Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

I must apologize profusely for the shortness of this chapter and the forthcoming delay, but for whatever reason this spring is absolutely kicking my ass in several directions, and it’s violently disrupted my writing schedule. So I’m going to be taking a break for the month of June, and work on getting back into the groove. The next chapter will be posted Sunday, July 6th. Thank you all so, so much for reading, commenting, and enjoying the story.

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My GI doctor says the celiac test is negative. This is both unsurprising and a relief: the doctor ordered the test because of comorbidities, not because there were any signs of celiac, but celiac is common enough in people with collagenous colitis that it was worth checking.

I do still need to contact her office tomorrow and ask about that follow-up appointment.

2025 May 16: The Washington Examiner: "An American papacy: The Catholic Church didn’t choose Pope Leo XIV to battle Trump"

2025 May 30: AlterNet: "'Divine trolling': Pope schedules Chicago mass on the same day as Trump's military parade"

Pattern is from the book Cross Stitch In The Forest. I foolishly thought, “This is just 4 colors! It should be simple. And I can use threads from my stash!”

Dear reader, it was not so. One 123stitch order for DMC 988 and more 989, hours of eyestrain from working on dark fabric, and about a billion three-quarter stitches later, I can confidently state that I HAVE NOT LEARNED A THING and intend to start Upon A Star (the one with the wolf and the moon) pretty much any second now.

Recently someone I know was complaining how bad Biden was. "He was so old," they said. "Going down hill. He never should have ran again (in 2024).

Well, maybe Joe was to old and should have handed it directly to Kamala Harris much soon. But I asked them, "Name me a bad policy he endorsed."

That shut them up.

'Nuff said.

Get better Joe.

Meanwhile, I stage managed Much Ado.

( Speak low if you speak love )

This week I'm trying something I haven't done in ages on my humor blog: letting Robert Benchley write it. I like this. He's got a pretty solid comic voice. Here's what you might have missed if you weren't reading it day-by-day:

• MiSTed: The 72 Hours Saga, Part 42
• There Are Limits to What I Can Say About Notable Soups
• Statistics Saturday: Some Unsuccessful Soups
• Robert Benchley: The Lost Locomotive
• Robert Benchley: ``Take The Witness!''
• What's Going On In Mark Trail? Why is Kelly Welly pitching AI garbage? March - May 2025
• Robert Benchley: The New Strokes
• MiSTed: The 72 Hours Saga, Part 43

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With that having got you moderately amused now please enjoy the end of our stop-in at Cedar Point last July, as photographed:

This is not the Space Age ride mentioned as a rotation point. This is a ride in Planet Snoopy, a completely separate kids area on the other side of the Coliseum from the Kiddie Kingdom.

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And this is a small performance area in Planet Snoopy that I think we've never been around when it was in use.

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Walking over to something or other (Iron Dragon) we saw a pack of musicians performing in front of the Coasters Diner. Also someone who bought a seagull backpack, that's nice.

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Also you can see a mother who does not have the time for people in poodle skirts dancing.

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And here's Iron Dragon, always a favorite, although in its last season before the indignity of a fast-pass line-cutting lane was installed.

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Meanwhile the griffin, now gold, stands proudly there and refuses to explain why it vanished for a few years and why it's in front of Iron Dragon instead of the griffin-themed GateKeeper.

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Now here is the turnstile outside the Cedar Downs racing carousel. I photograph this just because I'd never paid any attention to the manufacturer of the turnstile before, so here we go.

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The afternoon light flatters the horses here.

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The lights inside not being on improves the composition here. I should have centered the center area, though. If I ever get the chance I'll have to re-photograph this right.

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Tilting the camera this severely emphasizes how the horses are racing, moving back and forth in those slots, so that some look like they're leaping ahead of the pack.

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Cedar Downs is next to the Cadillac Cars, last remaining tracked car ride.

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And that's our drop-in done. Here's a look to the front of the park from Cedar Downs on the right and in the concrete you see how much has been done to dry up the rain already.

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Trivia: On the fourth flight day of Gemini 4, the astronauts found themselves unable to turn off the computer (to conserve spacecraft power). Even after switching the unit to off the computer light stayed on, with no malfunction light. Source: Gemini 4: An Astronaut Steps Into The Void, David J Shayler.

Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine, Volume 63: The Abdominal Snowman, Ralph Stein, Bela Zaboly, Editor Stephanie Noelle. There's a lot of energy going into this story, especially after the four thousandth college football story by Sims and Zaboly.

More of not having time to write anything so please enjoy Cedar Point as on the day we dropped in last July.

Resting in the Kiddie Kingdom as it might have rained. We had always thought this building had to have been the station for a train ride or something like that, before its long use as a lost-persons center. Turns out no, it never was. When the Kiddie Kingdom used to be enclosed this was the way you entered and exited, though, which is why it's a substantial building without any particular entertainment value.

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The Kiddie Kingdom motorcycle ride where you go around in a small vehicle and hit a buzzer lots.

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And the control panel for the station, including the note about what ride an operator here should go to next (Space Age).

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Enough of the Kiddie Kingdom; we're back at Blue Streak and ready for a front-seat ride! Soon.

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I got to see the sign with the text to read in case of service interruptions, but I couldn't get my camera to take a clear photo of it.

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The lift hill and the queue area that normally seems over-ample for Blue Streak. It fills up a bit come Halloweekends.

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And here's Cedar Point's Windseeker! Will this be the time I finally ride it?

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Yes. Despite the recent rain the ride was going and I chose to take this moment for a ride that proved pretty normal, compared to getting stopped up top like at Kings Island.

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Here's what the ride looks like at full height from under the queue's covering.

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And I liked this picture of a guy almost trapped between the fence railings up front. Tighten this up and you have a good album cover.

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Yeah, like that! Now you have the whole image of the guy not knowing he's confined to a narrow column, and that in-between fences behind and in front of him.

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Windseeker exits on this nice view of the back of the Wild Mouse's lift hill, and so you can see the back of the cat who's reaching for a mouse car.

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Trivia: On Gemini 4's third day of flight Pat White, wife of astronaut Ed White, besides talking with her husband also passed along some capcom notes to adjust some dials, and the flight surgeon's instruction to drink more water and get more rest. Pat McDivitt, Jim McDivitt's wife, repeated the drink-more-water instruction. Source: Gemini 4: An Astronaut Steps Into The Void, David J Shayler.

Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine, Volume 63: The Abdominal Snowman, Ralph Stein, Bela Zaboly, Editor Stephanie Noelle.

You know what we did after that Kennywood visit and that Pinball event? If you guessed ``went to an amusement park, probably Cedar Point'' good news, you get to see pictures of exactly that event now:

Traditional establishing shot, proving that both my car and Cedar Point were in view at the same time.

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The entrance, looking not as grand as it did during the eclipse but still, nice. Note the electronic sign warns that Top Thrill 2 will not open today; it could have said, all season.

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Boardwalk Nights! The Cedar Point 150 sign turns out to be a good spot to put signs for all kinds of temporary events.

