Posted by Paul Taylor

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https://wapsisquare.com/comic/going-senile/

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My now-former synagogue has an occasional shabbaton (Shabbat retreat), nominally once a year but sometimes the gaps are longer. They had one this past Shabbat; I've attended every one since I joined the congregation and if this isn't the last one, it will be the last one as "us" before a merger/acquisition, so I wanted to be there even though I've otherwise moved on to my new synagogue.

This one didn't have the usual longer lead time; a date became available and they jumped on it. We were missing several of the regulars and some newer minyan members weren't able to come, so it was small -- which could have made it more intimate, but it didn't have quite the right mix for that. There was a single member from the other synagogue, plus their interim rabbi, and I wonder how it felt for that congregant.

I couldn't help noticing that the average age has skewed way up (most are rather older than me), especially if you exclude the clergy (who have to be there).

Because it was Halloween, their interim rabbi led a text study on spooky stories from the talmud, which was pretty engaging. From what I've seen, text study is his strong suit, so I'm glad he did that. The senior rabbi prefers discussions to more formal study and did that. The cantor taught about a rare and distinctive trope (cantillation mark) that appears in next week's parsha, one of only four times in the torah. I hadn't previously noticed that, every time shalshelet appears, it's on the first word of the verse. His source sheet is public.

I got email on Monday asking if I would lead a text study on Shabbat afternoon. I called it "Avram before Lech L'cha" and drew a lot from Bereishit Rabbah, which I hope to write about separately. The afternoon sessions are always more lightly attended (some people take walks or nap or shmooze), but we had enough people to have good conversations and I overheard some comments that suggest I have fans. I think it went pretty well. My biggest fear in leading a study session (as opposed to giving a d'var torah) is always what to do if people don't engage. Fortunately, people did. Someday maybe I will get better at facilitating rather than wholly directing conversations like this.

Overall: I'm glad I went, but I felt less inspired and connected than in the past. Maybe that's the mix, maybe it's that our long-time now-retired rabbi set a really high bar, maybe it's the merger, maybe it's me. I don't feel the need to go to whatever follows this in future years, even if many of my friends are still going.

I came home from the shabbaton last night, and this morning went to a very nice welcome session and brunch for new members at my new synagogue. One era ends, another begins. (And Beth Shalom does a great job with welcoming newcomers!)

So stop me if you've heard this but we were at Cedar Point all day and I didn't have time to write anything. Instead, enjoy a dozen or so pictures from the Michigan State Women's Pinball Tournament.

Artwork set up at the Crazy Quarters Arcade showing all stuff from the classic arcade games they have, plus Kangaroo.

I don't think there was anywhere you could sit and eat immediately near this Lunch Box decoration but at least it has a lot of modern-looking faintly-ironic lunchboxes on the wall.

And here's some of the games they have that aren't pinball.

Here's the plaque for the winner (who wouldn't be bunnyhugger this year) and the first-through-fourth-place trophies. The International Flipper Pinball Association provided the plaque; the trophies were on bunnyhugger's dime.

Crazy Quarters has some of these posters that I, too, would have thought were at Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum.

And here's a corner with a vintage-looking poster advertising Dracula from when he was the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

In another corner where I couldn't quite get at it they had a playfield for an old-style mechanical pinball game, where you get points for dropping balls in scoops.

bunnyhugger getting ready to give competitors their instructions and set things up for the matches to get started.

Since I didn't have much of anything to do I looked around the area that we could play. Venue has a Scooby-Doo game like we'd seen when we were in California back in 2023, but I'm no good at it.

Hung up around the venue are flyers for a lot of games, including here the 90s Guns N Roses and Dungeons N Dragons games.

More vintage pinball flyers, including one based on the Broadway musical version of Tommy and the cartoon-mayhem-themed Mousin' Around.

And some propaganda-style posters for Donkey Kong, Tron, and Dig Dug. I don't think freedom was at stake in the Dig Dug backstory. I thought it was just Dig Dug Guy getting creatures out of his garden beds.

Trivia: The first cesium-based atomic clock was built in 1955 by British physicists Louis Essen and Jack Parry. Source: Time's Pendulum: The Quest to Capture Time --- from Sundials to Atomic Clocks, Jo Ellen Barnett.

