dianeduane | Reading

Before the thunderstorm broke in such steel-drum sheets of solid rain that we realized only after the fact that we had accidentally driven through a washed-out bridge on Route 127, I lay with my face against half a billion years of granite cooled in the volcanoes of Avalonia and weathered across aeons of which the ice ages were only the finishing touch to a boulder as rough as rust-cracked barnacles: it pushed into my palms like the denticles of sharkskin, my hair clung to it in the wind that smelled of high tide and the slap-glass of waves coiling around the sunken cobbles and combers of weed. The stone itself smelled of salt. I found a fragment of gull's feather tangled afterward in my hair.

spatch had driven me out to Gloucester for a bonanza of fried smelts and scallops eaten within sea-breeze earshot of the harbor while the clouds built like a shield-wall against the sunset and the thunder held off just long enough for us to get back to the car, following which we were theoretically treated to the coastal picturesque of Manchester-by-the-Sea and realistically corrected course back to Route 128 when we saw a taller vehicle than ours headlights-deep. The sunset that came out after the rain was preposterously spectacular: a huge cliff of cloud the peach-pearl color of a bailer shell, the gold-edged stickles of smaller reefs and bars, the mauve undershadow of the disappearing rain, all sunk to a true ultramarine dusk by the time we were doing the shopping for my mother back in Lexington. I used to spend a lot more time out in the world and I need to be able to again. It is self-evidently good for me.

Current Music: The Punters, "Jim Harris"

austin_dern

People keeping suspiciously close tabs on the state of our home might remember that a year and a half ago our fireplace cleaning and inspection got our fireplace condemned with a note that literally any fire had in the past 95 years could plausibly have burned the house down. The question was what to do about it. We finally resolved to having the fireplace converted, with a small wood-burning stove squeezed into the space where it would be adequately insulated and ventilated. Also to actually be effective in heating the house, since our open-hearth fireplace was kind of not good for anything but having the lovely sight of a fire and warming up people who were within three feet of its opening.

After finally committing to the stove installation last winter, the fireplace people finally had the time to come out and put it in. This involved getting here terribly early in the morning and using the neighbor's driveway to fuss with the chimney some. Fortunately the neighbor, who's there on some AirBnB-style lease, didn't mind as they haven't been using the driveway (we're not even sure they have a car), and to make some fuss inside the living room. But by the middle of last month, there we were: with a cute black stove poking just a couple inches out the front of our fireplace.

This was not the end of things, though. First, they would need to cut an arched metal plate to go around the stove, so as to fit the arch of the fireplace this was filling up. Second, and a bit more distressing, the stove's new front was not parallel with the edge of the fireplace. It was enough off to be obvious if you stood nearby. Third also was that the city had to inspect it to be satisfied that it was installed correctly, but that would come in time.

This past week the city finally had the time to send an inspector, who gave us a pass for a ``rough inspection'', because the fireplace was not exactly as it would be when finished. Exactly would include having a blower fan at the base, which was not installed in the first place because (our best explanation is) they forgot to order it, and having the faceplate put on.

That faceplate would be put on this week while I was in the office. It's got a nice arch that matches the circle of our original bricks, and for reasons it's poked out an inch or so from the brick so we can still see the whole original. The fan's tucked in where it should be with a cord we need to, like, triple-protect as long as Athena is in her ``chew everything'' phase. And they straightened out the stove while installing the faceplate so that it's near enough parallel the wall for any reasonable person's needs.

Now we need just the final inspection and for it not to be the middle of summer and we're good to go.

Meanwhile! Have we seen enough of Cedar Point's petting zoo rabbits yet? I don't think we have.

I know this is just the brown rabbit asking the white for head-pettings, but white rabbit looks ready to do an Incredible Hulk transformation and start ripping the place apart.

I believe this is actually the white rabbit grooming themself with the brown trying to horn in on the process.

But the white rabbit gradually accepted the invitation to groom the brown, and the brown rabbit looks so confident that has gone exactly as desired.

Aw yeah, that's the good head-licking.

On to the rest of the amusement park. This is the water mill that, up until this visit, was usually left open. We haven't seen it open t the public since.

Here's a little, easily overlooked, patch of water and green space next to the water mill. It's just enough off the main Frontier Trail that you might never know it was there.

Trivia: Soyuz 19 astronauts Alexei Leonov and Valery Kubasov had a nearly ten-hour rest period before the reentry the 21st of July, 1975. Source: The Partnership: A History of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, NASA SP-4209.