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Blue Streak, standing firm despite the threatening clouds.

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And here's Raptor, again with clouds that look like they don't want any fun going on.

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Of course even a short visit to Cedar Point will see carousels, such as the Kiddy Kingdom one here.

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We spent a little time looking around the Kiddie Kingdom rides, mostly out of a sense that someday they're going to renovate them otu of existence and we'll feel bad about that.

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Though a lot of the Kiddie Kingdom rides are like this, a toy vehicle going in a circle with a buzzer the kid can press to make noise.

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There's the carousel. The armored horse on the left is a fiberglass replica; the original is, last anyone confirmed, gathering dust in the art department for some reason.

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Back to rides, like the spinning tubs one here that was closed lest the rain you see there make it unsafe to operate.

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Here's two of the rabbits on the Kiddie Kingdom carousel. At the end of the season an operator claimed they had names, although we're not sure we believed the claim and I'm not sure I remember them. They were straightforward ones like you might make if you weren't trying very hard, like, Snowball and Caramel or something like that.

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Kiddie Kingdom Carousel, some flat kiddie ride or other, and one of the domes of the Coliseum.

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Trivia: On the second day of its flight Gemini 4 astronauts surpassed the total duration record of all eight previous United States astronauts combined, as well as the duration record for a multi-crew spacecraft set by Pavel Belyayev and Alexei Leonov on Voskhod 2 three months earlier. Source: Gemini 4: An Astronaut Steps Into The Void, David J Shayler.

Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine, Volume 62: WEE vs I.O.U., Tom Sims, Bela Zaboly, Editor Stephanie Noelle. Yep, that sure was another college football tale, although this one at least introduces the element that Olive Oyl eats a lot of olives, thereby justifying one element of this one Gene Deitch-made 60s Popeye cartoon.

(PS: there is no significance to the subject line, a lyric from Sparks's ``Tips for Teens''. I couldn't think of a good song to use and this was playing. Pay it no mind.)

Sometime during lockdown in the last four years, my arches fell. They had never been particularly high, but they felt fine in Birkies and so on. But now I am doing foot exercises to get them to show up at all, and if I don't it is really painful to walk any distance.

This cuts into my abiity to regain stamina and general fitness.

The exercises are starting to help significantly, so now all I need is a day or two without a major rainstorm or enough after a rainstorm that I won't be getting wet just by walking around near trees and bushes.

A friend told me that it takes at least 6 months to get one's energy back after COVID. Well, I was diagnosed Jan. 20 and it went for a couple of weeks actively and a few more overall. It took more time to be rid of the bad taste from the Pax than I expected. So I'm still within six months of it. I keep telling myself this.

The other thing that interferes with my health at the moment is variable tinitis, as in it comes and goes, and when it's there I have to find a soundscape in my CALM app that has that tone in it, so that the app's sounds distract me from the one inside my brain. Usually it works, but last night the inner sound had apparently retuned itself (autotune is the plague) and did not match anything on Calm except a wind in the trees, so I wasn't able to sleep, since the 'wind in pines' just didn't work. There is a downside to having perfect pitch and noticing when the inner-produced noises change.

Now to close out pictures of the Women's International Pinball Tournament, as again, no time to write just now.

Pinburgh championship banners seen from the first floor, near where they keep all the Long Croquet Mallets on the wall.

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A break in the action. This might have been lunch or just the time before the scheduled next round.

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The waiting area, waiting around.

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I went over to this little side balcony where I got an extreme shot of the previous WIPT champion banners.

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And over there they had the original King Kong! Hi-Deal is one of Bally's last electromechanical games, but don't worry, it's another collect-the-playing-cards game.

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From by Hi-Deal you get this view of the tournament organizers area, with all the people wearing STAFF shirts and plastic crates of stuff.

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Here I got up real close to the top-four-finishers plaques and you know what I discovered about how they're held up?

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Yeah, it's all done with cans of soda pop! Only the first place finisher gets a Diet Coke, everyone else has to accept Regular Sprite.

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This is just side art from a bouncy-ball crane game that, I don't know, there's something appealing even though the kangaroo face was drawn kind of weird.

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Disused PAPA call-a-tournament-official-over station; you push the button and they get word that someone should be over. They had a couple of these off hidden behind things. Anyway I don't know what the winged, horned pinball is supposed to mean.

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Later in the day the bagels were replaced with lots of popcorn.

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And at the venue we saw Labyrinth for the first time, playing it enough to understand there's cool stuff going on here, not enough to understand how to do any of it on purpose.

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Trivia: Capcom Gus Grissom gave Gemini 4 astronaut Ed White the go-head for his spacewalk one hour 33 minutes into the flight. Source: Gemini 4: An Astronaut Steps Into The Void, David J Shayler. They would try opening the hatch at just under four hours into the flight.

Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine, Volume 62: WEE vs I.O.U., Tom Sims, Bela Zaboly, Editor Stephanie Noelle. Noelle observes it's the last Tom Sims-penned story so of course it's another college football tale.

I don't have the time to really write anything up right now, so please enjoy pictures of the Revived Women's International Pinball Tournament, 2024 edition.

bunnyhugger discovering how much of Total Nuclear Annihilation she's lost touch with.

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A look across the lower level of the movie theater. It was before noon so that's why the lower level isn't busy enough to be dead. Later, the smell of movie popcorn would dominate things.

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And here's the trophies for the top four finishers! bunnyhugger would not be among them, but she didn't do badly.

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Waiting area and lounge set up for players in the middle of the floor, along with a projection screen that would show whatever they thought deserved it. On the side you can see a Genesis, conceivably the one of my long-departed glory days at Pinburgh.

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People gather together to hear opening announcements and play the Pinball National Anthem (the high-score theme from Space Station).

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And gathering for the group photo, with both real cameras and cell phones!

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bunnyhugger joins in the Pledge of Pinball Allegiance (liberty and just a wee bit more margin on the ball save timer for all).

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Round one! Tragically, bunnyhugger's tournament would begin with Paragon. The format was the same as the WIPT of 2019, at least.

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And here she faces up to, ugh, Paragon.

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Sometime later she writes down scores (probably) for one of the other games that bank. Feels like Aladdin's Castle to me, but no way to know for sure. Or she's just setting the pen down.

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Meanwhile with nothing else to do I got some time in on blob-themed game Quicksilver, in the free-play area.

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Not sure I'd ever seen the airbrushed side panel art on a Quicksilver before. Turns out this melty blobby game manages to find room for silhouetted nipples.

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Trivia: Albrecht Dürer, after receiving one of Martin Luther's works as a gift from Duke Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony in 1520, wrote (Duke Frederick's secretary and court chaplain) that he would draw Luther's portrait and engrave it in copper, ``if God helps me to come to'' him. Dürer would never meet, nor draw, Luther. Source: Worldly Goods: A New History of the Renaissance, Lisa Jardine.

Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine, Volume 61: King Bee and Queen Bee, Tom Sims, Bela Zaboly, Editor Stephanie Noelle. And after an intriguing start the characters just decide to leave. It's a choice that kind of makes sense but it should have been used as a stronger punch line.

I mentioned in passing the Zen Tournament, the traditional end-of-the-pinball-season match where teams of players try to win a double-elimination contest. We had that Tuesday night and once again bunnyhugger and I were a team. The format was, apart from the teams-of-people-playing, the same as we used in league finals, best-of-three matches and a team eliminated only after losing a second round of that.

The surprising thing, especially given we hadn't practiced at all. On our very first game against the team of PCL and DG, Black Knight: Sword of Rage, we lost, but after rallying from an enormous gap, and losing by only a couple hundred thousand points. I felt great for that; bunnyhugger felt the opposite. On Dungeons and Dragons we learned that there was a brand-new code update just that day that made Dragon Multiball, the thing everyone goes for, more difficult to reach. We won anyway but it was luckier than it should have been. We lost on the last game, though, and went into the Second Chance Bracket.

But once there we were we started doing well again. This included some really dominating games of Tron, The Beatles --- I think we had a million points plus on the first ball, and that's where you'd hope to be after two balls --- and in the next round, had a game of Pulp Fiction where we made up a half-million-point gap on one ball. I count myself lucky when I get a half-million points a whole game of Pulp Fiction, never mind on one ball and splitting flipper responsibilities. If that weren't enough we managed to beat the team of DMC and RED --- my pick for the team of destiny here --- in three games, winning on Tales of the Arabian Nights thanks to a killer first ball, and squeaking out a win on Jaws on the bonus of the last ball.

So this put us into finals, against the team of PCL and DG again. They beat us on Godzilla, like we kind of expected, although we didn't do badly. On The Addams Family it took us a little while but we finally got the rhythm of the skill shot, and shooting the ramp, and shooting the chair to start modes and that gave us a very easy win. Then they picked Jurassic Park, which we never play, and rarely play well, and we just couldn't do anything. We even failed to get the T-Rex Multiball started, so the game was a loss. And with that, we lost the tournament, but we got far closer than we were expecting, We should have expected; bunnyhugger had been counting on using down time during the tournament to get some work done so naturally she would have no time.

For the side tournament --- there's always a side tournament --- bunnyhugger brought in her All-American Girl toy machine, The Flip Side, figuring there was no way this could be such a long-playing game as to make the tournament drag on. In this she was correct. She did not foresee the possibility of someone beating her long-held high score on her own table, and while RED did not beat her high score, he came closer than she was comfortable with. We also streamed this on PCL's rig, which was very funny because the rig is set up for a pinball game of normal dimensions, not something small enough for a squirrel to be able to play. I don't know that this is the first time anyone's streamed The Flip Side for an actual sanctioned pinball tournament but it's a rarity at least. So if anyone caught the stream, they got to enjoy that oddness too.

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Coming up now on the photo roll: the Women's International Pinball Tournament, the thing we really went to Pittsburgh for. This used to be held the day after Pinburgh finals, but with ... well, there was a revival of Pinburgh. Without the backing of ReplayFX and the dispersed collection of games from PAPA headquarters it can't command the Anthrocon convention center, but after all, the important thing in a tournament is the playing, right? So here's how that looked ...

The new location of Pinburgh! Which we almost drove right past because we ... were expecting some kind of dedicated sports-event facility, not the upper level of a multiplex.

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But here it is, the revived Women's Intergalactic Pinball Tournament. Also something held there for the first time, the pre-Pinburgh Bash At The Burgh tournament that we didn't get to.

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They had the rights to the name as well as the banners from Previous Pinburgh, including the ones that reflected the 2019 champions that would have debuted at Pinburgh 2020.

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And ... there's the venue, the mezzanine level of the multiplex here. You can totally date these photos to this year because there's Yet Another Alien Movie among the posters.

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Players warming up. Also filling up, since they provided bagels! If we'd known I probably would still have eaten so many eggs from the hotel breakfast but still, that's nice seeing.

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Spanish Eyes! And still featuring its Pinburgh 2019 bank sign, so there's a good chance I played this literal table for something that counts before. Also look at that art; it's a pity that artist didn't do more games.

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Trivia: One of the Sanskrit words for 'Friday' was 'Sukravara', honoring Venus and meaning 'bright, resplendent'. Source: Mapping Time: The Calendar and its History, EG Richards.

Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine, Volume 61: King Bee and Queen Bee, Tom Sims, Bela Zaboly, Editor Stephanie Noelle.

Back in 2013, I winnowed down the entire listings of Boston Early Music Festival events, official and fringe, to a curated concentrate of just concerts and other events featuring music from before 1600 AD. There were about 35 of them.

The 2025 BEMF is just nine days out and the Fringe Concerts listings updated today has a total of fewer than 30 listings.

When last I reported about my lost camera and Motor City Furry Con we'd had established two important things. First, they had my camera! Second, it was in storage so who knows when they'd find the chance to recover it?

Well. I could manage going to Pinball At The Zoo without a camera and even the handful of things we got to in May without. Mostly local pinball stuff, although this might be the first time I don't have a proper ``what we compete for'' picture of the plaques at pinball night. But we are coming up on things I must have a camera for, and while yes, my iPhone is probably adequate for most purposes I want a camera that's a proper camera.

So I went looking and found a used Panasonic Lumix camera, one very close to the camera I had before my misplaced camera. And I finally have all the pieces I need for it together --- camera, memory card, battery and spare battery, charger, and the data/power cable that connects it to a computer or USB power supply! I even found that my old camera bag, the one used for the previous camera, fits this new one just fine. It lacks a strap --- I'd transferred that to my Samsung camera so that's in the Motor City Furry Con Lost And Found Storage Locker right now --- but the important thing is I can take good pictures and plenty of them. And the zoom on this doesn't --- yet --- get jammed up partway through, putting it ahead of my Samsung.

Now, of course, I just have to explain what I need to take pictures of that made me spend money on this.

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We close the month now with something I bet you'd never thought you would see: the end of Kennywood pictures from our trip last year! And what comes up to follow this? Hm. There's so many possibilities ...

Oh yeah, we rented a locker for the second time ever and had to get stuff out of it. Do you see our locker number? Well, it was easy to remember since it was 1054 and I need hardly remind you what an important year that was.

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Super Kaleidoscope, the charming circular-shaped building up front with the candy shop inside. It just looks good. You can make out the Old Mill's frontage in the background.

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The Goodnight heart, last thing you see before entering the tunnel to leave Kennywood.

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They've painted the tunnel with all kinds of Kennywood memorabilia and items, including a replica ticket from nearly a century ago and the reminder to gentlemen after using the washroom.

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Looking back at the park from the parking lot.

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And here's a panoramic view at the end of the night, to match the one had at the start of the day.

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Trivia: The pancreas's name reflects its label as ``pan'' (all) and ``kreas'' (flesh), an organ of all flesh. The name may reflect early lack of knowledge of what it did and was simply there. Source: The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human, Siddhartha Mukherjee.