Currently Reading: Comic books! At last. I picked up a couple at the comic book shop downtown and discovered that it has reached the level of expansion where it supports a fridge of out-of-market soda pop, which is how I was able to surprise bunnyhugger yesterday with a couple glass bottles of Moxie.

Ahead of our Halloweekends visit this year I did my lone preparing-for-a-trip responsibility and filled out the online form to hold our mail. Since the last time we had our mail held this somehow went wrong --- letters were delivered one day during the pause anyway, and we never got the big bundle of everything shipped at the end of our stay --- I checked the box to have them keep the mail at the main post office so I would pick it up myself. I also signed up for Informed Delivery, where they e-mail you a picture of the mail you're supposed to be getting that day, whether there's a hold or not. Over the weekend I got daily pictures but didn't know if that meant they were adding this to the hoard of mail at the main post office or if they had gotten the hold wrong and were delivering that every day.

Skipping ahead: when we got home Sunday night our mailbox was full. Over-full, in fact, with stuff dangling out of the mailbox because ours isn't actually that large and some of the stuff didn't bend. It looked like about the total mail we'd expect for the whole trip but I had no way of knowing if they skipped any days or anything. Mercifully if anything got rained on it wasn't damaged enough to show.

Monday afternoon, armed with the questions of why our mail wasn't held and if there was anything that was successfully held after all, I went to the post office with the printout of my hold-mail-confirmation. Guy went back and disappeared for long enough I was getting worried; I think everyone else in the five-person line was handled by the other clerk before mine got back.

There was no mail back there, of course. He said he checked all the spots held mail might be, and checked with a supervisor and with a carrier, though not the one working our neighborhood to confirm he wasn't overlooking anything. As best he can reconstruct the problem, it's ... well, you know what you need to get data from like ``whose mail is being held'' from the post office's central database system? That would be ``a person with authorization to access the central database system'' and right now there's nobody in the Lansing main post office with that access. He recommended that I fill out an in-person hold-mail request because that way then someone at Lansing is sure to see it.

While I was glad, I suppose, that we weren't missing any mail, I did not relish coming home to tell bunnyhugger all this because she is not as amused by folly as I am, and I lost most of my taste for post office folly when they lost a vintage postcard bunnyhugger had bought online and lost the remainder when they lost our held mail earlier this summer. But, you know, maybe it'll give you a giggle in these trying times.

Anyway. Next thing on my photo reel is mid-January 2025, and the Michigan State Women's Pinball Championship, held this year in Bay City, of Roller fame, and featuring bunnyhugger as the tournament director as well as publicity director. Hope you like.

The venue: the Crazy Quarters Arcade, which occupies a lot of the Bay City City Market downtown.

And the press would be there! bunnyhugger has learned that women's pinball tournaments offer local news exactly what they want most: human interest stories you can take a lot of good-looking B-roll footage.

Here of couse is Bay City's famous Portal to the otherworld.

And here's the venue, particularly, the pinball games. Lots of pinball games. Competitors are taking practice time and figuring out what games they'll plan on playing, and when.

Local news interviewing bunnyhugger, who's gotten several short but intense bouts of learning how to talk to cameras.

Other media! The Ypsi Pinball Podcast had a booth and after she was knocked out of tournament play bunnyhugger would pop in and give commentary with reasonable ease there. The figure in the center of Ypsi Pinball's logo there is the famed Ypsilanti Water Tower, which is not nearly as phallic as the Internet wants to point and laugh about.

Trivia: Scientists of many nationalities protested the 1918 Nobel Prize in Chemistry awarded to Fritz Haber for his work on ammonia synthesis and its use in ammonium sulphate fertilizer, as Haber also worked in Germany's chemical-weapons program and oversaw the first successful large-scale use of chlorine gas in April 1915. Source: An Edible History of Mankind, Tom Standage.

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

Pin-golf got started before I got home from work. The format lets you start anytime and the plan was that people could start playing a course anytime between 4:30 and 7:00. By the time I got home and walked to the barcade to join bunnyhugger a few people were already playing, and she was waiting for the chance to start herself. Past experience said it was a bad idea for the two of us to play at the same time, since it leaves the main desk with nobody watching it, but it's also just ... not done ... to play on your own if you can help it. So when the next couple people came in, bunnyhugger started playing with them while I watched the desk and gave people instructions and all that.

