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Monday, June 30th, was our anniversary, as mentioned. We like going to amusement parks that day, but we needed at some point to drive from Pittsburgh to Maryland and this would be the day. We got up as late as we could, close to check-out time, the better to sleep in. I forget whether we got out just ahead of housekeeping or if we were interrupted by them and had to apologize and ask for a little more time. We were aware that the earlier we got up the better the chance we could do something particular at the end of the day, but that's a hard trade-off to make when you're setting the alarm clock, already tired.

If I remember right we got lunch at the Sheetz near the hotel, as it turns out we're easily coaxed by their sandwich ordering screens. It's a break from Taco Bell (which I believe we missed the whole trip). We would get into Wawa territory during the vacation, for the first time in ages, but never set foot in one.

Anyway, onward to Interstates. At some point around this bunnyhugger quipped that of course it was I-76 going to Philadelphia and I said yeah, that is why Pennsylvania I-76 is named that (and not, say, I-78 or I-74 or some other convenient number). Colorado I-76 has that name for going through the Centennial State. (On double-checking, I can confirm the Colorado I-76's name origin, but the Department of Transportation says the Pennsylvania I-76 was coincidence, as far as they can prove from documentation, and there were adequate reasons to use 76 that had nothing to do with sentiment.)

bunnyhugger had picked out a hotel in Maryland somewhere and it stood out compared to our usual amusement park trip hotel: it was a skyscraper. At least fourteen storeys --- I forget if this or our airport hotel in Brussels was the one that conspicuously lacked a 13th floor, just like in the urban legends --- and we had a floor high enough we were dependent on the elevator. The elevator behaved as though it wanted to be at a furry con, all three shafts running slowly and one day, one not running at all. We saw on the hotel restaurant the promise that this place had a vegetarian-meat steak that sounded quite interesting and novel. The next day --- we didn't have time that day --- we'd go there, for it, and discover that oh yeah, they haven't had it in like forever, the menu just hasn't been changed. (Apparently the Detroit Athletic Club restaurant has it on the menu, so if true, we might someday get to try it out.)

The height did not put us above the mid-90s heat, but it was air conditioned, so we had that to not worry about. And one of the last things we did on the day was exchange anniversary presents. There would be nothing like last year when I had snuckened a Popeye pinball backglass out from Pinball At The Zoo with bunnyhugger noticing, and gave it to her without a clear idea where we could hang the thing. No, with our being on the road like this we had to go for slender presents. It won't surprise you that she gave me books which you'll be seeing in my Currently Reading line item (a Mark Kurlansky book, a book about the history of embroidery [ the 13th anniversary is lace and this is as close as could get ], and a Simon Winchester book). Very happy with them. And I gave her ... well, one book, about the roller coasters of one particular early-20th-century designer, several of which survived long enough for us to ride them. And, snuckified from Pinball At The Zoo ... a magic mirror, a small plastic piece from a FunHouse table. At least until we get one of the remake, this will keep us.

The sensitive reader with good estimates of what check-out time is and how long it could take to drive from the vicinity of Pittsburgh to the vicinity of Upper Marlboro, Maryland may wonder: was that all we did? Or have I left out something that took up a couple of hours?

No, and yes. I intend to get there.

Last September we were taking the train at Michigan's Adventure to the other station, the one next to Thunderhawk (closed for the season) and where they had set up ... you'll see.

On the train ride. We got this view of Shivering Timbers's first drop. I love the pattern of the supports here.

Going past the train shed where I discovered they have two other trains! They were running only the one and I'm not sure I've ever seen them running two trains, let alone three.

So here's a gourd face, part of the theme of the ride, which is telling the story of ...

The Gourd-geous Gourds, who have some kind of popular entertainment and would be just fine if not for the menace of ...

The Gross Goblins! Does the train ride build to a suspenseful climax where you the riders help overcome the gross goblins? Go on, guess.

Anyway here's what we're taking the train to: a pumpkin patch set up in some otherwise unused space --- it's an odd little cul de sac --- at the far end of the park.