Currently Reading: The Harvey Comics Companion, Mark Arnold.

 When someone tells you that something is "inevitable" or "here to stay," you shouldn't believe them. You should, in fact, do something between vicious mockery and other, more high-level spells on them. They are lying to you and they want you to suffer.

In the past, massive political and socioeconomic changes were enforced through violence. Before Margaret Thatcher could have people believing that There Is No Alternative, she had to crush the miner's unions. Before neoliberal structural adjustment policies were enforced on the Global South, governments and corporations had to rig elections, murder Indigenous people, and starve their populations. 

So why are we accepting this massive change—the enshittification of all things from labour to education to the arts—that no one asked for and no one wants? Because we are a very passive, bovine population that has been conditioned for decades to accept anything that Big Tech tells us that we want. Which is why I get daily emails from companies and my employer giving me best practices for incorporating plagiarism into my pedagogical practice, etc.

The handful of independent tech reporters who still have brains, like Ed Zitron and in this case, Paris Marx, put the lie to that. Tech Won't Save Us has a great episode, "Generative AI is Not Inevitable with Alex Hanna and Emily M. Bender" that discusses how obvious it is that gen AI has not lived up to the hype, that it's an industry propped up by wishes and VC capital rather than an actual market, and that we can actually nip this in the bud. It's very empowering and I'm definitely going to check out the book that the two guests wrote.

This week my humor blog has seen a lot being made out of the fact Wikipedia has a list of notable soups. But there's also other stuff, no less weakly motivated. For example:

• MiSTed: The 72 Hours Saga, Part 41
• The Guy Who Used to Draw _Beetle Bailey_ Saw a Fox
• Statistics Saturday: Your Forecast For The Week To Come
• I Need Hardly Explain Why I Looked at Wikipedia's List of Notable Soups
• But as Long as I Am Looking at Wikipedia's List of Notable Soups
• What's Going On In Gasoline Alley? Why celebrate a 106th anniversary? On the wrong date? March - May 2025
• Not to Say I've Finished Chewing This List of Notable Soups Bone
• MiSTed: The 72 Hours Saga, Part 42

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Now something that never needs motivation, the sharing of pictures of Kennywood. Enjoy!

Here's a picture of some of the horses from the inside of the carousel, showing off the less-elaborately-carved sides.

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This is the band organ, a Wurlitzer something or other model.

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Here's that carousel tiger scaring off some riders.

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And someone so delighted she's clapping and leaning back. (Yes, I know, she's taking a picture and not stepping back a little.)

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Is that the night already? Vending booths all closed up here.

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The traditional picture from the bridge of the Racer and midway games and Jack Rabbit. That tree on the right's obscuring the logo almost completely now.

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It is the end of the night! Grand Carousel with all the lights off, and people being quietly but insistently pushed toward the exit.

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So here's another quick picture of the lake, looking over towards Steel Curtain so there's none of that pesky nature obscuring the buildings.

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The waters were quite still and the reflection of Steel Curtain looked great.

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And here's Jack Rabbit where you can see the neon logo and the parts of the legs that still aren't illuminated.

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Refreshments continues to be one of bunnyhugger's favorite pieces of neon.

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And here's the Kangaroo. The rainbow-lit roo is part of a lights animation, the extra brightness and colors jumping from right to left.

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Trivia: During World War II, Japan had 99 motorized farm tractors. Source: The Taste of War: World War II and the Battle for Food, Lizzie Collingham. (Given the typical size and landscaping of rice paddies it's not obvious that more would have helped much, and in any case, fuel and oil were short.)

Currently Reading: The Harvey Comics Companion, Mark Arnold.

It's not Wednesday, which means it's a day of the week eligible for Wednesday Books. (I don't know why I'm so contrary about this, and I know occasionally I've messed up anyways). It's been a while, let's catch up!

Finished Reading Recently

We left off with me just barely having started Terry Pratchett's Wyrd Sisters. I got through it, but am continuing to feel Pretty Weird about the fact that I don't love the Witches stories nearly as much as I love the Guard stories. I did like all the Scottish-play references, because I am a theatre nerd (even if I'm not that kind of theatre nerd).

I then did a very necessary and very burnt-out reread of all seven Murderbot (by Martha Wells) books in rapid succession. They continue to be Real Fucking Good, and I continue to enjoy having verdantry to samebrain at and send random screencaps or whatever when I need. Three is still my absolute favourite golden retriever puppy of a character, but I had an unexpectedly positive reaction to 2.0 this time around. The seventh book is still the hardest to read, due to [redacted] but I still love the ending so goddamn much and all the hope for the future it seems to provide. Man these books are good for me.

After I finished Murderbot, I returned to the Disc with the next guards book: Jingo! This uh. This is a book about colonialism and racism and war and UH. Like. UHHHH.

Look, all of Pratchett's stuff has this horrible timeless quality to it --I say horrible, because it's less like "applicable to humans everywhere" and more like "goddamnit, we _still_ have to protest this shit?". And reading a book which is very blatantly drawing some parallels between us, the upstanding white British folk with our stiff upper lips and sensible demeanor, and them, the brown-skinned desert-living barbarians with their foreign ways and horrible traditions......yeeeeah, we still have to protest this shit?

It is nice as hell to watch Vimes annoyedly realize he's being racist and have to figure out how to be Less So. It's _amazing_ to watch him wield his privilege like a weapon, as extensively as humanly possible. The only reason to have power is to help those who don't have it, and Vimes gets that.

I was unexpectedly okay with the haha-very-funny joke of Nobby-the-horrible-gremlin being put into a dress and getting in touch with his feminine side. Like. I mean, there were some parts of it that were transphobe-adjacent, but most of the humour was very solidly on "Nobby Nobbs is a horrible gremlin" and not "men wearing dresses is inherently funny". And honestly, even with the first part, it felt pretty okay to watch him be like "no, it was genuinely good for me to explore my gender by doing some of this"

I've done at least one babysitting of The Local Toddler, so we read a small handful of books --not nearly as many as last time, because we spent most of the day outside at the playgrounds instead. But we got through a few:

Hooray, a pinata! by Elisa Kleven felt _ridiculously_ familiar to me as the kind of neurospice who builds connections with toys and plushies and fictional objects. Very sweet little story!

Red: A Crayon's Story by Michael Hall I have maybe read before? Not sure. It's a trans allegory and it doesn't try to be subtle about it. Reading parts of it really hurts because dannnnngg yeah, it is hard when other people see you in a way that just isn't true.

The Doorbell Rang by Pat Hutchins was entirely forgettable. There's counting. There's a nice cast of multi-racial inoffensive children. There are cookies. Great literature, it is not, but it won't hurt anyone.