Fear and Trembling is usually a small tournament --- people shy away from the pin-golf format, it seems --- and since you can start anytime there's never a particular reason to start at this time, so folks drift in slowly. I didn't get to start playing myself until just before 7pm, when, among other things, FAE and DMC decided to ditch the cards they had been playing and start new ones (one could restart a try for a small additional donation to the charity). DMC's choice to restart came after he had accidentally been playing toward one objective but had written down, on the scoresheet, that he was attempting the other. It was clear to everyone what he had meant to do, but we have to go by what's on the page and with that failure to meet the goal, a 4, he decided to restart. This is how he and FAE ended up in a group with me.

Since I had tested out most of the objectives in the preceding half-week and had suggested or concurred with all of them you'd expect I would be good at the course, if you had no idea how pin-golf works. Even expert players have trouble with some of them --- DMC, an expert on the game Rush, failed on his first go-round to make that objective in a single ball! --- and I'm not an expert player. I think my only hole-in-one was the Rush objective, one that we had agreed was an easy one, but also that you need some easy objectives because it is too demoralizing when everything is impossible. Despite that even expert players DMC and FAE had a couple of 4's, representing objectives never made. And even some of the more novice players, in other groups, got a couple of objectives in three or even two balls, giving them a heck of a feeling of triumph.

I did just well enough to make the four-person playoffs, which took me by such surprise that when bunnyhugger told me I said ``no I did not''. The playoffs were further pin-golf, playing a bank of three holes at the choice of top-seeded DMC, and the objectives chosen by second-seed FAE. (RED and I just got to pick our order of play.) I did not do well in the first two of the playoff objectives, even though they were the same ones as the main course. The only one I managed was on the final game, King Kong, playing the goal of climbing to 200 feet of the Empire State Building, which you do by making a specific set of game-chosen shots, one of them a right bastard, because there isn't a reliable angle to set up the shot. I ended up giving up on aiming for that and starting a multiball instead on the correct supposition that in the chaos of three balls running around something would go my way, and it did.

Still, that left me in fourth-place, still taking home a trophy. RED took home third place, the trophy he liked best too --- one he happened to mention earlier in the night as being awesome, assuaging bunnyhugger's fears that she had made disappointing trophies this time around --- and DMC took second. This meant FAE won the Fear and Trembling tournament for the fourth time in a row and it's kind of a shame we can't give them permanent possession of a trophy. They just have to take home this year's first-place trophy again.

Still can't believe I made the cut but there's the trophy to prove it.

Now I'm going to close out Christmas lights pictures; I promised you I was going to be more sparing in these, didn't I? Go ahead and guess what amusement park photographs come up next.

Pterodactyl light that's stationary and not animated, but the streaks in my windshield give it a little vibe of having just landed anyway.

And I'm always going to be fond of showing a sea serpent. As I recall the serpent actually has only one tail, with the end alternating, and my picture got both lit at once.

This Santa alligator looks like they've taken all the cold medicine.

From the Noah's Ark display here's two raccoons, two squirrels, and two frogs hanging out. The rest of the Ark is on the other side of the street.

Oh, bunch of people pointing at a lad in a basket, wonder what comes next.

The reindeer are so glad that I'm leaving. You can see a bit of the raceway stadium stairs behind, in the picture, that you couldn't possibly see in person.

Trivia: One of the Sanskrit words for 'Wednesday' was 'Budhuvasara', meaning 'Awakening'. Source: Mapping Time: The Calendar and its History, EG Richards.

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

This week my humor blog features some nonsense, some nonsense based on the English language, and even more MiSTing than usual, plus stuff you've seen before. And I get a bit of good news about Dick Tracy author Mike Curtis in the comments. Seek it in here:

• MiSTed: The Tale of Jimmy Rabbit, Part 11: The Tooth Puller
• Imagine My … My … Imagine My … Well, You Know
• Statistics Saturday: Some Nursery Rhyme Characters You Can’t Say From Text Are _Not_ Eggs Either
• Robert Benchley: Our Noisy Ghosts
• This Is a Long and Roundabout Excuse to Be Late With Recapping _Dick Tracy_ Tomorrow
• MiSTed: Safe Fun for Halloween
• What’s Going On In Dick Tracy? Is Mike Curtis ever coming back to Dick Tracy? August – October 2025
• MiSTed: The Tale of Jimmy Rabbit, Part 12: A Slight Dispute

Next up I'm going to be finishing off Christmas: we did a couple of tours of light shows and I refrained from taking a million blurry unfocused pictures of dots, so you're spared too much of all that. Let me show you.

