Tag Archive for 'memories'

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bus head

Published on August 9, 2008 in Family & Friends, Music, Photo and Work. Closed Tags: , , , , , , .

Last weekend, we went to Wisconsin, partly to fulfill our yearly tradition of seeing a play an American Players Theater and partly as a weekend getaway in honor of Sarah’s birthday. We spent the whole weekend in the Mt Horeb and Spring Green area. On Friday, we stopped in at our favorite little chocolate shop and then got dinner at the adorable Italian place we ate at last year, before heading up to the theater to catch Widower’s Houses.

Saturday, we spent the whole day in Mt Horeb, starting with breakfast at a great little place called Schubert’s. Then we took in the activities and sights of National Mustard Day. We didn’t actually participate in the activities or eat any mustard or mustard-themed food (Culver’s Mustard Custard?). But we did wander and take pictures and shop all the cute stores, including the gift-shop half of the Mustard Museum. Then we popped back into Schubert’s for milkshakes and rosettes. We also did some quick visits to the gift-shops of Little Norway and Cave of the Mounds. We bought some geodes. I’m not sure if we cracked them open yet. Then, after a little chillin’ at the motel, we got some yummy dinner at a place with a HUGE menu.

Sunday, we used the third part of our tickets to the House on the Rock tour. We did the other two parts last year. This was definitely the darkest part of the tour, but it was very cool… it started at the huge carousel and included the doll carousels, lots and lots of dollhouses and the amazing organ room. On the way home, we picked up some cheese and meat and ate at a Panera Bread rip-off called Atlanta Bread.

Pictures Here :)

It was nice to do a little road trip. I’ve been doing public transportation to work most of the summer and I’ve missed driving. I had kind of forgotten about the phenomenon that, back in high school, in the music groups that went on many trips, we called “bus head.” The theory was that sometime after two hours being enclosed in the same vehicle, something in your brain shut off. We found that it didn’t matter if it was a school bus or a nice comfy chartered bus or a van or even a car. Once you hit that point, you had “bus head.” We discussed it with our band director; It takes a long time to recover from “bus head.” We didn’t want to plan any trips with long rides and immediate performing, even if it meant leaving in the early morning. We needed at least two hours. We could unload equipment during those two hours, but we definitely couldn’t do any rehearsing or make any decisions or be expected to engage in any activities that involved a lot of thought.

Luckily, my drive to work usually stays just short of “bus head” inducing length, and the public transportation route involves changing from train to bus or “El” about halfway through. I actually drove a couple times this week. Wednesday, I got together with a couple guys, after camp, and played some music. I think it went pretty well, if it turns into something I will definitely let you all know. Thursday, we had our family night (that 60 inch TV was what my camp photos slideshow was being displayed on) and then some of the staff went to Whirlyball. I had no idea what Whirlyball was until I saw it. It’s kind of like like Jai Alai or Lacrosse, in bumper cars. It was fun.

One more week of camp left. This week includes a sleepover, possibly another trip to Eli’s cheesecake world, a visit to Independence grove and another cookout… so lots of excitement.

speaking of upgrades

Published on July 28, 2008 in Random Thoughts. Closed Tags: , , .

My iPod is getting old. It’s kind of sad. I guess it has outlasted any other portable audio device I’ve ever owned. I’ll always have fond memories of my Fisher portable CD player, with the 40 seconds of memory, so that I could take a CD out, if I was in the last 40 seconds of the track, and put the new CD in, with no gap in the music. And I’ll never forget my cute Philips portable MP3 mini CD player. It looked just like a miniature discman. Those 80mm discs were a little hard to find, and the name and size caused a lot of confusion with minidiscs, but it got me through many bus trips. I definitely had a few other trashy portable CD players and portable CD players that could read MP3s, but those two were my favorites. Had I known how much effort (making MP3 CDs) and time and money (buying CDs) I could have saved myself, I probably would’ve gotten the iPod a lot sooner. But it was two and a half years ago, and now it’s throwing up this weird “connect to your computer. use itunes to restore” error message every now and then. Resetting/restarting it seems to make it go away, I don’t actually have to connect it to a computer or restore it, that would be annoying. It might mean that the hard drive is dying. I dunno, maybe I should try a restore one of these days. It’s an essential part of my life, now that I’m on the trains and buses every day.