Trivia: Each transfer of a person between the Soyuz capsule and the Apollo Command or Docking Modules had to be followed by a check on the Soyuz's atmospheric composition, ensuring that not too much nitrogen had been removed. Source: The Partnership: A History of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, Edward Clinton Ezell, Linda Neuman Ezell. NASA SP-4209. (Apollo was, on orbit, pure oxygen at 1/3 atmospheric pressure; the Soviets, a four-to-one nitrogen-oxygen blend at one atmosphere, as on Earth. Part of the docking module was an airlock that could be brought up to one atmosphere of pressure.)

Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine, Volume 68: The Fish God of Gugattoo Island!, Ralph Stein, Bill Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle. The introduction features the thing everyone wants to see in an old story collection: the warning that it depicts a cannibal tribe.

Besides living the impossible of walking onto Exterminator and getting pictures with Kenny Kangaroo, what did we do at Kennywood? Well, we drank a lot of fluids. It was a brutally hot, sunny day, I believe in the mid-90s and with just enough humidity to make you think surely there will be rain that takes some of this away. There was not.

We had in two separate past years gotten souvenir drink cups and bunnyhugger brought both. They were supposed to be $4 per refill, which is a pretty fair cost, but we estimated this would likely come out less than the $40 or something that a free-refills-all-2025-season drink cup would be. (We're not sure what the something was; Kennywood's web site was weirdly evasive about it, and searching the web turns up AI slop that didn't even make internal sense, much less have a chance to be right. And yes, we ignore the useless AI summaries, but web sites collecting tourism information don't, so there's no getting basic information about the park anymore.) We did pay less than $40 even together, partly because a couple times we just got water refills (gratis; every amusement park agrees, better to just give people ice water than have them faint on you) and partly because one time the Parkside Cafe cashier didn't charge us. Possibly they didn't realize these were past-year souvenir cups; possibly they didn't care.

But if any piece of not-quite-dishwasher-safe plastic defines a trip, this one is defined by souvenir cups. For ages we didn't bother, seeing them as more trouble to deal with than they were worth and not much of a savings on the pop we usually buy. Last year, though, the heat in Camden Park and Dollywood and Kentucky Kingdom pushed us to cups. This year it was so hot and humid so reliably that we somewhere switched the default to at least seeing what the prices were. Parks have been getting better about having places to stow drink cups, and I discovered I can loop the handle around one of my belt straps and it'll hold on just fine when empty or near-empty.

The other important consumption-based thing to report is they had square ice cream back. Whatever problem caused their cone supplier to take last summer off is apparently resolved, and we were able to get perfectly good square ice cream cones, although from the other side of the Golden Nugget stand than we usually do. It's all right, we can roll with little changes like that. We had a nice time eating them while seeking shade near the Kiddieland and trying to remember if they had the Crazy Trolley last time we hung around Kiddieland. (Yes: Wikipedia says they have had it since 2001 and in fact it's the most recent ride added to Kiddieland that's still there, not counting the short-lived Thomas the Tank Engine area that's been remade as Kennywood Junction. The S S Kenny, a kiddie rocking tugboat, was there from 2007 to 2023.) We also took a moment to appreciate Kenny's Karousel, the kiddie carousel which dates to 1924 and is one of the original rides of the kiddie section. Also the Wacky Wheel, a kiddie Ferris wheel, similarly over a century old.

We also had some actual food, don't worry, with lunch at the Parkside Cafe, a building originally built in 1899, where we had ... I want to say margherita sandwiches. And that this wasn't even the only amusement park where we found margherita sandwiches this trip. We're going to encourage that since it's great to find a park with any vegetarian option besides ``fries'' and ``sad sandwich''.

Speaking of impossible sights did I mention we saw the Steel Curtain roller coaster running? The line was longer than we were willing to put up with, but the ride --- which has been snakebitten since its 2019 opening, and spent all of 2024 closed --- was doing fine, looked like. There's hope for Top Thrill 2 yet!

Also along the way we discovered Cedar Point has another mascot. We didn't see the suit, just evidence of the character in merchandise. Kenny Kangaroo and Parker the Arrow we knew, of course. And they've been bringing back Jeeters, a fluffy pink Krofft-Supershow-esque figure forgotten since the 70s when Kenny took over. But this new mascot? Tuft the Easter Bunny, introduced for their first-ever Eggcellent Scavenger Hunt back in spring. We had no idea. I had no idea, anyway. But they've got dolls for sale of him.