This was bunnyhugger's Christmas jigsaw puzzle, featuring a bunny and squirrel interrogating the reindeer, and a raccoon watching just in case. A very SpinDizzy Muck situation.

Here's the Lake Victoria Light Show house, with something like half the lights on all at once. It's easier to watch in movie version but movies are hard to post.

Lake Victoria Light Show snowman, who several times during the show comes out to be brutally melted by some punny tune.

The house again, this time with at least all(?) the strands of light on the central tree lit and in a variety of colors. They're color-changing LEDs and synched up with the low-power FM broadcast.

And now down to Brooklyn, Michigan, for the Nite Lites display! Here, a crane hauls twenty tons of candy cane.

Would it be holiday lights without dentist content? Here's teeth pulling Santa's sleigh, or else all the reindeer have turned their rear ends to you.

The official entrance to Nite Lights, at the Michigan International Speedway. There's like a half mile of lights of mostly sponsors leading up to this so there's a show before you even pay for the show.

And a more ceremonial entry to the light show by driving through a castle walls, which in real life would be contra-indicated.

Nice wavy Michigan here with the hat on its thumb because they didn't know of a better place to put it.

I love those tunnels of light, and the slight streaking of my windshield adds surprising motion to the Christmas trees.

Finally, some of that fairy-tale content: Rapunzel pulling a boy up to the shoe she lives in with her giant shoelace or ... I'm not sure what's going on here actually.

And here's a Big Bad Wolf trying to blow out the Three Little Pigs' home, unaware that you can't just blow out LEDs! Silly wolf.

Trivia: The first attempted buyers of the Cunard Lines' Queen Elizabeth in 1968 were a group of Philadelphia investors who planed to moor the ship on the Delaware River and operate it as a hotel (as the Queen Mary was doing off Long Beach, California), but the group failed to check whether the cruise ship would fit in the river at that point (it would not) or how patrons would access the location (it would need a new highway built). Source: Pacific: Silicon Chips and Surfboards, Coral Reefs and Atom Bombs, Brutal Dictators, Fading Empires, and the Coming Collision of the World's Superpowers, Simon Winchester.

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

Posted by Paul Taylor

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But my face is burning and I've got no idea what's going on with that at all. If I wake up sick I shall be very cross.  Especially since I'm the one bringing the tarps.

This was supposed to do the click to embiggen but it's being weird and i really want to sleep. 

Hm. this can't be a symptom of food poisoning can it? Last couple days have been a "eat the things what need eating"

All the way ago last Tuesday bunnyhugger hosted this year's Fear and Trembling pinball tournament. This is her pin-golf event, where the goal is not to score points but to complete objectives in as few balls as possible. This is a fun and frustrating format, for everyone. Us, for the challenge of figuring out what tables to use and what objectives to set on them. Everyone else, for finding that they can't manage to do something on purpose that they always do incidentally while playing. Sometimes your best approach is to ignore the goal and just play a good game, but people only resort to that in desperation.

Speaking of desperation: one extra challenge we put on ourselves is that the tournament offers a player's choice of objectives, so we need to find tables that have two clear objectives that aren't just ``get a bunch of points''. Ideally they should be objectives you can make progress on that's saved, ball-to-ball, and should make it really clear when you've made the goal so you don't have to guess what happened. The point of this is to make choosing, and knowing you might have succeeded if you'd picked the other objective, part of the game.

Ironically, we passed on the challenge of picking which tables, turning the choice over to a random number generator. Well, we feel like we always pick the same games and after long enough you run out of different goals. The random number generator picked an interesting enough course, though, including a couple games I really like, at least one that I don't but am somehow good at, and didn't repeat too many from the last couple years' of games.