It got me thinking about my phone situation, again. It’s also not performing at it’s best, and occasionally turning off or restarting itself, randomly, and my contract is up sometime in the next six months. I still think switching from Verizon to AT&T, for the iPhone, is a big hassle… and I don’t know if the iPhone would fill my expectations as either a GPS device or as an iPod replacement. Sure, the idea of having all of those gadgets in one is appealing, but I really like the click-wheel, I think I’d miss it. I really like my phone’s real QWERTY keyboard, with real keys. And I even like my big honkin’ laptop GPS system, though, that is the system that most needs replacing with something smaller and easier to use. Still no word on carriers for the Nuvifone. I doubt that it’ll be the right replacement for the iPod, though, so unless it’s available on Verizon, it’s not gonna happen for me. The only way the switch to AT&T is going to happen is if the iPhone proves itself to be the all-encompassing device that I need it to be.

longevity

Published on June 22, 2008 in Family & Friends and Random Thoughts. Closed Tags: , , , , .

Sarah’s mom reminded us that we passed the two year anniversary of our first date. She then started to ask me whether this was my longest relationship and I had to think about it. It turns out that it definitely is. The longest possible definition for my last long relationship was from November 1992 to September 1994… and it was a long distance relationship, only seeing each other on weekends and school breaks, and, for at least one year, it wasn’t an exclusive relationship… and it was in high school… so really, does it count at all? While I was sitting here, bored at work, I figured out that Sarah might also be a record holder for the longest “friendship that turned into a serious relationship,” since we started talking back in 2003, on photoSIG… as long as I don’t count the weird girls who I had relationships with in high school, lost touch with, off and on, for 5-10 years and then had another relationship with. All those years of non-contact don’t count, right? I dunno the rules for these kind of things. I wouldn’t say that two years flew by, but it doesn’t feel like it’s been two years. I know time flies when you’re having fun… but what do you call it when you’re happy and in love and two years doesn’t feel like two years? I guess it’s the same thing, fun just seems like too general a word to sum up the last two years. It’s been wonderful.

In other news, my phone started doing weird things and “rebooting” itself, so I brought it to a Verizon store and got its software/firmware updated. It seemed to help. Apparently, I’m eligible for $100 towards a new phone at the end of August. I looked at what’s available, now and wasn’t overly excited by anything. And I’m certainly not going to double my bill [to get unlimited calling to anyone on any service] just so I’m eligible for the new iPhone rip-off. I may not do anything in the phone department until I find out what carriers the Nuviphone will be on. That would satisfy my new GPS urges and hopefully quash any iPhone urges. I don’t really want to rearrange the family phone plan, though, so if it can’t work with Verizon, it probably won’t happen. What’s nice is that my current phone has been pretty good to me for almost two years. My current little laptop with GPS has been adequate, for a little over two years, but it’s not nearly as convenient or nice as those little portable units. It’d be cool to do some one-stop shopping, but I have to be patient and let the cool new devices hit the marketplace.

Now, I’ve just gotta survive through the rest of the boring front desk gig at the Y… not that I’m complaining – boring work on the weekends is fine with me, but relaxing at home is nicer.

pictures up, car down

Published on June 11, 2008 in Photo and Random Thoughts. Closed Tags: , , , .

trees on rocksSpent most of the day going through pictures from the trip. I picked out about 150 of them and put them up on flickr. My flickr “uploadr” sucks pretty bad… I had to retry the upload on some of these sets two or three times. Sometimes it gives up and keeps track of what didn’t get uploaded. Sometimes it’ll try to finish it’s upload, sometimes it won’t. Sometimes it’ll fail to upload at all and not even tell me. Sometimes it’ll get glitchy and upload the ones it missed twice. It’s pretty buggy. You can see all the picturesfrom the newest sets in my Vacations collection or by searching the tag “Knopf Northwest Vacation”