Other discoveries? I'm not sure they had new pressed-penny machines, but bunnyhugger did try one she was fairly confident she hadn't got a coin from, and the machine didn't really respond to her tapping her credit card. The park has gone cash-free, so instead of putting coins in a slot that works instantly and pretty reliably, we had to wonder what it meant that this card reader was showing nothing but was counting down from four minutes. While bunnyhugger went into the shop adjacent to see if they knew what was going on (they gave her the pressed penny she'd wanted; they keep a stock on hand for the card reader failing) the reader reached zero and ... ... started back counting down from twenty minutes.

And what the heck, I'll spoil the surprise for what souvenir I brought home, besides the cup. In the gift shop outside Jackrabbit, their unquestionably century-old roller coaster, I found they were selling pieces of the ride! Six-inch squares of replaced wood, specifically. You of course recall we already have a chunk of Son of Beast's track, and some bolts from the Wild Mouse that bunnyhugger and I rode at Casino Pier our first date. How could I not add to the collection out of the wood Kennywood otherwise had to haul off as scrap? I picked a piece that had holes from the metal bolts, and now the mild mystery of wondering just what sort of piece this used to be, one of the ones making up the structure? One of the pieces holding the rail the train actually runs on? Something from the station? No way to know, unless next time we go I sneak it in and start holding it up to various candidate positions until they throw me off the ride.

Now to the photo section of today's entry; it's Michigan's Adventure, on the first of our Halloweekends visits.

Returning here from Camp Snoopy to the ... well, there isn't really a main midway for Michigan's Adventure, but the drag between the main body of the park and where the water park and Thunderhawk roller coasters are. Behind the black temporary fence you can see the cars set up for Trunk-or-Treat. The cars used to be part of the Be-Bop Boulevard car ride.

Skeletons in bumper-boat carcasses set out in front of the carousel. ... I'm sorry, did I call it the carousel? Because it's really ...

... The Scare-ousel! Which, in this case, means that it was riding backwards, like Cedar Point's Midway Carousel. And we would have thought we'd never see a Cedar Fair park deliberately ride something backwards; they've got some historic phobia of that (even on rides like a Musik Express designed to run backwards). So this was a special treat.

Here we are getting ready for a backseat ride in the Corkscrew and oh, did I mention bunnyhugger wore her summer-weight dragon kigurumi for this? Because she did. Also, it was hot enough for summer-weight kigurumis to be plenty.

Costume contest for the kids! Here are the Three Blind Mice. Also someone just wearing ears and a tail like they were hanging out at a furry convention.

Waiting for the winner to be announced, I think this was. It might have been the time a woman asked us to specifically applaud someone who'd gotten nothing from the sparse crowd.

Trivia: On orbit insertion Apollo Command Module Pilot Vance Brand called out, ``Miy nakhoditsya na orbite'', saying ``we are in orbit'' in Russian. Source: The Partnership: A History of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, NASA SP-4209.

Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine, Volume 67: Dopy Nick or The Pink Whale!!, Ralph Stein, Bill Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle.

After Tuscora Park our destination was Kennywood; New Philadelphia is a natural break point on the way to Pittsburgh and Pittsburgh a good break point toward Maryland. And we hadn't been to Kennywood since, well, last year, but still. We had a new hotel, this time. We've accepted with regret that the Red Roof Inn we always used had degraded a bit too much. The hotel we stayed at last week was well-placed for the substitute Pinburgh, but we could surely do better for a Kennywood hotel. bunnyhugger found one, and kept its exact location a secret, the better to surprise me.

Also to delight me. I am obliged to report there was a drawback, and that is that we didn't go through the Fort Pitt Tunnel and get to see the spectacle of Pittsburgh lit up by night. Instead, we got a long series of twisty passages, all blocked by construction, and I badly overshot the hotel when we finally reached it.

The hotel was a motel, your classic courtyard style thing with fieldstone walls, and an office with windows tilted outward in that imitation air traffic control panel of late-50s construction. We were the last people to check in; the clerk asked if we had a reservation because he had only the one room and it was spoken for. On learning we were there for Kennywood he was delighted, and just as if a character actor began giving us impossibly complicated instructions to get to the park, better than the satellite navigator could do, and referencing landmarks with mentions of what they used to be. As best I remembered the instructions his advice coincided with the satellite navigator's but talked a lot more about the county airport.