Picking objectives was annoying, in part because many modern pinball games have gotten complicated to the point there are jillions of things to do and the video screens, for all the space they have, don't always persistently show you what happened. Ultimately we only had to bump one game from the main bank to backup for want of being sure we had a clean objective. And there was testing, because with stuff going on we didn't have enough time at our local barcade to try them all out. I went two days in a row in the leadup to the tournament to try out objectives I wasn't sure about, but still left a couple games --- like Medieval Madness, which I've played so many times in person and in virtual form that I doubt there's anything I don't know --- with objectives that were technically untested.

Still, what's the worst that could happen?

That teased, let's wrap up photos of our trip to Crossroads Village from the last week of last year. I'm almost up to within the past ten months!

Another intersection with a nice lighted fence and some really good reflections here.

Here's the village's central tree and the reflections in the slush around it.

Not Santa! Just one of his many statues waving around the place. Note the over-decorated tree in the background, one of the village's centerpiece items.

The opera house and the coffee shop here, near the end of the night. The gift shop has already closed and is dark.

The tree wrapped up tight in lights. I think this is the time we overheard someone asking and told them that yeah, we'd been here in the summer and the tree was still wrapped, just unlit.

And a parting view of the train station and a lot of wet planks of wood.

Trivia: When developing the first periodic table of the elements Dimitri Mendeleyev supposed that the atomic weights of either tellurium (128) or iodine (127) must be wrong because tellurium clearly preceded iodine in order. Mendeleyev was correct about the ordering, but did not know of isotopes, or that there is enough abundant tellurium-130 that an unrefined sample's average weight will be closer to 128, while iodine-127 is the only common isotope of that element. Source: Nature's Building Blocks: An A-Z Guide to the Elements, John Emsley.

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

"Manna Food Center in Maryland serves a significant federal workforce population. Because of the ongoing government shutdown, they are making emergency bags for furloughed federal workers in our area.
If you are available to volunteer for any of the shifts listed below, please contact Manna's Volunteer Coordinator, Kalandra Thompson, at 240.268.2520 x2520 or kalandra@mannafood.org
Volunteers are urgently needed for the following shifts:
· Thursday 10/30 9am – 12pm – 3 openings
· Thursday 10/30 9am – 12pm (Rescued Produce shift) – 8 openings
· Friday 10/31 from 12pm – 2pm (Frozen Meat Prep shift) – 9 openings
Manna Food Center Warehouse: 9311 Gaither Road, Gaithersburg, MD 20877

As is tradition in this journal, I have a birthday cake for everyone: recs!

This year, it's Wimsey-flavoured. All of these should be read after reading Gaudy Night.

All Our Scattered Leaves by marycrawford. No archive warnings apply, rated G. "A selection of letters and diaries on the eve of the Armistice."

21 Oct 1918.-- Saunders has toothache and refuses to do anything about it, silly woman, walking around with her cheek swollen and smiling horribly at everyone like a perfect martyr, so tiresome of her and I have no patience with it -- have made appointment for her with Mr. Platt down in the village, whose ideas on sedation really quite modern, nothing like that horrible tooth-drawer my father had us visit when I was a girl, like something out of Hoffmann or am I thinking of Grimm?

That a Lover have his Desire by Nineveh_uk. Creator chose not to use archive warnings, rated G. "... because apparently it all happened quite late on Sunday evening, and they sat up half the night, kissing one another madly in a punt. From the Balliol hall to the morning after; at the end of Gaudy Night, Harriet and Peter take a punt on the river. Missing scene fic, the rest of that evening that DLS (curse her!) didn't give us."

'However did you do it?'

'Stood the porter a pint to 'phone Padgett and ask if Lord Peter Wimsey could be trusted with a punt. Don't worry: Padgett is as silent as the grave.'

'Is that the honour of the regiment?'

'Of course,' Peter continued, 'if you'd prefer the Daimler, an elderly and probably oil-stained Burberry, and to take your chances with the cow-pats...'

'Not on your life! I shall learn to live with luxury.'

'I certainly hope so.'

Peter and the Power of Suggestion by keswindhover. No archive warnings apply, rated G. "For once, Lord Peter Wimsey is at a loss. What on earth can a man buy his wife for Christmas that costs under a guinea? Harriet also has a one guinea budget for Peter's present, but she has had the good sense to ask for assistance from Miss Climpson. (And sometimes the best presents are the ones you make yourself.)"