In other news, someone drove into my car in the YMCA parking lot on Saturday. It apparently happened just before I was going to leave. I didn’t notice, since all the damage was around the front passenger-side wheel. I was in my car, and had turned it on and was ready to drive off… when a kid came running up with a note in his hand and apologized for scratching my car. I got out and looked at it, and it seemed to look like a bunch of scratches, so I was hoping we could take care of it without going through insurance companies. I got his contact info. But then I put the car in drive and it would not go. Upon closer inspection, I noticed that the wheel was not going straight, like the driver-side. So, I found the kid, in the Y, and we exchanged insurance info and called the police and I called my insurance company and set up all the towing, repairs and rental car stuff. It was supposed to be towed on Monday, so I went back to the Y on Sunday afternoon, after picking up the rental car, to take some pictures, and it was already gone. My rental is a Dodge Magnum, which is really fun to drive and very comfortable.

Northwest is nice

Published on June 6, 2008 in Family & Friends. Closed Tags: , , , , .

I really enjoyed our trip to Seattle, Vancouver, Victoria, the Olympic Peninsula and Mt Rainier. While we didn’t hit any of my yelp food finds, except for the Georgetown Truck Stop, we did eat well, and kept ourselves very entertained. All the pictures are on the Mac right now, I’m nowhere near ready to sort them and get them online. Maybe this afternoon or sometime this weekend. I’ve also got a lot of yelping to do. For now, I’ll attempt a quick blow-by-blow… and it will turn out to be a long-winded, rambling mess:

Our airport taxi wasn’t at the house on time, so we called them, and got upgraded to a stretch limo. We were late, but so was our plane. Frank, Sarah and I played Mario DS at the gate, and a random stranger joined in with us. Gotta love wi-fi video games. We ate Cinnabons at the airport, but after the delay and the long flight with minimal snacks and the extra long time it always seems to take United to get your luggage to the claim centers, we were starving. We said as much to the guy who drove our shuttle to the rental car place, and he suggested a couple very close food options. We picked up our super-duper 08 Dodge Grand Caravan SXT (later dubbed megatron, by Frank) it had power sliders and liftgate and a camera for backing up and a touchscreen stereo with Sirius built-in. It was pretty sweet. We immediately drove it around the block, to the closest food place that the shuttle guy recommended, Dave’s Diner. We got soups and sandwiches and desserts and it was all pretty yum. It was certainly, exactly what we needed. Then we found our way to our hotel (with the help of the GPS unit, that we added to the rental) and checked in. We decided to go check out what we could of the city, at that point, and ended up mostly driving through various neighborhoods as they closed up shop. We noted that Elliott Bay Book Company was still open, so we found some parking, shopped a bit, walked up and down a couple of streets and then got some pretty good Italian stuff at a place called Mitchelli’s. We headed back to the hotel, by way of a Walgreens, for some in-room snack foods.

The next day, we had our first sampling of the (decent) hotel breakfast, then headed directly for Pike Place Market. I think we got the full market experience in… saw the first Starbucks, experienced flying fish, had some mini-donuts, ate some crumpets. We debated buying some fish, but decided to put the decision off until it would keep for the trip home. We then headed back to the Pioneer Square area, to try and catch some of the shops that were closed when we walked around the night before. We really only went to one, Magic Mouse Toys, but it was worth it, big toy stores are awesome. Next we went around Elliott Bay to the viewpoint at Alki Beach. It was a great place to take in the whole Seattle skyline (pictures later, I promise). When we were done there, we decided to try to find Archie McPhee, which was fun… and we were about to get in the car and drive away when we saw More Archie McPhee across the parking lot. We started heading back to the hotel and then plugged “game stop” into our GPS, as an intermediate destination (Super Dodgeball Brawlers for the DS came out the day before we left, but we couldn’t find it anywhere). It brought us to a dead end street around the corner from Redmond High School. After a quick stop at a Target, where we saw a woman bring her dog shopping by letting him ride in the big part of the cart, we realized our error and searched for “gamestop” (without the space) and got our game. By this time, we were hungry, and entered Redmond Town Center, a giant outdoor mall, drove around it a couple times and then parked and walked over to Pizza Schmiza… which was delicious and well decorated. And then we went back to the hotel and to bed.