Bootsie Barker Bites by Barbara Bottner I read after the toddler was in bed, just finding it on the floor and giving it a shot. And it was _delightful_! It includes a child being belived by their parents about something they find uncomfortable! It includes the triumph of brains over brawn! It includes girl children who are horrible little gremlin bullies! (I mean, obviously we don't like bullies, but dang, it's weirdly refreshing to see visions of bullying that look familiar to my childhood and ALSO let girls be rough and physical and scary sometimes!). It was a fun read and I didn't predict the twist and was pleased when I got to it!

Last thing I've finished reading recently was the entire archive of the webcomic Subnormality. If you've been around the internet for a while, it's the one with too many words and the immortal human-eating Sphinx as a regular character. I'd read batches of it before, but not in ages and ages, and it was nice to see how all the threads warp and weft. It's absolutely pretentious as shit, but still made me cry at least a couple times, and wrapped me up in a general hope for humanity --even when it's being cynical as fuck, it never seems to stop hoping. (The lead singer of the Generals is my favourite character, by far).

Oh, and I don't think I ever properly mentioned it, but I had been reading The Pushcart War aloud to Austin, and did finally finish it. And then quite soon after, observed one of my favourite students holding her own very beloved copy and we had a mutual squee.....and then I learned that apparently subsequent editions have changed the dates of the book to place it "in the future" which makes absolutely zero goddamn sense given that _nothing else is changed_. So her copy, published in like 2014 or so, sets the pushcart war as beginning in 2026 but does not otherwise _remotely_ reimagine a world that is different from the one in my much older copy, which sets the tale in the 1980s.

Currently Reading

I have been a mess with library check-outs and holds and stuff. I have two physical books I really need to return to the library, like, months ago because I'm probably not going to read them at this point, and I have two digital books that I need to re-hold because I didn't manage to get to them when they were checked out to me. Arg!

What I am actually currently reading though is A Drop of Corruption, which is Robert Jackson Bennett's sequel to his excellent The Tainted Cup which I read last year. I'm through the first part and definitely having as much joy about the worldbuilding and any moment Ana is on screen. Din is...going through it, and I hope he works himself out okay. I like that I've observed at least one of the Clues that was later confirmed, although I wasn't nearly smart enough to answer the first mystery that was presented. Anyways, I have like five days before that ebook evaporates, but I think I'm on track. Finding excuses to walk places and read as I do seems to be really helpful for how my brain handles books.

A couple weeks ago, I needed something to read as I walked to (actual in-person!) therapy, so I broke out my Gutenberg ebook of Dracula, and read up to the current day. I think my hope is to actually go ahead and read the whole thing _not_ as a daily, since I haven't managed that either of the previous two years I've been subscribed. But I haven't read anything since, so I'm behind either way. I did get far enough to get to the part where Jonathan is looking out the window and being all "that sure is my host climbing around on the outside of the castle like a big lizard". Delightful!

What I'm Reading Next

More Discworld, probably. I'm currently at a slight loss for specific cravings, although Tho read Scholomance on my recommendation, so maybe I grab that again. I could for reals try Fire Logic (third time's the charm?) or try to get and finish How To Be Perfec.

I should have some free time in mid-to-late August and I'd love to spend some of that doing like...a thorough read-through of the stuff on my bookshelves I've never gotten to. I also had something push the "Transmet?" button in the back of my brain and like ugh, we all know Warren Ellis is a creep and the books have some serious problems, but also I think I was rereading the entire series more often than once a year during the first Tr*mp administation and I'm probably due for more of that.

Yaybooks!

~Sor
MOOP!

So Elon and company had another fireworks display... I mean, attempted another launch of Starship.

The launch went well but the Starship tumbled out of control and exploded and the Super Heavy blew up in the Gulf of Mexico.

Hardware retrieved: 0. Data retrieved: ??? Estimated cost: 100 million dollars.

Lessons learned? Probably none.

I'm old enough (young enough?) to remember when NASA had disasters of having entire rockets with payload go *BOOM* there were investigations, Senate hearings and people got demoted, fired or disciplined. Elon? Fat chance.

I grew up in the Space Race: Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Skylab, the Shuttle. I know NASA has its problems. I know that no bucks, no Buck Rogers. Too often NASA has been squeezed between doing Science, government micro management and providing job programs for select congressional districts. Space X has done a great job with Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy but Starship? It's a near total failure.

Look, NASA was working on reusable space craft back in the 1970s but the material science wasn't quite there yet. They were doing successful launch pad to landing pad experiments. Nothing big, just a 100 feet or so. Baby steps. All cancelled by budget cuts by congress. Space is hard. Space costs money. Space needs research. But when you blow through a 100 million per launch and gain nothing? Forget it.

bunnyhugger, stirred up by my post last night about the tree and the risk it might present, spent too much time worrying about what to do and turned to doing something about it this afternoon. And by remarkable stroke, found something very effective: a couple guys who could come out to the house today to give an estimate, and who're scheduled to come out tomorrow afternoon to cut the fallen branch down and chop it up into useful wood. So now we're set to be even more well-stocked for when we get the fireplace converted into something not dangerously unsafe to operate.

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Also we got back the clock. As promised they had it ready Wednesday; I ventured in after work, but before going to the card store to get my father a birthday card. (This spun out into also getting father's day cards, saving me a trip sometime in two weeks.) As bunnyhugger texted to ask if I was stopping for something after work I was on my way to the art glass shop. This was all but the work of a minute. I came in and both the woman and the guy who'd been in the car on Saturday telling me she'd gone back in were there. I started to explain what my deal was when the woman pointed to the counter. I was delighted, and said so, by how lovely the new glass looks. bunnyhugger observed maybe the real difference was just that it was completely new and clean. But it does look great. And now it's on the wall and everything's in good shape in this part of this room of the house! We're making progress.

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And now we return to Kennywood and to the flying saucer gift shop!

And here's the 90s t-shirt. Steel Phantom was rebuilt into Phantom's Revenge; Wipeout and Pitt Fall are gone (Wipeout to Lake Compounce). I can't find any information about Fort Kennywood and wonder if it might have been a show or event or something that wouldn't make lists of former attractions.

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bunnyhugger admiring the Grand Carousel by night.

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The carousel all white-lit and brilliant by night.

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The inside has plenty of mirrors so you get to see the insides of the horses in this picture.

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Looking out from atop a horse. bunnyhugger grabs a picture of me here.

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bunnyhugger goes for a ride on the tiger this time.

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Trivia: E-470, the beltway toll highway around Denver, is an incomplete loop, with the northwestern corner never built owing to plutonium-239 contamination of the soil of the former Rocky Flats Plant, which operated from 1952 to 1992. Source: Land: How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World, Simon Winchester. In 1989 the FBI raided the plant, owned by the federal Department of Energy, over Rockwell International's shoddy management.

Currently Reading: The Harvey Comics Companion, Mark Arnold.

I have been staggering through the past few weeks, holding myself together with string and duct tape, and it is finally the Cottagecore Week.