She had mentioned a house and Peter bought it for her. Presumably if she had mentioned the desire for a tiger and some peacocks, there would now be a small zoo in the garage, along with Mrs Merdle. This time, she had felt, Peter needed a firm hand.

So for their second Christmas together she had stipulated, very clearly, that she required something small and modestly priced – no more than a guinea she had added hastily, realising just in time that Peter’s definition of modest was likely to vary from her own. Look on it as a chance to live within somebody else’s means, she had added, a little imp of mischief urging her on. And had been rewarded when she saw Peter’s eyes suddenly gleam behind his monocle, as he realised that a challenge had been laid down.

“Dulcius ex asperis,” he had declared, “Domina, I accept.”

Gentle Antidote by x_los. No archive warnings apply, rated T. "At twenty-one, Harriet Vane gets her Name. It's rather longer than she expected."

“Oh I don’t say that one can’t or shouldn’t love a man not one’s soulmate, of course, only that my husband could at times make himself quite difficult to like. So I quite understand taking care with these decisions, because heaven knows the lithesome limbs of youth and suchlike don’t long endure, nor does their memory adequately compensate one for the grumbling sulks of age."

Green Ice by Adina. No archive warnings apply, rated G. "Wooster has a reputation for pinching things--necklaces, amber statuettes, umbrellas--a reputation that becomes dashedly awkward when Lord Attenbury's emeralds go missing."

"Bertie, you blot on the family escutcheon!" the aforementioned aunt, my good and deserving Aunt Dahlia, cried. "What are you doing here?"

"I like that," I responded with no little heat. "Here I drove from the distant metrop. in answer to an ancient relative's urgent telegram, only to have her look at me like some battered corpse the cat dragged in."

"I sent no blasted telegram!"

I tut-tutted. "You most certainly did."

"I did not."

"You did."

Traces Through Time by brutti_ma_buoni. No archive warnings apply, rated T. "Katherine Climpson explores the documentation of an unusual example of medieval matrimony."

Climpson, K., The Wimseys of Bredon: a textual study in marital relationships among the 14th century English high nobility (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), [xi, 439pp].

Introduction

Peter, second son of Mortimer Wimsey, 5th Duke of Denver, is well-known as an exemplar of unconventional medieval noble life. His bibliophily, cultural patronage and prominence in jurisprudence have been examined by, most recently, Pharos and McLellan in their illustrated biography, and challenged by Jones, who sees the Wimsey reputation for charitable giving as a typical example of high-status fourteenth-century power politics, rather than an exceptional personal commitment. This work does not attempt to reappraise the life of Wimsey alone. It contends, on the contrary, that his relationship and eventual marriage with Harriet (also Harriott, Henriet) Vane is a genuinely enlightening and exceptional case. With parallels to the John of Gaunt-Katherine Swynford marriage, its successor by half a century, the relationship transgressed social norms and was subject to censure and comment within high-status circles. These will to some extent be examined within the present volume. The focus, however, is on the reconstruction of an emotional relationship from the surviving records.

And if you would like to make my birthday extra awesome, please donate to the National Network of Abortion Funds or your local food bank, or tell me something you like about me. ♥

In 2024, nearly three out of every four restaurant orders were not eaten in a restaurant, according to data provided to me by the National Restaurant Association, a trade group. The share of customers using delivery specifically, as opposed to picking up takeout or going to a drive-through, more than doubled from 2019 to 2024. In a recently released poll by the association, 41 percent of respondents said that delivery was “an essential part of their lifestyle.” For Millennials and Generation Z—the apex consumers of today, and of tomorrow too—it’s apparently even more essential: More than half of adults under 45 use delivery at least once a week, and 13 percent use it once a day. Five percent use it multiple times a day. But the delivery boom isn’t confined to young people or to urbanites: About one in eight Baby Boomers uses delivery once a week, and so does about one in five rural dwellers. We are a nation of order-inners. A world, really—earlier this year, DoorDash announced a deal to acquire the British delivery service Deliveroo for $3.86 billion; the new, combined company will have 50 million monthly active users, spread over more than 40 countries.

Guess who spent the whole day either at work or at pinball league? And you know who's going to see a double dose of Crossroads Village pictures to make up for it? If your answers were ``you'', meaning me, and ``me'', meaning you, then you, meaning you, were right.