The motel was lovely, apart from the interior having been renovated into that generic stuff with fake floors and white walls you get anymore. But it was the first of a bunch of great stays we'd have places. The only disappointment was the Wi-Fi, which was weak and slow. The next night I'd go to the main office to ask if I had the connection information right and I did; we were just in a spot where it didn't work. bunnyhugger made the sacrifice of setting up her phone as a hotspot again.

A bigger struggle and one threatening our day: we didn't exactly have Kennywood tickets. Or maybe we did. No way to be sure. bunnyhugger had tried buying tickets a day or two before, at home, but got a weird error message about something having gone wrong and maybe the transaction was rejected or something else? I know this sounds like I'm being vague for comic effect, but the situation was vague. bunnyhugger could see a pending transaction on her account, but never got an e-mail or message and the transaction never moved to accepted or rejected or anything.

She had tried again the morning we left, with a process that eventually accepted her credit card, and then never produced tickets to print out or, like normal people, save to their phones. At the hotel, past midnight, there still wasn't anything in her e-mail. So, I went and bought tickets, figuring, maybe there was some freak problem with her account. Or her computer: not mentioned in all this has been that her MacBook Air, subject like most of its model year to a problem where the video screen stops working, had finally failed soundly. She was using my old laptop, basically functional but with absolutely zero battery life, and a magnetic plug connector prone to falling out, crashing the computer, with the slightest movement. The operating system and web browsers are several years out of date, naturally, and maybe that was causing trouble.

That was not causing the trouble, as I made my purchase and got a spinny wheel and never saw anything. We had just resolved to the annoyance of going early in the day to the guest relations desk when the e-mails came. Both of our sets of purchases had come in. And, who knew, maybe the purchase from a couple days before might too. (As far as I know, it never did.)

So we had to form a fresh plan, and this was it: we would use my tickets, bought on my credit card, for Kennywood. At some point during the day when we had time, we'd go to guest services and get refunds for the tickets bunnyhugger had bought, all of which were on a different card. We supposed refunds for two or possibly four tickets on one card would be easier than two or possibly four tickets on up to two cards. And so it was, ultimately. We got in fine, and we went to guest relations at the end of the day we went to guest relations and learned, first, they'd had some web problem the other day that caused attempted purchases to fail. So that's the tickets from that day resolved. And they pledged to refund bunnyhugger's tickets. So all the trouble resolved as well as we could have hoped. Plus, we got a day at Kennywood.

(It happens in the time between when I wrote that and when I posted this, bunnyhugger spontaneously thought to check whether she had been refunded. She was, just a day or two after our visit, as we were promised.)

So what amusement park thing came up next? None at all! Instead, it happens that I spotted a friend hanging around the front porch ...

Do you see them? Look close.

That's right! There was an opossum hanging out in the hostas, hoping they weren't perceived by me.

I was zooming in so as to give them some space, but I can't swear they weren't looking back at me.

From a tiny bit closer I got to see their head. I think they're young because the ears seem pretty full and round, so they haven't been wrecked by a bitter winter.

I could see the creature pretty well, but that's impossible to photograph.

This was, I think, a flash photograph, my best chance at recording their fur color and a bit more of their shape. Haven't seen them around since but they're welcome to have about.

Trivia: As late as July 1972, NASA representatives believed that the Soviet Soyuz capsule carried bottled nitrogen to make up air lost to space. It did not, and carried no air reserve. The Soviet design insisted on virtually no air leakage, while the Apollo Command Module would lose something like a tenth of a pound an hour. Source: The Partnership: A History of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, NASA SP-4209. (The book doesn't give an exact figure for Apollo's leakage, instead quoting a person's oral recollection, and who plausibly was giving an order-of-magnitude estimate.)

Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine, Volume 67: Dopy Nick or The Pink Whale!!, Ralph Stein, Bill Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle.

