My mom found this. It was somewhere in her house, probably in the basement with a bunch of other old mail. I definitely played Freeway, a lot. Like any good addictive game, it would still be there, long after I stopped playing, when I closed my eyes. Seeing the picture and screenshot in the “Summer 1982 Activision Video Game Cartridge Catalog” made the memories come flooding back. Now I have to figure out what I should put the patch on.

The text of the letter:

Dear Fan of FREEWAY™ by ACTIVISION:

Congratulations! You guided your chicken through traffic at least 20 times, which qualifies you as an official member of the Activision “Save the Chicken Foundation.”  We are pleased to reward your traffic dodging achievemets with the enclosed patch.

Your name has been added to our mailing list and we will keep you posted on new Activision game cartridges as they become available.

Thank you for sharing your accomplishment with us.  We hope you’ll try other video games by Activision and write us about your experiences with them.

Yours truly,

Jan Marsella
Customer Relations

JM
Enclosure

PS. Please read the enclosed Heat Seal Instructions carefully. Children should not attempt to heat seal the patch to clothing.  Improper use of an iron (or related appliance) may result in damage to clothing, or bodily harm.  This patch may also be sewn to any fabric.

Also be sure to check out the scans of the Activision catalog at flickr.

In other news, we’ll be back on the east coast, doing the family thing and trying to catch up with all the people who I’ve neglected to see on my last couple trips that way from the day after Christmas until about the 30th. Let me know if you have time in there and want to reserve a day or evening, now.

Right now, sitting at the desk at the Y, all I can really think about is seeing Star Trek. I’ve heard so many good things about it… sure, some classic trek fans have their issues, but it’s trying to reboot the Star Trek world, not continue it. With a bunch of the Fringe team behind the writing and production, it has to be good.
update: Star Trek didn’t happen tonight, but we did a lot of research into how to set up a clothesline for Patti for Mother’s Day. Hopefully we’ll fit Star Trek in, tomorrow.

Good things coming up: more days off, mini-vacations, new Fable II downloadable content, macbook

In the bummer zone: Garmin announced more delays for the Nuvifone. The android phones are looking more and more attractive, even though they don’t have turn-by-turn directions, yet. Unfortunately, the only android phone even rumored for Verizon has a crappy-looking keyboard. If I didn’t think I’d miss the real keyboard, I’d already have broken down and gone with the iPhone. In the meantime, my phone is surviving… only shutting itself off once or twice a day.

I don’t have a timeframe for the phone upgrade. I was waiting for the nuvifone, but there isn’t a release date for that yet, and the main reason I was leaning towards it was the GPS-centric nature of it. The word on the street is that the new iPhone OS will enable using the Google maps in other applications and allow turn-by-turn directions. I don’t know if I can go Apple in such a big way… but the iPhone does have great customer satisfaction ratings and such. My phone turned itself off three times, completely at random, on Thursday… it is definitely time for that upgrade, but it also might not happen until the summer.

I don’t know if it’s actually going to be an upgrade, but we’re supposed to switch from Dish to U-Verse next month. Our DSL is currently with AT&T, and it can’t even handle streaming Netflix movies… I don’t think we ordered any more speed, so it probably won’t change, but the girl who set up the install sure did try to convince us that it was a newer, better, more exclusive dsl line. As far as I’ve heard, U-Verse is just TV over DSL. It’s pretty likely that we’re actually trying to squeeze TV and the internet over the same pipe and actually downgrading. We shall see.

This site’s wordpress code is due for an upgrade, but I don’t have any desire to do that. All of my little plugins are working fine. Maybe, if I get a little more into tumblr/twitter/etc. after the phone/macbook upgrade, I’ll feel the need to tweak the code here to keep up with more mobile updates.