We attempted to get up early the next morning and drive directly to Canada. We didn’t get up as early as planned, but we got past the pushy, intimidating border guy and all the way to the Capilano Suspension Bridge in fairly good time. We walked around the grounds at the bridge for a while and took lots of fun pictures from up in the trees and stuff. We went to a very expensive Canadian Burger King on the way out and, since Sarah started running out of polaroid film, we plugged “camera” into the GPS. It led us to an amazing Asian mall called Aberdeen Centre. No film for us, but a crazy experience, none-the-less. We continued to make our way through the Vancouver traffic congestion to the ferries. When we finally got to there, we were a little early, so we headed into the Tsawwassen Quay Market and found Oh Gelato, a gelato place with amazing presentation and very yummy gelato. We got on the ferry, which was huge, and explored it for a while before settling down and enjoying the ride. When we got to Victoria, we decided against the gardens, since we were already tired from walking around Capilano, and instead, drove and walked around downtwon Victoria a bit. We even parked in the “Tourist Parking” and got out and took some pictures. We checked into our hotel for the night and Sarah’s Mom went and got some Red Robin, which was sort of gross. Then we slept.

We had a few choices for breakfast, but it was our last day in Canada and everyone indulged my Tim Horton’s obsession. We hit a camera shop for polaroid pack film, and scored some b&w. Our ferry out of Victoria filled up very early, so we were stuck there for a while. We explored the area we had driven and walked through the night before, including a great shoe store called Baggins with lots and lots of Converse. We also drove up to the castle and took a few pictures but didn’t go in any further than the gift shop. Then we wandered South to a place called Clover Point, where we had a cool view of the mountains of the Olympic Peninsula and some guys flying kites. We picked up some goodies at the Dutch Bakery and headed to the next ferry. We had to wait there a long time, questioned again by border and customs people.The ride was ok, though… we enjoyed watching the huge mountains in the distance get bigger and bigger. We arrived in Port Angeles, WA and, after a quick stop at Rite Aid, we headed up to the Olympic National Forest Visitors Center, which was closed, but just happened to be a guy there who workedin the park. He told us that we could probably make it to the rain forest with some daylight and could definitely make it to the coast before sunset. We decided to drive towards the coast, enjoy the sunset, stay somewhere in Forks then enjoy the Hoh Rain Forest and Hurricane Ridge the next day. We ate at one of the few restaurants in town and then checked into a HUGE suite just outside of town. I got the best night of sleep on the whole trip in that place.

We went to breakfast at the restaurant across the street from the one we ate at the night before. Breakfast portions were huge, so we were happy. Then we headed into the Rain Forest, which was gorgeous, and took a bunch of pictures. Furry trees are cool… then we went back through Forks, and around the park, through Port Angeles, again, and up to Hurricane Ridge. Lots of pretty mountain views on the way, but the top was kinda foggy/cloudy. We had a little food up at the visitor center on the ridge and then started the long drive to the original hotel … we didn’t make the ferry that cut through Puget Sound, so we had to drive around. I was pretty beat after all that driving.

Monday morning, we sacrificed a trip to the creperie to go visit Nintendo of America’s Redmond headquarters… it was sort of nestled in amongst Microsoft-land. There was a cute little visitor center. Then we headed downtown to check out the Experience Music Project and Science Fiction Museum, which I think were worth the money… we were a little worried about it after reading the reviews. We combined that trip with lunch/dinner at the Sky City restaurant in the Space Needle… then we popped over to Pike Place Market to buy more donuts and purchase the fish. I ate some donuts and drank some of the Walgreens milk that we bought on our first day, back at the hotel that night… and I think it made me sick.