I have finished a sashiko patch on a pair of jeans and I am very proud of myself, as well as the first of the embroidered numbers for my front & back doors, and I have solved the problem of how to print patterns onto stabilizer (use the library makerspace printer from a USB). The mending circle at the local "sustainable fashion collective" (it's a secondhand store with some mending/tailoring services) was fun and I'll go back when the bus schedule allows. Dropout.tv and the 1995 Pride & Prejudice miniseries have been my companions as I sew this week, and they are both great for that purpose. I think I will move on to North & South and perhaps Horrible Histories next. Is Shakespeare & Hathaway fun?

The knotweed in the garden has been beaten back from the path to the shed, and the asparagus is coming up spindly and feathery (I really hope that they will thicken over time, I will eat a thin asparagus spear without complaining but I love asparagus with some heft); no trace of the rhubarb, which I'm kind of upset about, but seeds are always chancy, and I'm waiting to see what happened with the watermelon and sunflowers, now that I've staked the peas. Surely something will come up? The gladiolus in the front garden are looking more promising, although I don't know what happened to everything else. I have proof that someone in the Parks Department exists, and has just been ignoring my emails (a coworker knows the parks director, and emailed her, and the person I have been trying to get in touch with answered when their boss was on the chain, but no luck since, so this is progress but not by much).

I have been wallowing in books, and can enthusiastically join the chorus of those of you who have been shrieking delightedly about Robert Jackson Bennett's latest, A Drop of Corruption, it's so good, please discuss in the comments; and I finally got my hands on Katherine Addison's The Tomb of Dragons, ditto.

I just made a spreadsheet of all of my cross stitch works in progress that I can think of, and sorted them by "joy quotient" and then by effort remaining. Ta dahh! I have prioritized my backlog.

I gave each WIP two numbers from 1-10: How satisfying would it be to finish this (higher number is good), and how much effort remains (lower number is good). "Joy quotient" is satisfaction divided by effort.

I should probably do something similar with my spreadsheet of planned projects, although "planned" is really too strong a word. Yes, I have separate sheets for kits and charts. No, I have not catalogued every chart I own (we would be here until the heat death of the universe and probably also crash Excel); just the ones I have formed some vague intention of doing and/or have purchased materials for.

Parting thought, any kits I bought before about 1995 should almost certainly get yeeted. (Yotted? Yeeten?)


Edited to add: I did this for my backlog of charts and it came out sorted perfectly by effort (easiest at the top of the list). Hahahahaha.

I made the list of kits from memory and I have a terrible feeling that in reality I have tons more than I think I do. This is already discounting things like the pile of beginner kits I bought to teach my coworkers at game night in 2020 (RIP).


Edit edit: Strictly speaking these are UFOs (UnFinished Objects) rather than true WIPs. My one actual work in progress is Deer Trail and that's nearly done.

I'm fine, as far as I know everyone's fine, but my trip to get blood drawn was more exciting than anticipated: the bus driver had to slam on the brakes to avoid either a bicycle or a pedestrian crossing in mid-block. She did that, checked to make sure that everyone on the bus was OK, then drove to the next corner, pulled over, and asked again if everyone was sure they were OK.

A few stops after that, someone asked me where he should get off the bus to get to "the little mall with Trader Joe's and MicroCenter." It took me a moment to figure out what he meant, because the bus we were on doesn't go there. So first I told him I wasn't sure, because this bus didn't go there, and then I started thinking about the problem. He said he wasn't good at directions, so I suggested a route that involved more walking but less chance of getting lost. I wound up signaling for his bus stop, and then telling him I was sorry, I'd forgotten they'd moved the bus stop, so [revised directions]. I should note, he didn't ask me for most of this, just what bus stop to use, and I was in the mood to do the extra bits.

The rest of the trip to Mt. Auburn to get blood drawn went smoothly. Once I got there, I had very little wait, and the phlebotomist did a very good job; I made a point of telling him so. On the way back, I stopped in Harvard Square to put more money on my Charlie card; buy and eat a slice of Otto's mashed potato and bacon pizza; and then went to Lizzy's to get Adrian a pint of non-dairy chocolate ice cream.

I was going to withdraw some cash from the ATM at the 7-11 at Comm Ave and Harvard Ave, but when I got there the screen said "windows 7. Press ctrl-alt-del to log in," which was literally impossible with the numeric keypad, so I just came home.

Short explainer for whats currently horrifying Lawyer, Moderation and T&S Bsky: The people who have been advertising 'Verified Gaza Go Fund Me Accounts', have now moved on to asking for people to hand over control of their personal US Bank Accounts so that they can 'receive international donations'

Today's bad idea - Active Crime Scene Walking Tours.

Just finished: Bad Cree by Jessica Johns. I really enjoyed this one, with the caveat that it was hyped to me as the most disturbing thing, read it before giving it to a student, etc., and it was a very different (if very good) kind of book. Though possibly my calibration for disturbing is way off. I did find it a very strong story about family and community vs. extractive industries and the MMIWG epidemic, and one of the best use of dreams in fiction I've seen since we all decided that kind of thing was gauche.

What Feasts At Night by T. Kingfisher. I enjoyed this one too. After barely surviving the events of the first book, our lead and ka (?) companions return to their home (fictional) country, where the caretaker of the estate has suddenly died. The villagers won't go near the place and claim that it's haunted by a creature that sits on your chest and sucks out your breath. So, they have to fight it, all while dealing with PTSD from the war. Fun stuff.

Two things I particularly liked about this: 1) it actually was disturbing as shit, especially the scene with the horses. 2) this is kind of the reverse of what I complained about with Someone You Can Build a Nest In in terms of queernormative fantasy settings. The imaginary country is integrated into the Serbo-Bulgarian War, but it is clearly a country with different norms, myths, and traditions. The novella has a nonbinary lead, and this identity is important and plays a role in their backstory, but it also has a different meaning and definition that in would have in our world (it's important to note that this is queernormative and Alex doesn't appear to be discriminated against in their society, but there are still gendered expectations and roles). It contributes to the worldbuilding as well, so there are different pronouns for both God and priests, and that adds interest rather than erases difference. Anyway, it is pretty cool.

Currently reading: The Siege of Burning Grass by Premee Mohamed. This one was also really hyped up and I can see why. There's a longstanding war between two empires: Varkal (which is kind of industrial-age but uses genetically altered animals as its technology) and Med’ariz (which has floating cities and more technologically based weapons). The causes and parameters of this war are deliberately fuzzy to the POV characters, but Med'ariz seems to be winning. Alefrat, the leader of the pacifist resistance in Varkal, is blown up, kidnapped, and imprisoned by his government, and let out on the condition that he travel to the Med'ariz front line, infiltrate them, and create the same kind of grassroots uprising that he did in Varkal. He's accompanied by Qhudur, a brutal soldier/prison guard. 

This is very good so far; it pulls no punches either in its depiction of war or its depiction of disability (Alefrat's leg was blown off before the story begins, and there's a bizarro doctor who had started to regrow it with wasps, and the entire thing is very nasty). It's definitely problematizing pacifism and its role in defanging political movements, though I am not sure where the author/narrative is ultimately going to fall on this. It feels like a slog, and this is intentional; every inch of the characters' journey is painstakingly fought for, and you feel it.