Currently Reading: Beyond Measure: The Hidden History of Measurement From Cubits to Quantum Constants, James Vincent.

jayblanc

I am adding mobile phone services to the things I will only buy from places with brick and morter shops on the high street. My provider expected me to confirm a verification code sent to my phone to get a new e-sim to replace one wiped by a hardware reset.

And also I have a migraine, and also I had to unblock the sink. Today has been a day.

jhetley

Through the wonders of the internet, just found out that my banjo was made in 1924. Ties in with Dad's backstory that he bought it cheap during the Depression.

beccaelizabeth

Relistened some 7th Doctor Big Finish today.
7 & Ace in Assassination Game I realised I had put on my relist because it mentions The Light, who also turn up in a Torchwood audio and arguably are referenced in a Torchwood book. Except in Torchwood they are not much like this. So probably it's more like when you get two secret societies called Watchers, because no one is trademarking their secret society. Someone wants to claim to be a major concept like Light, that's up to them.

( Read more... )
Other than that it was a lot of politics and mind control and running around. Didn't hate it. Didn't like its ideas though.

In Torchwood it's simpler, the Light introduces itself as Hell. Extradimensional conspiracy to get in. Still creepy infiltration and mind control stuff but without the mind controlled babies.

Actually all three of today's listens involved mind control stuff, which always seems to me a lazy shortcut. Persuade us someone could be persuaded or go home. But they did okay on that in the Dalek one.

7 and Mel in
We Are the Daleks
and
The Warehouse.

We Are The Daleks was released in 2015 and set in the 80s.

( Read more... )

So there were good bits and not so good bits. Reacting to the Daleks as if they're just another trading block and deciding to oppose them on the same grounds they decided to oppose the EU is funny and an interesting angle. But mind control takes the pressure off the problem from the story title. It makes it a dumb sci fi problem solved by moving the transmitter, instead of a lot of moral choices.
But that does make it solvable in the space of one adventure, so, can see what they were going for there.

The Warehouse was one of those that takes ordinary words like Delivery and respins the story around them not meaning quite the same thing there as here. Deliverance and religion get attached to a big warehouse for fulfilling online orders.

( Read more... )
After relistening this one I went back to my existing listing in my catalog and gave it an extra star. It's still not maximum stars but I think I must have been in a bad mood listening the first time. Liked it.

Liked today pretty well.
Sunday tasks achieved. Lots of nice foods to choose between. Plenty of quiet time to listen.
Pretty good day.

jhetley

Air temperature 65 F, wind south at 3 mph, cloudy. We have showers in the forecast, starting before noon and lasting into evening, to maybe include thunder and wind. Walk earlier rather than later.

archangelbeth

Scene: the ex-Padawan is having an emotional breakdown because oh no, it's so scary having emotions and she hates having friends.

The Main Character is comforting her about this, and draws out that the reason the ex-Padawan is upset is that she's afraid something will happen to her friends.

So the MC gives a speech about, "it's okay to be afraid. But use your fear. Let it become anger that anyone would threaten your friends! Let the anger give you power, to fight to protect everyone you care about!"

(I had a better line earlier but it's nearly 7am and I need sleep...)

Sent from my iPhone

austin_dern

And now, while I build up strength for the next big reporting project, a bit of news around the home. Last time I talked about our bathroom lights I mentioned how I'd found the nonfunctioning bulbs above the mirror were actually just burned out, and I replaced them with LED bulbs that are bright, cool, and look fine.

So we had a new light problem break out. bunnyhugger turned the light on, it flickered a moment, and then the main light, not over the mirror, stayed on, incapable of being turned off. The other switches on the same switch plate --- the ceiling fan and the heater --- worked fine, but not the light. So, oven mitt in hand, I unscrewed the compact fluorescent that hasn't given up the ghost yet, and we called yet again on the electricians.

You know, I thought we were probably being rooked when we signed up for that service contract with the plumber/electricians but we've now saved a bunch of service visit calls. Maybe our house should be falling apart more slowly.

So the problem was that the physical switch had at last burned out. Not a difficult fix --- the electrician didn't even bother turning off the circuit breaker --- and the only catch was finding a replacement faceplate to cover the three switches and the two electric sockets next to it. He found one but had to go four places for it. Once he had that, though? I can't say it was but the work of a moment, but it was pretty quick to do. And now we have a new and shiny white switchplate.