On our last full day, we headed to the Georgetown Truck Stop for breakfast. It was very impressive… in it’s small size and big portions. Mt Rainier was our destination for the day… not the top… but the park, in general. We opted to go in the Southwest entrance, since it was open year-round, and some of the roads were still closed. We found out once we were in the park that the Northeast entrance (and Southeast entrance) were both also open, but some of the higher roads were not. It was kind of cloudy/rainy, so some of our views could have been better, but we did catch a break in the clouds and see Rainier at least once. The visitors center at Paradise was really cool, but apparently very impractical and due to be shut down… so I took lots of pictures of it. On our way down the mountains and out of the park, we grabbed some dinner at a local Inn/Restaurant/Gift Shop and then headed back to the hotel for our final night of sleep.

Aside from my body trying to eat itself from the inside, the day of our departure was fairly uneventful. There was a small delay in our plane, a large delay in our luggage getting to the baggage claim and a lot of sleeping, by me, through most of it.

Overall, great trip. We brought home a few Huckleberry flavored souvenirs and some clothing and trinkets from here and there. We’re on a website for the Forks visitors center, holding a sign, proving that we’re Twilight fans who visited Forks. I’ve got a bazillion pictures to go through… and I can now say I’ve been to the Pacific Northwest and that I like it a lot. I’ll surely think of some great thing that I forgot about or some super highlights to expand upon later, but for now, I am done.

I’m on YouTube?

Published on May 4, 2008 in Family & Friends, Music and Work. Closed Tags: , , , , , .

This page has some videos of me performing in my high school’s song and dance group (the ones with titles that include years back in the 90s – cause I’m old).  Totally embarrassing. Enjoy.

It’s been a fun week. The weather was fairly nice and we went to the Flea Market, today. We’ve been teased with warm spells and then temperatures dropping back near freezing overnight, so it was nice to walk around in a t-shirt today. The overnight trips for Adventure Ed. are this week, so I hope this warm spell continues. We saw Iron Man on Friday. It was pretty darn good, especially for a comic book movie. We also went yard saling that morning and attended Fly Bird‘s 4th birthday bash-thing and picked up some weird stuff. I think we’re doing a double date tonight and seeing another movie, maybe Forgetting Sarah Marshall or maybe Baby Mama… I really liked the intriguing “is that for real?” ad campaign that Forgetting Sarah Marshall did with their billboards and busboards.

I also did something bad to my knee at some point this week. I think I may have injured it on Tuesday night when I was doing a balancing-on-one-foot-and-tying-my-shoe dance. It was kinda sore on Wednesday, worse on Thursday and really really painful on Friday. Yesterday it was much better and today it feels fine… but it really made me feel old. I was all gimpy and hobbling around the yard sales on Friday.

Oh, and while it wasn’t my boss, this time… a director at the YMCA I work at was let go this week. I’m not directly involved and, as I said, it wasn’t my boss, so it has nothing to do with the curse that I bring along to every after-school day care that I’ve ever worked for, but I am curious to see how they fill his position. I haven’t yet worked for a YMCA that filled a vacant position with anyone half-as-good as the person that left/they fired. They usually cut corners and give some of their responsibilities to other directors and maybe hire a new assistant.

What’s wrong with Barack Obama’s campaign:

Published on April 22, 2008 in Random Thoughts. Closed Tags: , , .

Anyone who knows me, knows that I am not political. I’m not even registered to vote in Illinois. I thought I was last registered in Dudley, but who knows. Until a candidate who is an atheist, possibly an existentialist, in favor of a complete destruction and rebuilding of the monetary system from one based on debt to one based on work and is basically an anarchist runs, I can’t get behind one and give them my vote, because they won’t represent me. Having said that, I have voted once (and attempted to vote a couple other times, but was told I didn’t exist). I will vote for or against the presidential candidate that I would like to or not like to see on TV for the next four years. I didn’t want to see Bush’s creepy little beady eyes on TV for four years (or four more years), so I attempted to vote against him, twice. I didn’t really like either candidate, but I knew who I didn’t like, based on what I’d seen on TV. I occasionally watch some election coverage, so I’m not clueless about who’s on the ticket. Tonight, the Pennsylvania primary coverage was on. Barack Obama was losing the state’s primary. He’d traveled to Indiana to start his campaigning there, so he gave his speech tonight, from there. Here is what I saw… and what I don’t want to see, for the next four years:

obama and fitch

That’s Barack Obama and three guys who look like fratboy-idiots, in Abercrombie & Fitch t-shirts. I’m not saying that this is some sort of purposeful advertising campaign by Abercrombie, though that would be really disgusting, too. I’m saying that I don’t want to see dumb people behind my president. He seems ok, but those buffoons behind him are obviously fratboy sheep. If they were blank t-shirts, it would’ve been ok. If they had witty text on them, I might’ve been intrigued. But they’re brand name t-shirts among the likes of Aeropostale, Hollister and American Eagle Outfitters. Why are they there? Do fratboy-sheep like this guy? It makes me think twice about liking him. If nothing else, this is a tragic mistake by some staffer on his campaign. There must be a guy who looks at the people who are going to be on screen with him… image is important, right? To an unimpressed, unaffected voter like myself, it’s just about all that matters. And if there is such a guy, he let those three bully-esque, stubble-faced kids with giant advertisements on their chests, be the backdrop behind his candidate.

30 is easy to remember

Published on February 25, 2008 in Family & Friends and Random Thoughts. Closed Tags: , , , .

We’re right at the beginning of a new season of work, so I’m just getting to know the new staff. When one of the new guys asked me how old I was on Thursday, I told him I was thirty. It’s easier to say and easier to remember than all these twenty-something ages I’ve been going through for the past decade. I’ve never felt like any specific age, so all the early twenties seem to blend together and twenty-eight seemed to be the age that would pop into my head, even when I was twenty-seven and twenty-nine… I guess just because it was an even number or easier to say or something. But I’ve officially accepted thirty, a few days early, even.

Last night, Sarah put together a gathering of some of our friends. It was a mix of local friends of hers and people she went to school with. I think she felt bad that I didn’t have any of my own friends, but I’m not that close with the people I work with, really. Most of my friends at home were people I had gone to school with and kept in touch with or musicians. So, since there aren’t [m]any old acquaintances out here and I’ve yet to join a band, I just don’t have a group of local friends. Sarah’s happy to share hers, though, and I like them. Anyway, we had a bunch of food, all cooked here by us, and played some awesome games, including Bananagrams, which has turned out to be one of the most popular Christmas presents from Sarah to me.

There may be some pictures when Sarah’s paparazzi school friends upload some. Sarah and I were too busy cooking and entertaining to take any ourselves.

more vacation, please

Published on February 7, 2008 in Computers, Family & Friends, Photo and Work. Closed Tags: , , , , .

I thought that the Dell had ended it’s extended lease on life, again, but it turned out to be bad drivers for my network card. It took way too long to narrow the problem from random freezing to maybe the Firefox beta to maybe just Firefox to anything internet to the new drivers from windows update. It’s been running normally again since I updated a few power management settings that were suggested on some forum. Acceptable solution, I guess. Before all that narrowing down was done, I opened it up again to make sure it wasn’t simply overheating. There wasn’t a whole lot of dust to blow out, though. Opening up laptops and fiddling with them isn’t as much fun as full sized PCs. Yet another reason my next laptop will be a Macbook Pro. Still don’t know when I’ll make that upgrade, but I thought about it a lot more, while trying to figure this thing out.

In other computer-related news, two of the hard drives I sent in for recovery have come back to be by way of a new external drive. Most of the data is intact and there are some original versions of photos from a couple events (shooting the house in Bedford, trip to Philly with Drew to see Olivia) from 2003 and 2002. The oldest drive was not recoverable, at least not by the company I went with, and should have all the photography from my first year or two with my Olympus and a bunch of other old band-related and website-related stuff that I’d like to recover. I’ll probably call around and see if anyone’s up for the task.

Adventure Ed starts up this month. We have a some new blood with us this season, so that should make things interesting. We’re also trying to shift the focus to skills training, which sort of sounds like what my last program was all about. There, we had a big long talk with the kids coming in to the program… explaining what we were going to work on. Here, we’re going to do it in a more subtle way, I guess, but there will be some frontloading of teamwork concepts, which I’m cool with it… just don’t know how it fits with the timeframe. We’ll see how it actually goes.