My car doesn’t need any upgrades… I guess Doug’s van is dead, though. We peeked at some craigslist ads for similar vehicles in our price range, but haven’t started actively looking at anything yet. I’ve been using the Sirius in my car much more often, lately. I got an eMail from Sirius and I was tempted to buy the latest portable radio while I can still “lock in” the current rates. Who knows if Sirius will survive? I’ve done my part to support them. I resisted the urge by telling myself that the radio I had put in my car works fine and I don’t need another portable music player… I like the idea of combining a couple devices, not adding one to carry around.

My camera also doesn’t need to be upgraded, but I haven’t used it much, lately. When I had time to be taking pictures, I was mostly playing video games. I’ll bring it along on the field trips for work and maybe that’ll respark my desire to shoot. Maybe a new toy would help… Or maybe I should get a Diana+ for myself, since it seems to be getting all the cool attachments and add-ons lately.

Upgrade fever is similar to Spring fever. All of our vacation planning is definitely keeping the typical spring fever symptoms at bay… unless vacation planning is a symptom of spring fever. Mom’s coming up during my spring break, we’ve got a family vacation planned for early June and a wedding back east in late June… and we’ve yet to pick out a show, but we plan to hit APT/Theater in the woods again this summer. I guess there are a few weeks between the team-building season and the camp season that I haven’t thought about, yet. There’s always video games…

Last call for hang-out requests while Sarah and I are at Mom’s house the weekend after Christmas!

I think this would be a good time to mention that I’ll be at Mom’s house the weekend after Christmas. Sarah and I will only there for a few days, but we might have a little bit of free time if anybody wants to get together.

I did a lot of wandering around in between my grandfather’s funeral and the day Sarah and her Mom arrived. I didn’t make a checklist this time, I sort of winged it. I missed Putnam and Providence and Western Mass, as well as Sara and Drew, but I’ll try and make it up to them over the holidays or something. The most impressive changes were in Woonsocket. I drove around most of town on one of my first free days, while doing some errands.

Improvements since I lived in Woonsocket:

Starbucks: closed
Tim Hortons: opened a second location, with a drive-thru
Main St: more than half of the storefronts were occupied and open

Also, the Game Stop had a Wii Fit in stock.

I caught up with some people and did a little sightseeing around Worcester & Millbury and Webster & Dudley. I ate at Jimmy’s pizza, played Werewolves of London on the jukebox. I did some shopping for New England treats at a Market Basket (where I found the Coffee Milk on the same shelf as all the other milks). I helped Mom start to remake her living room and move beds around.

The girls arrived on Saturday night, right in the middle of what was left of the storm Hanna. They survived their long drive, though, and I was very proud of them. Sarah’s posted a pretty good recap of the first couple days at her livejournal. We saw some family, toured through Plymouth, hit King Richard’s Faire and then went to NYC and played tourist some more; visited the Statue of Liberty and ground zero and a good deli.

Tuesday, we had a little more rain, so we kept it local and did some indoor-type activities. We started with breakfast at Carl’s Diner in Oxford. The serving size has not gone down. We sat at the counter, for the maximum effect. I don’t believe we ate another real meal for the whole day. We did hit Friendly’s for some ice cream, that evening. I believe that was also the day we took in some Candlepin bowling at Mohegan in Webster. It’s still kind of a dive, but its charm is intact.

Wednesday, we met Mom in Worcester, after dropping my car off at the Mazda dealership for an oil change (and to look into the weirdness it went through on the drive out there). We headed to Lexington to visit the historic Battle Green, visited the cemetery where my Dad and my Grandfather are and then met up with Mom’s friend Joyce at Bruegger’s Bagels for lunch. I hadn’t had a Herbie Turkey in a long time, and it was very tasty. Then we drove downtown and walked around Quincy Market and Faneuil Hall, had some cream puffs and then went to my cousin Mark’s place, in Braintree, for dinner. Mark made us pick records to play, and then made us play his XBox 360 and his Playstation 3. He cooked his awesome mac & cheese and some amazing burgers for us.