Sadly, this replaces the switch's old faceplate, a battered metal NuTone thing that was our only clue what model ceiling fan we had (and that was itself cut partway down to make room for the faceplate around the electric sockets). It also replaces the toggle switches with rocker switches that I'm still getting used to. They did a similar replacement of a toggle with a rocker switch when they changed our kitchen ceiling light. I don't know why. I can see sources claiming rocker switches are more durable because it's harder for contaminants to get in, but they also say it's only a little better. Maybe it's just the electricians' house style.

When he asked if there were anything else I did mention how nice it'd be if there were more outlets in the bathroom. Right now we just have the one next to the light switch, plus a socket coming off the mirror's lights that's only good for the electric toothbrush. He outlined the intimidating pile of things we'd need to do to get a new socket put in, and yeah, won't be doing that, however much it would make everything better. Too bad.

Anyway, light is working and we should probably make a note somewhere of what our ceiling fan model is since we can't use the faceplate to tell us anymore.

Back now to pictures of Cedar Point, and something everyone would really like to see.

Hey, what's that over in the petting zoo?

Aw hey, a fluffy white rabbit all set to be petted and have all kinds of attention pushed on her, that's great, right?

And here's another rabbit sinking in their dewlap.

I wonder if the white bunny is waiting around for someone to touch them!

Only thing to do is respect the rabbits' desire for petting by dangling your kid way over the fence with them.

Tragedy! Bunny is confused about which way to turn to get a person to touch them all over.

Trivia: On the 19th of July, 1975, NASA played ``Tenderness'', sung by the Soviet artist Maya Kristalinskaya, as wake-up music for the Apollo crew, but they slept through it. The 20th of July NASA tried again and this time woke for it. Source: The Partnership: A History of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, NASA SP-4209. Mind, the wake-up time was 3:13 am the 19th, but then it was 1:54 am the 20th. Also I am genuinely embarrassed that I forgot this was the 50th anniversary of Apollo-Soyuz.

Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine, Volume 66: Uranium Hunter or the Living Geiger Counter, Ralph Stein, Bill Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle.

lurkingcat

We drove out to Anglesey on Wednesday to visit Plas Newydd, which we'd somehow failed to visit when we actually stayed on Anglesey.

The original house on the site was built in the thirteenth century but the current building was started in the early fifteenth century and has been expanded many times since. I failed to take any photos inside (I have very definitely lost the habit of taking photos), which I'm regretting now as some of the rooms were presented in the state that they would have been in the 1930's. That's a lot more recent than most National Trust properties and I found that very interesting. But the thing that I really should have taken a picture of was the amazing Rex Whistler mural in the dining room. There's a picture in the Wikipedia entry that really doesn't do it justice. Not that a photo was really going to capture all the perspective tricks in it. As you walk from one end to the other, some of the perspective changes and things like the wet footprints on the quayside change direction.

The house is set in a lovely garden that we would have explored more of but we made the mistake of taking the path out to the rhododendron garden first. There is a warning sign that the path is a little tricky but that didn't really cover how slippery it was after the rain. Inevitably I stumbled and slid a little about halfway along the route and my ankle twinged. I thought it was okay but by the time we actually reached the rhododendron garden it was quite sore and

battlehamster ended up taking my rucksack on the way back so that I wasn't putting too much weight on the ankle. We sat and had some ice cream and took a very gentle walk along a much smoother path, saw a couple of red squirrels, and then headed back to Portmeirion.

I don't think I've done anything serious to the ankle but we're back home now and it's still unhappy enough that I caught the bus into town to get my hair cut this morning rather than walking down the hill. Which is a bit frustrating because I enjoy walking and it's my main form of exercise. Hopefully the ankle will settle down again in the next couple of days.

Current Mood: sore

beccaelizabeth

Today I played WotR Lord of Nothing and did the cave, tower, and jungle.
I stopped before the Shadow because I remember going through that as fast as possible because Creepy, and it is sleepy time now.

I got the two fiddly achievements I was trying for, including one that *should* have worked already but I found a guide that said it was bugged so you had to do the thing a particular way that would usually be losing. So I did a proper save, played it the right way, did another proper save, and went back and did it the wrong way. Then I exited the game and loaded the right way version. And then it went Ping and I got an achievement something like 0.6% of players do.
This is not because I'm impressive, its because hardly any percent of people seem to actually play their game, the can't miss it achievements aren't impressive percents on the xbox either.

I also spent some of today playing using the actual xbox controller rather than the wired powera version I usually use, because the controls were being quirky and I wondered if it was game or controller. Either way it stopped. But, I relearned why I don't use the xbox one. It is just different enough everything Bothers Me and the buttons click Wrong and I can't put my fingers in the exactly places. Blah.