The plan for what would work out to be a nearly precise 1600-mile road trip had one big decision to make up front: do we aim for Six Flags America as the first park on our trip or the last? Actually it was whether HersheyPark should be first or last, because the cluster of parks we hoped to visit had that as the geographic outlier. Would we rather the longest drive without another amusement park be the start of our trip (Hershey first) or at the end (Hershey last)? And Six Flags America would then be at the other end.

The case for Hershey First: we'd get the longest uninterrupted leg of driving done first, when we're freshest. We would get to the biggest park as far as possible from the 4th of July, a day we expected it to be packed. The case for Hershey Last: if we were there the 4th of July we'd get to see the fireworks. We'd see fireworks at whatever park we were at but figured Hershey, Kennywood, or Six Flags America likely to have the best show.

But the deciding factor for Hershey Last was that if all went well, and we went to Six Flags America first, then my 300th coaster could be The Wild One, the arguably-over-a-century-old ride. Not that there aren't coasters at Hershey that would make a good milestone, but a century-old wooden coaster is really special.

With that tie broken we had the plan: we'd drive to Kennywood, from there to Six Flags America possibly getting in the evening of our anniversary. We'd spend a couple days in the area, on the plan that if weather or crowds or malfunctions kept us from having enough of the park we'd have backup (and if we did get enough of the park, there's other stuff in the area to see, not least of which, my brother and his family). Then up to Pennsylvania for Dutch Wonderland and HersheyPark, both of which we hadn't seen since 2010. And then the long drive home, although it'd be plausible we could stop in at Cedar Point for a somewhat-past-halfway rest.

And we could pick up some side trips along the way. There's a good number of antique carousels in and around Maryland, particularly, plus the Smithsonian's. There's Glen Echo Park, onetime amusement park that's been converted to a National Park that still has its antique carousel and many of the Art Deco buildings of the park's height. And bunnyhugger would find other carousels close-by that we would not want to miss.

So our journey began, Saturday afternoon, with our destination: New Philadelphia, Ohio, for reasons that will baffle those who don't remember similar trips we've made before. Also somewhere around Ann Arbor, an hour into the drive, bunnyhugger realized what we had forgotten. We hadn't brought our letterboxing gear, so there'd be no chance to stop at miscellaneous curios spots along the way, especially on the long drive back, trying to find hidden rubber stamps somewhere near the fallen log. (Also left behind: my National Parks Passport, so we couldn't get a stamp at Glenn Echo Park.) Not worth driving back for, but a bit sad that we wouldn't have that option. Still, if that was the biggest disappointment we'd have on our trip --- and bunnyhugger had gone over the operating hours for every park and every day we had planned and confirmed they were open, barring power failures or the deluge --- we could take it.

Having gotten our Last Looks pictures in on Snake River Falls, what's there else to take Last Looks at?

The back of a 'firehouse' building that was put up with the 'Frontier Town' setting, to look like the sort of old-timey 19th century town. It's hard to escape the feeling Cedar Point wants to redevelop this area though as of 2025 it hasn't happened yet.

Here's the front of the 'firehouse'. Used to sell ice cream, a much-needed thing, but for the last couple years it's sold cocktails.

This pizza shop next to the firehouse has been closed for like forever.

Here's the side of the Town Hall Museum, closed in 2019 to renovate into a new experience and that hasn't opened yet.

Front of the Town Hall Museum, which has given up the pretext that it's going to reopen, part of why we feel sure it's going to be demolished more suddenly than we think.

End of the Town Hall Museum building. Somewhere past that window they once had three horses removed from the Kiddie Kingdom carousel as too precious to be ridden; now, they're ... ? I think gathering dust in a workshop somewhere?

Trivia: At the Apollo astronauts' second press conference during the flight, Deke Slayton quipped that he had done nothing in space that his 91-year-old aunt count not have. This sent reporters scrambling to learn her name ahead of deadline. (It was Sadie Link.) 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.

If there's anything bad about my current job besides having to wake up to an alarm clock, it's that we can't just skip out on work some day and go to an amusement park. Especially on a weekday, in June, when the crowds are lowest. But the creation of Juneteenth as a federal and state holiday seemed to hold the promise of some good amusement park time for us, as it can drift to the middle of the week. The first time we tried Juneteenth for a Cedar Point trip we were disappointed, as it was a crowded and busy Monday --- and this right after a Father's Day that crowd calendars tell us was a ghost town --- but maybe this year would be different? (Last year was a less-busy-than-average year according to crowd calendars.) So we gave that a try, especially since preparing for the European Vacation ate up all the time in May that might have been used for a trip.