Thursday, we took in Purgatory Chasm. We walked down the chasm and back up on the East side of it. It was very nice, good weather for it. We also went up to Dresser Hill and got some food and shakes. I don’t think the Dairy stuff is as good as it once was, but it’s still the only place I eat fried clams. That night, we went to the outskirts of Worcester and saw Mark’s group, The Accident that Led Me to the World, play in a barn attached to a huge farmhouse that about 20 people lived in. They call it a Collective (read: commune) and the show was a potluck. Lots of friendly modern hippie-types, nice big wood-burning stove in the kitchen, bunch of pretty good music. It was something I’d never expect from Worcester.

Friday, we decided to hit the Big E on opening day, as a stopping point on our way back home. It was fun to go down the avenue of states and expose Patti to all the local culture and flavors. We wandered through some of the vendors and a good chunk of the crafting section. We ate a little and walked a lot. Looking back, it wasn’t a good choice for a stop on the morning of a big drive. We were still pretty exhausted for the first few hours of the trip home, and we ran into torrential downpours and Tornado warnings, but we survived. I think I slept through most of Saturday.

Gotta get through all this memorial stuff, and then we can vacation, as planned. That’s my mindset.

So, for those of you who are back east, I will be around for almost two weeks, a little busy until Thursday, and then joined by Sarah and her Mom on the weekend and for the rest of the following week. I will resume taking requests to hang out and/or suggestions for activities, now.

The plan is to drive out there on Tuesday the 2nd and stay until Monday the 8th (or maybe Tuesday the 9th, if we need an extra day). We’ve penciled in a King Richard’s Faire outing with my sister and her kids for Sunday, and we want to see some Boston and NYC, but otherwise, plans are fairly open. I think we should do a little candlepin bowling, eat breakfast at the counter at Carl’s Diner, if it’s still open and see any of y’all who live out there and miss me. Put in your requests for activities/hang-out time now.

I walked around the Y and changed all the clocks, again, today. Last time the time changed, I was late for work when my clock changed on the wrong weekend. It was too smart for its own good. My new clock has a daylight savings time mode, so I got there with no problem… and I think we only had one guy show up late because he hadn’t changed his clocks.

And yes, the amp and equipment and stuff all still seems to be working great, I’ve got a couple opportunities to go play with some people in the city this week… to try some stuff out, see if there’s a good fit. I plugged my bass into my computer and played along with some tracks yesterday. It was fun. Looking forward to playing with people… hoping something comes together.

-  I miss playing music. I knew that already, obviously, but I took a ride with Mark to a couple music stores, looking for gifts for Raianne, and I missed even that part of the scene. Hanging around talking to music store employees, seeing how knowledgeable they are, guessing what kinds of shoppers the other people in the store are: parents, multi-instrumentalists, strictly piano, garage band kids, etc. I also almost went to a show at Ralph’s. I was extremely tempted, just to see some local music, even if it was metal(!) … but I didn’t end up going, mostly because I didn’t have my earplugs with me, but the yearning was there.

- While the GPS is useful out here for finding out how long it’s going to take to get places or getting around large obstacles like airports or finding out where the bridges over the rivers are, it’s not necessary, since the grid road structure seems to extend forever. It is, however, completely necessary when driving to new places in New England. Grid doesn’t exist out there, except in small pockets of residential suburbia or inner-city areas that happen to be uninterrupted by a river or a coastline or a humongous hill. Most roads go diagonally at some time or another, very few are straight for more than a mile at a time. If GPS is unavailable, a printed out set of directions from a map service is ok, if you have a decent navigator to read them to you. Getting directions from locals works in a pinch, but be prepared for landmarks that don’t really exist anymore (“bear left where The Fair used to be, then go up past the old closed Texaco and turn left at the building that used to be the high school. When you pass the parking lot that used to be the Ford Dealership you’re almost there, you just have to take what was the third exit of the rotary at that big intersection where they installed a light. Then it’s on your right, after the where the mill used to be…”). Of course, if you live out there, you just know which roads go where. I used to have mental pictures of where each road ended and which important roads it might intersect with along the way. Maybe I can start clearing out all the brainspace for other things, now.