This is not exciting gaming news.

But it passes the time.

I'm never going to get 100% of achievements because already Core difficulty is annoyingly hard instead of just quite challenging. There's more difficulties above that and all you get for it is a finished the whole thing on that difficulty trophy. ... the highest difficulty one I believe is called Test of the Starstone, which, would be nice to be able to say I passed.

The weather is nicer outside but my flat does not feel like changing, except to intermittently feel like if you put a wet sponge in a microwave. Dryer is better.

But basically had an okay day.

jhetley

There's this prevailing attitude that "they" are doing things to "us" . . . it's all "us" and that's part of the problem.

jhetley

First jewel-weed seen in the roadside tangle, lots of chicory and goats-beard and Queen Anne's lace and water parsnip and milkweed and various clovers and vetches. And Canada lily, which I missed last year.

Roadkill limited to one gray squirrel and a number of Unidentified Flattened Objects.

Got out on the bike, up to the golf course and across to the road through the bog and thence home. Warming up out there, 77 F when I finished. Did not die.

15.31 miles, 1:28:25

jhetley

Air temperature 57 F, wind near calm, sunny. Should be able to get out for a bike ride this morning. Only this and nothing more, rapping tapping . . .

sovay

Obviously I am not at Readercon, but on the other hand I may have fixed our central air: it required a new filter, a section of insulation, and a quantity of aluminum tape, but the temperature in the apartment has in fact followed the thermostat down for the first time all week. Fingers crossed that it stays that way.

Although its state-of-the-art submarine is nuclear-powered and engaged in the humanitarian mission of planting a chain of seismometers around the sunken hotspots of the globe, Around the World Under the Sea (1966) plays so much like a modernized Verne mash-up right down to its trick-photographed battle with a giant moray eel and its climactic ascent amid the eruption of a newly discovered volcano that it should not be faulted for generally shorting its characters in favor of all the techno-oceanography, but Keenan Wynn grouches delightfully as the specialist in deep-sea survival who prefers to spend his time playing shortwave chess in a diving bell at the bottom of the Caribbean and the script actually remembers it isn't Shirley Eaton's fault if the average heterosexual male IQ plummets past the Marianas just because she's inhaled in its vicinity, but the MVP of the cast is David McCallum whose tinted monobrowline glasses and irritable social gracelessness would code him nerd in any era, but he's the grit in the philanthropy with his stake in a sunken treasure of transistor crystals and his surprise to be accused of cheating at chess when he designed and programmed the computer that's been making his moves for him. If the film of The Flight of the Phoenix (1965) had not made its inspired change in the nationality of its aeronautical engineer, McCallum could have knocked the part out of the park. "No, you don't get one," he almost gets the last word, distributing his sole precious handful of salvage among his fellow crew with the pointed exception of the captain played inevitably by Lloyd Bridges: "You blew the bloody submarine in half."

spatch and I have seen four films now by the husband-and-wife, director-and-editor team of Andrew L. and Virginia Stone and on the strength of Ring of Fire (1961), The Steel Trap (1952), The Decks Ran Red (1958), and just lately The Last Voyage (1960), the unifying theme of their pictures looks like pulp logistics. So far the standout has been the nail-biter noir of The Steel Trap, whose sprung ironies depend on an accumulation of individually trivial hitches in getting from L.A. to Rio that under less criminal circumstances would mount to planes-trains-and-automobiles farce, but Ring of Fire incorporates at least two real forest fires into its evacuation of a Cascadian small town, The Decks Ran Red transplants its historical mutiny to the modern engine room of a former Liberty ship, and The Last Voyage went the full Fitzcarraldo by sinking the scrap-bound SS Île de France after first blowing its boiler through its salon and smashing its funnel into its deckhouse without benefit of model work. The prevailing style is pedal-to-the-metal documentary with just enough infill of character to keep the proceedings from turning to clockwork and a deep anoraky delight in timetables and mechanical variables. Eventually I will hit one of their more conventional-sounding crime films, but until then I am really enjoying their clinker-built approach to human interest. Edmond O'Brien as the second engineer of the doomed SS Claridon lost his father on the Titanic, a second-generation trauma another film could have built an entire arc out of, and the Stones care mostly whether he's as handy with an acetylene torch as all that.

We were forty-four minutes into Dr. Kildare's Strange Case (1940) before anything remotely strange occurred beyond an impressive protraction of soap and with sincere regrets to Lew Ayres, I tapped out.