The centerpiece of any Crossroads Village trip is the carousel. Here's some horses on display showing off, particularly, the kind of shape they were in before restoration.

And here's a case that shows off just how bad a horse's leg can be.

More horse parts, including a tail. I'm sorry to report that's from an actual once-living horse.

And here's the carousel. The blankets are festive and also protect the mounts from snow- and mud-caked boots.

And who's the maker? Large C W Parker, Leavenworth, Kansas.

Almost all the horses at the Crossroads Village carousel are sponsored by someone; here's two horses that I think are the ones we rode, and their dedication plaques.

Went for a dramatic low shot between the horses here.

And here's an over-the-shoulder picture to look back.

This time around we rode in the chariot for some reason and it was a much better, more intense, ride than we imagined. In front is a row of kiddie-size horses.

Exiting the carousel building we got this view of the wreath and what totally is not the couple on top of a wedding cake in the middle of that.

Here's a giant white Christmas ornament ready to be walked into.

While it was above freezing, once again, that meant the melted snow gave us good reflective puddles just everywhere.

Trivia: An April 1973 Consumer Reports review of the Mazda RX-2 found it burned a quart of oil every 875 miles (to lubricate the Wankel engine seals) and averaged 15 mpg, good by American standards but far lower than typical Japanese imports. Source: Car Wars: The Untold Story, Robert Sobel.

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

So skipping ahead a little bit in what I mean to report here: we just got back from our Halloweekends vacation at Cedar Point. I had filled out, online, the Post Office's form to Hold Mail. Sunday night we got home to a mailbox stuffed full of un-held mail.

You might remember that we had a problem holding mail this spring, when we went to France and they delivered one day's mail in the middle of the hold period, and then just ... like ... never really got around to delivering the held mail. Not in full, at least. So this time I had specified that I would come to the post office and collect the held mail, in person, and I did that today. Yes, I had a bunch of mail already, including some today --- theoretically the last day of the hold --- but how did I know there wasn't any more?

The clerk took my printed-out hold mail form back, and disappeared for a long while, during which (he would tell me) he looked in the various mail hold compartments, and talked with a supervisor, and with some carrier who wasn't ours but who knew something about the hold mail process, and they had nothing. So I asked why. With two hold-mail fails out of two tries (I forgot our Extreme Heat road trip) I wanted to know if I was somehow doing something wrong.

The clerk did not know why, as they never do. But he did ask if I'd filled out the hold mail form in person. No, I'd done it online. And so it turns out this was probably my problem. Because you know what you need when you have data in an online system about whose mail should be held and on what days? You need someone who can access the system and apparently our local post office currently does not have anyone who can access that system. This is a sufficiently ridiculous explanation that I believe it.

But they think that filling out a physical form, at the post office, will make it less likely that something goes wrong, I guess because someone at the post office will actually be able to read any of this. We'll see whenever our next multi-day trip out of town comes up.

Next thing on my photo roll is Crossroads Village, so we're in the Christmas-to-New-Years stretch of lots of lighting, so, please enjoy that. I am again trying to limit myself to sharing pictures that look better than usual.

bunnyhugger looking like she's having a great time already as we get to Crossroads Village.

Someone ahead of me peeking at the train as it arrives and isn't that a great halo around their hat?

Here's the holiday train going into warp right past us.

Inside one of the Crossroads Village preserved buildings. Here you see Santa Claus's Willy Wonka hat.

There's a shuttle that runs from the front of the village back to where the carousel is. We never take it because waiting for it would be slower than just walking back there, but you can see here at least four of the same guy wearing the same blue jacket and cap taking the ride.

But we're already back at the carousel building and looking back at the village, here.

Trivia: The fastest flight of the first-generation Bell X-1 aircraft was 960 miles per hour, Mach 1.45. Its highest was 69,000 feet. Source: American X-Vehicles: An Inventory - X-1 to X-50, Dennis R Jenkins, Tony Landis, Jay Miller.

Currently Reading: Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space, Adam Higginbotham. I should say if you haven't figured this out. Given how for the past week I haven't had time to write up what I've been up to, and that we were at Halloweekends all last week, I haven't actually had time to read one page in like a solid week now.