This weekend we finally --- after like a week or so --- enjoyed some warm enough weather to clean out the goldfish pond, ahead of putting the fish back in for summer. That went about as usual, me mucking the pond out until I broke the pond vacuum. This time it's a simple fix, as the plastic bolt that holds the handle on the main unit of the vacuum snapped off, and that should be easy enough to replace with a metal bolt.

But while doing this I noticed something funny about the fence, the older one that bunnyhugger and her starter husband put up when the house on that side was the bad neighbor. A piece of it was loose from the other and that seemed weird and new. And then I finally registered that one of the big branches from a huge tree had fallen over and knocked it out of place. Presumably it was knocked over in the big storm that blew through a week and a half ago, and we just failed to register that fact. It would be more ridiculous and embarrassing if it had fallen over back in the Motor City Furry Con storm of late March, so we'll go with the latter date.

So besides everything else going on --- and you'll learn what that is soon enough, don't worry --- we have to figure a way to get someone with a chainsaw and a ladder out here. Also to figure out whether the tree --- which is in the space behind our back fence, but also behind the back fence of the neighbor behind us --- is on our property or theirs and whether to get an insurance company involved. And the real crisis will be if another heavy storm blows through before we can get it dealt with because the branch is something like forty feet long and still partly attached to the tree trunk, so if it fell it could ... not hit any structures, but could destroy fences, our cherry tree, or do untold damage to our goldfish pond, if only by giving local raccoons a great place to sit while fishing. More on this as it comes to pass.

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And now, pictures from the end of our day at Kennywood. We're not quite there yet, don't fear.

Tried taking a picture of the fountain by night, I think with the 'Waterfall' mode on my camera so I got this nice sheen in the middle water level there.

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Tried the same thing with the water fountains of the main pool and I like how strange it makes the surface of the water look.

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Swings ride and the giant rigid pendulum. I believe we've ridden both of these, although not this visit.

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One of the gift shops, the flying saucer one in Area 412, had some fun decade T-shirts that ... we didn't want to get, but didn't want to forget either. Of the rides listed here only the Bumper Cars are still around. (Le Cachot was the 1972 Bill Tracy redesign of a Pretzel dark ride.)

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Baseball caps showing off ... either rabbit-eared squirrels or squirrel-tailed rabbits.

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The Kennywood 2000s shirt lists rides that are mostly still there and ... you know, thing with the Y2K fears is they were done once 2000 started so logically ...

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Trivia: Between 1856 and 1864 Cyrus Field crossed the Atlantic at least 31 times working to build the Atlantic Telegraph Company's trans-oceanic telegraph line. Source: How The World Was One: Beyond the Global Village, Arthur C Clarke.

Currently Reading: The Harvey Comics Companion, Mark Arnold.

Returning to the real world has been rough.

I think part of it is that I didn't sleep well --the whole previous week, I managed to actually get out of bed on the first alarm without hitting snooze multiple times. Today....I did not manage that. Part of the problem is waking up and it being _cold_ and part is just being tired and cranky. But I definitely spent _way_ longer in bed than I should've today.

I did make it to work, and then it took over half an hour to get my 40 copies finished, which like...fucking hell, I wish I worked for a school that had sufficient materials, etc. For all that I'm part of my union's bargaining team, this is really not something that has made it onto the list, because it's just...stupid. It's stupid that we don't have sufficient copiers in my fucking building. At least the one in my wing was even actually working today, just slow as fuck, and being behind literally one other person fucked it all up.

But it was mostly okay, just...braindead. I am burnt out and tired and really want to go back to camp and be at Pinewoods again. I do not want to be in school anymore. The children are tired and I am also tired. I liked the parts where I could do simple mindless physical labour instead of abundant emotional and mental labour.

I'm also just real tired about being _busy_ all the time. I know where my break comes --right after Scottish Sessions-- and there's a _long_ way to go before then. A lot of said way is quite good! But there's a lot of it. Union meetings, dance meetings, eventually preparing my ESCape classes.

Stuff costs energy, especially when the background radiation is _real_ bad right now. I hope I can find the energy I need to do the stuff I want, and I hope you can too.

~Sor

MOOP!

This year's Wiscon was all-online, and billed as a "gap year," with fewer program items than I'm used to, and no dealers room.

I went to two program items--a "US immigration law and worldwide fandom roundtable" and a panel on "the wild world of modern agtech and why isn't it showing up in current SF."

The roundtable was about as cheerful as you'd expect, with a lot of discussion of both past and feared legal difficulties in traveling to cons, and alternatives like smaller gatherings and online cons. Most of us thought that online wasn't as good as in person, but that it's significantly better than nothing. (There may be some selection bias here: people who didn't think an online con was better than nothing wouldn't bother attending.) And a couple of people noted that their choice has been online or nothing at least since 2020, for reasons like disability or budge that don't have much to do with Trump.

The panel on current and future agriculture was fun. Some of the "what SF is getting wrong" was about TV and movies, showing a garden plot that's much too small for the population it's allegedly feeding, and that the fictional future is even worse/stupider about monoculture than the real world today.

Other than that, I hung out on the Discord server. Most if not all of the program items were recorded, and will be available to convention members for a week after the end of the con, but I may not get around to watching any of them, even less interactive things like readings and the guest of honor speeches.

I should start pulling more of my Facebook entries over here. Here's my most recent:

Wanna get started with Freeway Overpass Banners? Found the link for Backbone Campaign's overpass banner making zoom workshop for tonight at 8 EDT (first was 5/22) - scroll down, & forward to those interested.
https://www.backbonecampaign.org/workshop_20250527


Well actually my most recent was responding to the news that HHS just announced c19 updated vaccines no longer recommended for healthy children are pregnant people, and I invited people to go look up the long covid rates including for children and teens and just why it's more dangerous to have covid in pregnancy.


I need to get back on the road. I just drove out to Winchester for a blood draw, my penultimate lyme vaccine trial visit.

Heather Cox Richardson's post for today spends time on West point but also reminds us that there were 23 states attorneys who started preprep for all the legal challenges we've seen back in February of 24, starting with close reading of Project 2025. Many of us are far from impressed with most Senate Democrats, but it's worth realizing that they are not the entirety.

It was a really good weekend, even if I couldn't manage to do all the things I wanted to do and missed things I would have liked to do.

Mozilla is shutting down "Pocket", the bookmarking/offline-reading app they bought a while back. End of pocket is July 8th. If you have a pocket account you can get an export before then.

Not sure what 'fakespot' is, but they're closing that down too. I'm annoyed by losing pocket and even more annoyed by the realization that this is probably so they can throw more resources at their favorite Stochastic Parrot.

https://www.pcworld.com/article/2793228/mozilla-is-discontinuing-pocket-and-fakespot.html

When I got home yesterday from getting some stuff from the pet store and the hardware store I had news for bunny_hugger. She'd wondered when the Joann Fabrics in our local mall would close. The answer: 55 minutes. We dithered a small bit about whether to go; would it be just depressing, or might we get something useful like really cheap Easter egg dye kits or bolts of fleece or stuff?