Current Music: Tech and the EFFX, "Perfect Match"

austin_dern

I made the drive home from the airport sound like everything was fine. Most of the important things were, but there was a bit of noise coming from my brakes. Nothing big but certainly persistent. Over the next week the noise grew, getting louder and more insistent and the braking getting less smooth. Even I knew how to diagnose this, though: my brake pads were almost worn out. Or calipers, maybe. Doesn't matter; they're basically a set. When they're close to wearing out, they start making --- they're supposed to start making --- a noise too irritating to ignore, which encourages the car owner to get the thing fixed before it becomes unsafe to operate.

This was mostly just wear, as I've had the car for closing in on 50,000 miles and the car itself is well over 100,000 miles old. It's possibly hurried by the extreme emergency stop we had to make on the way to Detroit airport, but that would be only hurried rather than caused. Anyway, a trip to the dealer, the discovery they couldn't deal with it at the after-office-hours appointment I had, and my own trip by bus and the next morning my car was fine.

Except. Something started making a terrible racket in my suspension, something hard to miss over the course of a road trip covering suspiciously close to 1600 miles and you're going to read about every one of them. Usually when I was at low speed, reliably when I was braking or going over a pothole, and our particular street is nothing but potholes. I had to chalk it up to the suspension, annoyingly, being as old as the brake pads and dying at almost but not quite the same time, and brought the car in yesterday after work for them to examine.

They figured to have a diagnosis by about 5:30 and if they were lucky get it done by their 8 pm close. No luck and they texted that it they would need the morning to diagnose it. Either the problem was awful or they were swamped. This morning they didn't have any message for me and finally I texted them about noon to ask if there was word. They were still working on it but hoped to have an answer soon.

Finally the answer: it looks like a bit of road debris got into a shield near the suspension, which was causing the trouble. And I suppose its natural movement might explain why the low-speed groaning stopped this past weekend, though the pothole and braking noise kept going. Must have shaken loose. But they got it and cleaned it out, and what's left looks good.

Of course, as I write this, I haven't driven it yet so who knows what's next ...

In pictures, now, what's next is a bit more Cedar Point during the no-longer-bonus weekend that's before Halloweekends but after Ordinary Time.

bunnyhugger discovering that while the Kettle Corn place was set up, it wasn't running. We would never see it open that fall. But coffee was open and she would get coffee at least.

The chickens are on the prowl!

``You coming, Mabel? C'mon, time's a-wasting!''

And then bunnyhugger noticed trouble approaching, and started whistling that theme from West Side Story.

``You're just lucky my chick's here!''

Although Halloweekends hadn't started yet there was a group lined up at one of the haunted house areas, next to the petting zoo, and the door opened up to let people in. So I got this view of what might be inside which looks like a 50s-ish diner?

Trivia: Chinese is the only script to still be primarily used for the language it was originally developed for. Source: The Greatest Invention: A History of the World In Nine Mysterious Scripts, Silvia Ferrara.

Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine, Volume 66: Uranium Hunter or the Living Geiger Counter, Ralph Stein, Bill Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle. The living Geiger counter is a creature named the Beekl-Bokl and it looks kind of like ``What if Eugene the Jeep were a bunny-tailed platypus?'' (he glows and ticks when detecting radioactivity).

sovay

The first weekend in May,

spatch and I day-tripped to the Coney Island Film Festival in order to catch the short film debut of Steve Havelka and Nat Strange's Pokey the Penguin (1998–), which I described at the time as "a five-minute delight of shyster shenanigans including an accidentally combination cathedral and DMV and an international offer cautioned to be void in Lemuria. It loses nothing and in fact gains an inventive layer of detail in the translation to traditional animation from all-caps MS Paint, e.g. a beet instead of a carrot for the nose of a fast-talking snowman who could outbooze W. C. Fields. Steal a seat if it comes to a film festival near you." Fortunately, it is now necessary only to steal a seat on the internet: The Animated Adventures of Pokey the Penguin Presents: The Lawyers' Lawyers (2025) is freely streaming and still a delight. Guaranteed even on mythical continents.