It’s been snowing a lot. I’m a fan of winter, I really am, but we’ve had enough of this stuff, now, I think. We still have rolls of film to finish, but there hasn’t been a great day to do it… either too cold or too gray. It was kinda fun to go through the House on the Rock stuff and get it uploaded. I think Sarah and I are both itching for a vacation. Maybe we should do another short road-trip. Montreal was suggested, but that’s a bit long for road-trip. I’m all for it, though. Sure it’s not the right season to go North, and sure the state of affairs with needing a passport/not needing a passport to go to Canada is still up in the air… but what’s the worst that could happen, we get stuck in Canada forever? Or take a road-trip and be denied at the border because our birth certificates aren’t notarized? It’s still sounds like a vacation.

my fault, sorry

Published on February 4, 2008 in Family & Friends, Photo and Web. Closed Tags: , , , , , , .

So, I’ve been reading a lot more, lately. Reading instead of doing my homework for adventure ed seems to be my favorite pastime. I reread Childhood’s End around Christmas. I finally decided to give it another read after I heard about Arthur C. Clarke’s birthday. Sarah’s mom picked me up a cheap hardcover copy of Anansi Boys on the clearance rack of a book store in the Borders Outlet at Gurnee Mills and I read it almost immediately. Sarah challenged me to read a book I wouldn’t finish in two days and suggested House of Leaves. I think I spent five to seven days on it. I remember when Drew lived in Woonsocket the first time, He and Candace were reading it, maybe, possibly they were just admiring it, I never really talked to him about it, cause I wasn’t reading it. I suppose I should ask him if he ever did end up actually reading the whole thing. I started American Gods on Saturday. As I’m reading, I get to a part where they visit The House on the Rock, up in Wisconsin, and I can see each room as he’s describing it. I think about all the pictures that I took when Sarah and I went there and pop onto Flickr to check some of them out… and they’re not on Flickr. I somehow managed to not post any of them or mention the visit in my blog at all. I guess it wasn’t until November or so that I decided I want to write here more often.

Sometime in late September, Sarah and I took a trip up to Wisconsin to see a play at an outdoor theater. We booked a hotel stay with the tickets and then planned a couple little adventures around the show. We saw [most of] the Mount Horeb trolls and had a wonderful dinner there. We visited the House on the Rock and took two of the three tours. I really got a kick out of the 60s/70s vibe to all the rugs and appliances and the various collections were really awesome… There was also a life-size whale & giant squid battle that reminded me of Childhood’s End [and the They Might Be Giants Apollo 18 album cover], but the little plaque said nothing of taking its influence from the book. We saw the show at the outdoor theater… in the rain. It was very wet, but the show was funny. There were some near-spills due to wet stage and a complete false start, due to a downpour about a minute into the first scene. We also picked up some meat on a detour on the way home from a favorite butcher of the family. It was a mini-vacation, it was a lot fun and I still don’t know how I failed to mention it here at all.

spindleI went through the pictures last night and picked out some decent ones and added them to my flickr. As I logged in to flickr, I shuddered at the thought of it becoming a Microsoft-owned and controlled site. The Microhoo merger seems like an all around bad idea to me. Maybe I’m still upset about Microsoft taking over HoTMaiL. I certainly stopped using it for anything but junk after that and it’s pretty close to unusable, now, with all the crazy Windows Live crap they turned it into. Yahoo didn’t ruin flickr. Hopefully, if that merger happens, Microsoft won’t either… but their online track record is pretty bad.

Before going through the pictures, though, I watched the game. I formally apologize to all of my friends back east who care about sports and to the Patriots for watching the game. I was completely aware that every Patriots game I watch turns into a loss for them, but I really wanted to see if there were any really funny commercials. In my defense, they were still in the lead when I paused it for dinner. So they may have lost while I was eating and not while I was actually watching… but I did return to the TV and watch the rest of the game. So it’s most likely my fault. Sorry. I didn’t mean to ruin your perfect season.