We got there to learn that they didn't have any fleece left. Or Easter egg kits. Or almost anything, really; they did well at keeping the store open until they ran out of stuff. All the remaining merchandise was on two small shelving units up front, and most of that was decoration letters. If you need a box of Z's, we could set you up, except that Joann's is now closed for good and all. Someone working the tiny remaining stock was urging people to buy boxes of toothpicks with lobster or shrimp cutouts atop them. We're not sure why anyone would get these at all, even if, as she observed, they won't spoil. I had the feeling this had turned into some minor silly retail obsession, waiting to see if anyone would ever take any of this.

We also wandered around the shelving and fixtures, where another employee was doing her best to find some piece of hardware we would take home with us. Apparently some of the thread spools are also a good configuration for storing Hot Wheels cars, in case you have a hundred-plus Hot Wheel cars that need storing. But we don't, nor anything close to that. Some of the pegbord-with-bin shelving seemed like it might be useful in our basement, if it weren't too big to fit in our basement.

And yet as we were leaving I noticed they had boxes full of pegboard racks, like, the metal or plastic rods that stick out and you can hang stuff on. So we got a box of that, for five bucks, and have the promise of organizing more things in our basement and garage if we ever get to that. I also, maybe foolishly, bought a couple boxes of some silicone sheets that are meant to be pressed around mugs or other ceramic things. I don't know what to do with them but have the feeling there's probably something decorative we can do. bunny_hugger sees in them mostly a thing we'll have to get rid of at some point. I suppose either will do fine.

And that was our last Joann's visit.

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Now to what I hope was merely the most recent Kennywood visit, drawing as you can see nearer its close.

Almost at The Phantom's Revenge's station and this gives a view of the exit queue. (Also the entrance for people with mobility needs, like the guy in a wheelchair coming up the other way.)

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Lanes to get your seat for the ride. Note there isn't that automatic gate that keeps you away until the operator decides you may approach.

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That gift shop again, now seen by night. Also showing off the Small Fry's, that place where you can get the same fries as at The Potato Patch but with less of a wait. And yes, per Kennywood: Behind The Screams, it is based on the entrance to Wonderland at Revere Beach, Massachusetts. (Yes, if you looked at that link, you saw an 'Infant Incubators' building inside Wonderland. Early 20th century was weird.)

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Sitting at the top of the reflecting pool in Lost Kennywood, looking out over a beautifully clear sky and the Black Widow swing ride.

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Over that way's the swing ride. Oops, accidentally got a tiny bit of a view of bunny_hugger in there. Sorry, won't do that again.

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And here's how the pool looks by early night.

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Trivia: Charles Babbage invented a mechanical time clock in 1844. Source: Time's Pendulum: The Quest to Capture Time --- From Sundials to Atomic Clocks, Jo Ellen Barnett.

Currently Reading: The Harvey Comics Companion, Mark Arnold.

Sunday of work weekend was fine (and complicated and stressful because Mice) but mostly uneventful and my brain went a little sideways for some parts of it, which was not the best. I think maybe the most satisfying part of Sunday --and a little bit of today-- was developing new skills and practicing at them some, and getting reasonably good at them.

The new skill from yesterday was sewing, and specifically doing a very fine whip stitch with almost hidden stitches to get the edge on for a quilt (basting? Is that what it was?) I was taught by Kimberly-(Lucretia's-Mom) who is entirely lovely and was calm, good at teaching, and a lovely conversationalist. I will probably never love sewing, but it's good to remember that it and I can be friends, and it's very good to have chances to learn skills with it sometimes.

The new skill from today was Ditch Digging! Elliot was in charge of doing some path-shaping to get water to travel the correct directions (off the path) and a little bit of berm shaping and the like. My first ditch was, uh, a little too extreme, but I took his good feedback and by the end of it, I think I had a pretty good sense of how to make the path go the ways I wanted it to.

In the afternoon, I did a little bit of other helpful things, and then suddenly was gifted with the truly wonderful present of a working Hobart. Well okay then, I *will* wash the last few dozen loads of dishes, since I don't have to then drag them through the sanitizer as well! Critically, this meant all the flatware, which was going to be _miserable_ to have to drop in the sanitizer and then retrieve. I also now know exactly how many trays are at camp (both the Good Kind and the shitty kind.) The margin is...a _lot_ closer than I would've expected, honestly.

It was _so pleasant_ to spend the last three hours of my work weekend in the kitchen, by myself, just me and the music cranked and the hobart humming along and round after round of dishes. Isaac even brought me some soap so that I wouldn't have to run to Dingle every time I needed to wash my hands between dirty side and clean side. It is good to learn new skills and get better at them! It is also real fucking good to just do skills that I am already competent at and feel like I have good agency for.

It was also really nice to feel like I could make Actually Useful And Sensible Decisions about how to run things through. My only concession to Amanda being the Head Of Kitchen was to send a text being all "I'm doing the rest of them and you can't stop me", I didn't need to ask her for advice because I could think through all the things that needed to happen and just...do them!

Like, there's this thing I do where I be Extremely Confident which dovetails in interesting ways with that thing I do where I be Extremely Nosy About How Everything Everywhere Works. I worry that people might not be standing up to me enough about their own expertise sometimes --like, it is cute for Seramay to defer to me on cabin opening things, he has _way_ more experience doing so than I do! But also, I do have a fair chunk of experience and I tend to be competent in general, so yeah, it's not unreasonable to be all "okay Kat, go get the clotheslines up in the Bamps and the hill, have fun".

Anyways, it felt nice to be helpful (Amanda sent me a very nice text at the end when I was finished) and it was very nice that I got to do a _lot_ of dishwashing which is my absolute favourite job at camp 5ever. I don't mind opening cabins, and digging/carrying/general grounds nonsense is fine. But this particular work weekend I got to send...gods...Okay so like, there were 16 flats of just trays to go through the Hobart and that wasn't even half of what I did today. I probably pushed well over 200 flats through on Saturday? 300 maybe? I wish I had counted, because it was _wonderful_.

*and* I got to fill four fire bins, which is close to half the ones at camp, and is my other favourite job. I loved _so much_ two years ago when I got to do the camp safety audit and I briefly knew where literally every fire extinguisher was at camp. I also love running through and checking the AEDs, although I noted that they weren't up yet for this year.

So yeah, this was a very satisfying work weekend where I did a lot of things I liked, and made some good connections because of it. (I was working with this summer's dishwasher on Saturday and gave her plenty of random advice; this year's potwasher is totally new to camp and I think I left a good impression. And the head cook for the weekend is charming and I think I have successfully charmed them in return).

I really don't want to go back to the real world. LCFD in a couple weeks, which is good, but man, there is a _lot_ of grading between here and there.

~Sor
MOOP!