Current Music: Deep Sea Diver, "What Do I Know"

twistedchick

Firing Stephen Colbert, whose contract guarantees he'll have a show through next May, may be the stupidest thing Paramount has ever done.

sovay

During one of the four discrete hours I may have managed to sleep in my own apartment, I dreamed of a trio of dark-masked, clever-clawed, civet-bodied animals tumbling across the carpet of the front hall that I recognized finally as orries, which I realized I had never known were marsupials of the real world as opposed to inventions of the 1970's children's trilogy where I had encountered them in elementary school, the companion animals of the nuclear-winter breed of human traveling in secret across a post-rain-of-fire Australia, in some places reverted to a sort of colonially reconstructed medievalism, more indigenously enduring in others. I had so wanted an orrie of my own as a child reader, not least because they were a mark of the strange: bonding with one could get an adolescent suddenly exiled from their pseudo-medieval settlement, as had of course happened to one of the protagonists; they too were creatures of the fallen-out world. In this one, they were inquisitive and quick-moving, slithered themselves into the tub as eagerly as yapoks, and Hestia hissed at them. Awake, I am even sadder about their nonexistence than the more predictable fictitiousness of the books and their famous Australian children's author. I dreamed also of Stephen Colbert, I assume because I am worrying about him. It does not feel actually out of character that he had read much of the same random science fiction I had.

Current Music: Alice Merton, "No Roots"

jhetley

Air temperature 67 F, wind northwest gusting to 23 mph, partly cloudy. Dew point 57 F. Temp was 70 F when I got up. We have broken free of the malarial miasma of the last few days. Did not get any rain in the process. Trash out.

austin_dern

So if my humor blog isn't about letting Robert Benchley write it, then what is it about? ... How about if it's just a lot of explaining Popeye storylines? That works. Here's what you can catch up on:

So next up on the photo reel is, of course, an amusement park. We got to Cedar Point on the weekend between regular weeklong operations and the start of Halloweekends, once upon a time known as a ``bonus weekend'' and now just kind of there. Here's what's there:

Part of the lawn approach to the entrance that we never go to because we're never coming from that side of the parking lot. But this is where they moved the Peanuts topiaries that used to line the Causeway.

Turns out they're completely artificial --- I had assumed they were actually sculpted --- but that does mean they could be moved rather than killed when the park decided not to have them line the Causeway.

Halloweekends wasn't really going, yet they were getting the decorations up, letting us be there in a weird liminal zone.

Also it was still summertime hot so all the Halloween theming felt out of season.

Decorations on the main midway where they used to have the ride graveyard. The graveyard's moved, but it does mean the sickest joke --- Sky Ride car #13 on the ground, smashed --- is spoiled.

I believe the fountain in the middle is one of the set Cedar Point snagged from the 1904 St Louis Exposition. Here, it holds a bunch of fake pumpkins.

The mummy here is an alien from one of Cedar Point's early-2000s Halloweekends haunted houses, the one about the secret of the Mummy, which is that he's an alien.

Banners that look like bunnyhugger's parents' Halloween decorations, along with an un-eclipsed afternoon sun.

The Pumpkin Spice Gourds. I don't remember if they were playing any music, but the placement of flowers in front does a good job at making it look like they're playing to an audience. I guess it's okay that there are only three of them. The joke would be a little stronger if they had five and they could be matched to the actual Spice Girls but it probably wouldn't be funnier enough to nearly double the materials cost.

The brake run and the first drop of Blue Streak, seen from the queue going up to the ride. I like this kind of inside-the-ride photo, especially with all the many soothing lines of a wooden roller coaster.

Photograph from the Millennium Force queue of ... well, the back of the Panda Express. Why? Because nobody ever photographs that for any reason ever is why.

And here's Millennium Force which, despite this being their tallest operating coaster at the time and a top-notch ride and it being a gorgeous Sunday didn't have much of a line. Sometimes that happens.

Trivia: Maize was an important enough crop in the inland Chinese province of Henan to be mentioned in a regional history in 1555. Source: Food In History, Reay Tannahill.

Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine, Volume 66: Uranium Hunter or the Living Geiger Counter, Ralph Stein, Bill Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle. As teased, radioactive bears block buried treasure.

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dianeduane

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May 2017

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Word Salad II

A mirror blog of Diane Duane's "Out of Ambit"

Reading

Far across the broad Atlantic where the storms do rage severe

I Like What You're Doing Now, Fire

(no subject)

Minor amusement

(no subject)

Gloomy gray morning

A pretty Sith Lord warriors post

Alone in the Dark but Now You've Come Along

Plas Newydd, Anglesey

(no subject)

(no subject)

Saturday floral report

Minimalist post

We rented a glass-bottom boat, we got farther from shore

We're Gonna Rock It Tonight

Offer not valid in Lemuria

New Substack post

I build a home and wait for someone to tear it down

Oh what a relief

Strike Up the Band for Popeye the Sailor

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May 2017

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