- My little laptop could might be able to get me through a weekend or maybe even a week of regular use. It’s pretty beat up and kinda sad, in that it has no CD-Rom and has to have either wireless network or USB ports, since it’s internal USB port fell out. But it gets me to my mail and the rest of the web. It does just fine with that GPS stuff, when it doesn’t do that 25-minute blank screen before booting thing.

I wish the rest of the computers here had such minor problems. Frank’s is due for another upgrade, to be able to play Call of Duty 4. He thinks it’s the graphics card, it probably is, but that’s gonna require a Power supply upgrade … and since we left it in the crazy Gateway case, it’s gonna be easier and cheaper to do a case transfer. Not a huge problem, but still a big project. The fish tank computer was due to have the Reserator added to it, but after successfully fishing out the molex power lead that tells the reserator when to turn on, the machine won’t boot. It seems like a power issue, and the power supply was just the crappy stock Gateway… possibly not the best candidate for oil submersion. Maybe, after the upgrade, I’ll submerge Frank’s equally crappy power supply, instead. removing that tray from the oil seems like a really messy project that I’m not especially looking forward to. And then Sarah’s uncle Paul left his laptop here on Christmas… it was ridiculously infested with spyware and malware and adware, but it also can’t see its audio card… or, more accurately, it can see it, and install drivers for it, but only the line-in gets installed. For output, it says “no audio device.” It’s annoying. It also has a power jack issue, which, I believe i saw something about needing a re-solder in a quick google search. I’ve never been good at soldering.

Got my alarm clock on my cell phone all set up. My phone hasn’t been in need of constant charging, like it has in past visits to Dudley. Apparently, there’s a new tower in the area or something, because I have a great signal, even in Mom’s basement. Keeping that digital signal takes less battery power than struggling with an older not-so-digital signal.I guess the next time Mom upgrades her phone, she doesn’t have to go with a tri-mode phone.

Didn’t take a ton of pictures, but I’m glad I had the camera. I got a cute shot of Pam’s dog Mel and a couple random shots of Worcester. Oh, and on Saturday, me and my Mom’s best friend from high school, Joyce, went to 111 Chophouse. We had some amazing food. I had heard good things about the place, but, for some reason, neither Mom or I had ever been there. She got a gift card from one of her clients at work, so we took advantage of it. I took a couple pics while we were there of their monogrammed (logoed?) knives and our amazingly delicious dessert. White chocolate mousse in a chocolate tulip cup with whipped cream and a raspberry puree: yum. We really weren’t hungry, the servings were more than ample, but it sounded way too good, so we got one and shared it. When the mousse was almost gone, Mom imploded the cup and we each grabbed a couple bits. A piece of mine fell into my latte when I bit into it… and that just made my tasty latte into something amazing.

All in all, a good visit. I wish I had managed to see everyone that wanted to see me, but I did come close and in a very limited amount of time. I spent a good amount of time in Worcester and a little time in Woonsocket. Most of my time was out in the Dudley and other ‘burbs. Actually, after seeing the way Chicago suburbs really fit the description of a suburb, I’d say that Dudley and these other New England towns are somewhere in between suburban and rural. Dudley is certainly practically rural in terms of the kind of land and features you see, but the people and the community act fairly suburban. I dunno, maybe I need to go look at the actual definitions of those terms… but some other time, right now I need to sleep, so I can get up early and shower and get to my plane on time.