Well, it started as a slow day, but this was because it started as a rainy day, with just the carousels and some other fully-covered rides running. As the clouds parted and the sun and humidity returned, so did the crowds. It was maybe not as bad as a weekend day would be, but I think we have to conclude that people have decided Juneteenth is an amusement park holiday in a way that Father's Day is not. You work out the logic, I don't know it. (I mean, Father's Day seems like an obvious amusement park day. Dad brings the kids somewhere they're going to have fun and probably not break an anything, event planning done.)

Anyway the day was pleasant enough and while we couldn't ride everything, we could place enough of that blame on the rain shutting down so many rides to start with. Also that we had to leave so I could get to bed around midnight.

We did get to see some sights, like Top Thrill 2 running! It's been managing to be up a little over half the time, which is enormously better than last season. We also got to see a couple test cycles for Siren's Curse, the roller coaster they're hastily dropping in to distract everyone from the cursed first season that Top Thrill 2 had. The gimmick for Siren's Curse is that after the lift hill the roller coaster comes to a stop on a piece of track, is very securely braked, and then the track itself pitches over to connect with the next segment, a vertical drop. It's neat to watch and every time we saw the track pitched, someone watching said, ``Nope. Never.'' Since our visit, the ride has opened, and does not get stuck with the riders facing the vertical drop most of the time. Maybe they should be avoiding words like ``curse'' in coaster names for a while.

The least happy thing to see at the park was that Iron Dragon's new entrance --- they finally inflicted Fast Pass line-cutting on it --- also saw the gryphon statue moved away. It had disappeared for a few years when GateKeeper opened, the easy supposition being the gryphon-themed ride would get a gryphon-themed statue, but the gryphon eventually reappeared in its traditional home by Iron Dragon. Now it's just gone and who knows when, or where, it will reappear.

The happiest thing to discover was that they had a band! A seven-piece band performing near the Wild Mouse coaster as The Wild Mice, playing trumpets and drums and saxophone and trombone and all, with each of the performers playing one of the six colored mice that have names and identities to match the spinning wild mouse's cars. Yes, they had ears and coily tails. And the seventh, the grey mouse that appears in the ride's logo but corresponds to nothing in the ride. The mice gave their names and while I missed it, bunnyhugger told me the grey mouse's name is GreyGary, at least according to the performing band canon.

Next year we're definitely doing a Father's Day trip instead of Juneteenth. Although next year Juneteenth will be a Friday so we can stay until midnight, and the park really clears out around 10:30, 11:00 ... ... hm ...

Having started another Cedar Point adventure what can I do but continue sharing pictures of our Cedar Point trip on the anonymous bonus weekend of last year?

More of the hidden, parklike spaces around the water mill. You can see parts of the structure of Snake River falls, a shoot-the-chutes ride, but won't for long.

Although Cedar Point is full up --- they've run out of space to expand the park --- there are still spaces that have room for little patches of nature.

Safety guide for Snake River Falls, the little-loved shoot-the-chutes ride that closed for good about Labor Day of last year. We didn't know how soon it would be torn down, but (correctly) guessed ``over the winter'' and so did a little last-chance-to-see photography.

Exit for the ride; I believe you could also stand there and watch, at the risk of getting wet, the chutes shooting down.

Here's the lift hill for the ride, which would basically turn around up high and splash down. The peak for Top Thrill 2 is the red-and-white spire in the background.

Underneath the exit bridge for Snake River falls. The rails keep the boat from going past its designated path.

Trivia: The Apollo crew had 23 independent science experiments to work on after the Soyuz undocked and landed. 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.

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.

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:

• MiSTed: The 72 Hours Saga, Part 48
• Would I Describe This Package of Meat Substitute As _Completely_ Soy?
• Statistics Saturday: The Price Is Right Showcase Showdown Wheel In Alphabetical Order
• While You Might Have Questions About This 1950 Comic Book
• What's Going On In Eye Lie Popeye? Is there new stuff in Eye Lie Popeye? May - July 2025
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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.