The visit home is going well. I probably won’t make it to the teen center this time around, I’m not going to take a ton of pictures of all my old haunts (which was on my mental list of things to do and not well defined, I think it was a flickr-groups-inspired idea and I can’t think of which groups/themes I had in mind) and I don’t think I’ll be able to fit in hanging out with everyone who wants to, since today is pretty much the only day I have and only Erika has come up with a time and place that works for her… and I pretty much slept the whole morning away. I suppose I could fit some time in with someone around our visit to Karen and the kids in Stoughton, tomorrow… or before dinner time on Monday. Heading out to Worcester this afternoon, most likely, with Mom and her good friend Joyce. I’ll probably take my own car so that I can break off and meet with someone, if they get in touch with me before it runs into my other plans. I guess I should go shower.

Anyway, planning on relaxing at Mom’s for a good percentage of my time at home, so I should be able to update a few times. Hope you all enjoy your holidays if I don’t see you!

√ Dinner @ Mom’s (Monday night)
√ Go to Hava Java (on the way back from the airport, with Mark)
√ Go to Java Hut (for the last time … ::sniff::)
√ Get remaining gifts for people in the area
_ visit the teen center
hang out with:
√ Mark (ride home from airport, no Raianne or Scrabble, though)
√ Kristin
√ Drew (at Numark party)
√ Sara (at Numark party, no Tyler visit)
_ Jess and Erika
√ Karen and Cousin Mark

I guess I also need a packing list. A things not to forget list:

_ Tim Horton’s coffee mug didn’t fit, not important
√ laptop (little one)
√ camera
√ ipod and mount (maybe cupholder-mount)
√ stocking stuffers for Mom’s house
√ phone and charger (both car and home)
√ sunglasses
√ gloves

Ooh, and a things to not forget to bring/ship home list:

√ stocking stuff from Mom’s and other gifts
√ hard drives that need rescuing (out of the barn and shipped to Gillware)
√ Just For Sundae CD (haven’t found it yet)
_ Peggy Lawton cookies, Devil Dogs and other local foods (not this time, I can always get stuff shipped)

I may be adding to this.

edited on 12/25

Sarah came in to Providence on Friday night, only about twenty minutes late, on an otherwise uneventful flight, save for the sticky floor under her feet.  Once we got her shoes all cleaned off, we headed back to Mom’s, talked a little bit, did some catching up, and then got some sleep.

Saturday was our Woodstock Fair day. We headed down there with Mom, using the back-roads to avoid the traffic, and we snuck in the back entrance to avoid the huge crazy parking lot and crossing the super-busy street. We wandered the fair in a sort of aimless fashion for a while… got a cool gift at a craft tent for some friends of ours who are having a baby soon. We also picked up some cool books at half price… or less … and a lot of yummy food. They had excellent turkey legs and while Mom and I shared blooming onion Sarah and I shared a turkey leg. I got a whole meal out of it. We had some Del’s lemonade, a local treat I had forgotten about. We also got an awesome orange cream smoothie and a delicious cinnamon bun, just before we left. We heard some of the Bangles, but there were no seats left to sit and actually watch. Afterwards, we collapsed into bed and slept most of the afternoon and evening away.

Sunday morning, we headed out to Plymouth and had some breakfast at my Aunt Elizabeth’s house with cousin Mark, Karen and Brian, sister and brother in law, and their kids Jake and Cam. After some yummy waffles and such, we all headed over to King Richard’s Faire. It was a charming little set-up with a lot more shade and trees than the Bristol fair up in Kenosha. It was very similar to that fair, though somewhat lacking in vendors and variety in crafts and wares in comparison. They did have a lot of nice pottery, though, and Sarah and I picked up a couple cool mugs with fish on them. Mark bought one of those hanging Sky Chairs and everyone else got Henna tattoos (except maybe Brian).

Monday, we went to Providence to find OOP. I thought they’d moved to the mall, from Thayer St, so we went there first… but found it all closed up. They guy in Ritz, next door, gave us a pamphlet with their new locations and a $10 coupon… so we took three. We found the OOP on Westminster St and bought a few books, some chocolate band-aids and some neat little planting kits that look like matchbooks. We got some shiny diner breakfast on the way home. I got the car all packed and we collapsed into bed again.

Apparently, I didn’t set the alarm right, and we got up about an hour after we had planned, but we got on the road  within an hour and got back to Illinois before the day was over. Saw a pretty sunset over very flat Ohio. Slowed down a little bit at that silly curve in the highway in Cleveland – otherwise, smooth sailing.

Pictures from the trip are all on Flickr, but I can’t seem to connect to it right now, so I dunno how they look.

Tuesday evening, I met up with Erika and Shane. We took a little shopping trip to pick up a remote controlled dragonfly (like this one). Then we headed back to Webster and went to Friendly’s for some dinner and ice cream. I love their peanut butter sauce. I had kinda forgotten how much.

Wednesday morning, I headed out to the Mazda dealership, where we bought the car, for an oil change and tire rotation. I had Kristin with me and we took a walk to Honey Dew Donuts while we were waiting for the work to be done. Honey Dew is the same as I remember it… good competition for Dunkin’, even if it is just in a small regional market. Kristin and I also visited Steve at Toad Hall, and I got my dose of Wormtown music and gossip and such. We also swung through Woonsocket, while we were killing time and I went to Hava Java, where they still remembered my order (six months later). I took a few pictures of a local landmark while we were in the area. That evening, we swung out to the Hockomock Teen Center and saw all the kids who weren’t there on my last visit.

I had no specific plans for Thursday morning until Erika called and asked for a ride to Worcester. She needed a CAT scan because she had sneezed and then gotten a sudden headache and problems with vision and tracking with her left eye. I left her at the huge new “Medical City” in the early afternoon. She was there until 7PM, and they sent her home, but another killer sneeze has made all the pain come back since then. I dunno what her plan is, the big shiny hospital seems useless, from my point of view. On my way out of Worcester, I stopped by a new shiny diner, fairly close to where I used to live. It had a 50s theme and was fairly good.

Name Me?

I ended the night with the only official plans I had for the day – a visit to Sara, my old roommate, and Tyler, the cat. Tyler was as cute sexy as ever and there’s a new kitten, who is being called bit until he gets a permanent name. We watched some awesome TV and had some awesome sandwiches and were entertained by the cats.

This morning, I grabbed a coffee with Mark at Victoria Station in Putnam and then tooled around Webster, chatting with some other local artists and talking about upcoming Webster-Dudley events. Now, I’m trying to decide what to do until I pick up Sarah at 11PM in Providence tonight. I’ve got plenty of options, but no idea which one makes the most sense.

Today, I took a ride down to Woonsocket, almost on accident. I was just looking for a place to pick up some audio/video cables and just ended up heading that way. I went to the shiny diner, which is no longer a Scramblers… it is now Patriot Diner. The menu was hilarious, I wish I had taken a picture. They obviously just took the front cover picture from the previous owner’s menu and pasted a piece of paper onto the picture of the diner that said Patriot Diner where the last name had been… it was black with light writing and completely flat in perspective, while the diner was at a slight angle. I may have to go back and get a picture, it was that good. Unfortunately, they no longer have crunchy french toast on the menu.

Fredo

I got the cables I needed, eventually, but while I was setting up the devices, Mom got home and immediately started yelling for me from outside… and asked if I could bring an aquarium up. When I got there, I saw what they had seen, and understood. On top of our screened in porch, there sat an iguana. Pam, friend of the family and nurse for my grandfather and uncle, was chasing the thing down and trying to get a hold of it. I went inside to fetch a box and the phone. After I gave the phone to Pam, I got my camera out of my car. I snapped a couple of pictures and then went down to the computer to print out a basic iguana guide and consult with a couple friends about the whole situation. Mom and Pam headed down the street to the house that the raccoons had come from (apparently, she feeds them in her backyard). It turned out that the iguana had escaped about a month ago. They were very happy to see Fredo again.

Fredo’s Owner