Mambo Taxi

It's been a busy 5 days. Friday we drove to Erie PA, which turns out to be just as quick as Google Maps says, if the border crossing is perfunctory, as it was. d. had us switch from the Interstate to Rt. 5, which took us past some beautiful Lake Erie shoreline and some distressingly funny road-signs (including "North Gun Club Rd." across from "South Gun Club Rd.," and more housing developments named "Lakeview" than deserved to be along one road...)

And in Erie, we saw his cousin married, in a Catholic service that felt just a bit over-long on the sermon, but quite well-paced with the singing. And we took d's parents to dinner (at the "best restaurant and lounge between New York and Chicago." All things considered, I'll take NY or Chicago, thanks.) dan's mom grew up near Erie, so we heard some of the story to the city, though she didn't know what the current economy looks like. There were lots of neglected early-20th-century buildings, so I took lots of photos of Art Deco and decrepitude. I imagine the city's OK if you know it, but for a weekend trip it didn't strike me particularly strongly.

We returned home on Sunday, and I got busy on our deck, which has been stripped and waiting for stain since April. (Which isn't exactly my fault; the instructions I read online said I was to wait a week after any rain, and don't do it if rain's expected in the next two days. In this rainy summer we had, I believe we've had precisely one 9-day window without rain, and in it, I was visiting relatives or some other good excuse.) I finally said, 6 days of no rain is close enough, and whipped through 2/3 of it on Sunday, and the rest after work on Monday. And I ran out of stain just 3 square feet from the end- I had to wring the stain from the container with a tiny roller, and it just barely made it. I guess I can conclude the deck was sufficiently pre-seasoned. And it looks pretty good now, too.

What with various other bleh, I'm looking forward to the weekend; maybe even just forward to tomorrow.

Oh yeah- today my bike rolled over its 1000th km for the season.

By rights, I should've lost the 160 photos I took from April 15 through last week. I was lazy about copying them off my camera, and I was lazy about plugging it into my work mac for the first time (to recharge the battery) and it didn't properly unmount, so yesterday when I tried to take photos and the camera said "0 photos" I was more than sufficiently chagrined. But: once we were home, I plugged it in, and iPhoto downloaded all 160 photos. I was still chagrined, but not nearly as sad. (I figure if I'm going to be this sad about losing the photos, I really should pay better attention to them, since some are fairly good photos. With gratitude-mixed-with-chagrin, I hope to make a photo post later this week.)

A more positive near-miss: yesterday melted_snowball, hotcabanasauce, roverthedog and I tried to go to the Toronto Islands for some sunbathing. We got there in excellent time, had a wonderful picnic, and just as we got to Hanlan Point, it started sprinkling. Which wasn't quite unexpected, given the forecast. There were impressive thunderheads to the west and north, and a friend of Tim's checked the current radar map, and it really looked like we were due for a big storm.

So we had a nice walk instead, and caught the ferry back from the main Island, getting onto the boat an hour later as it started raining for real. It was a great walk; the only down side was *all the mobs of people* who were there for dragon-boat races. None of us really enjoyed the crush on the ferry, especially roverthedog who doesn't really like masses of ankles and shoes; but we got out without being too grumpy. And we got pastries and coffee and drove home again and- surprise surprise- I didn't mow because it was raining.

This felt like a full weekend.

Friday afternoon I took part in a Critical Mass ride (post updated with more detail).




In the evening, melted_snowball and I celebrated our 11th anniversary with dinner at Bhima's, which I had bicycled past a mere 90 minutes earlier. We made an early night of it, due to exhaustion for the both of us.

Saturday morning I ran errands, and I stopped by catbear 's photography open-house.


In the afternoon, I played Arkam Horror with the_infamous_j and two of his friends, Chris, and MJ. The game went faster than we expected- only 4 hours, including explaining the rules to MJ. But he was an extraordinarily fast learner, and he kept us on-track during the game as well. I played the salesman, just because. He wound up collecting some nice toys, but didn't buy either of the Elder Signs we used to win. We did less story-talking during the game than the other time I've played; which was OK, but it sort of made it seem less epic. :) We randomly chose Azethoth again (we even re-drew because both the_infamous_j and I played against him the last time too). But he kept coming up. Meant to be. We lucked out in having monster-surges instead of new gates early on, and a few times, new gates were to appear on already sealed locations. We squeaked to a win in the 12th turn.

We had pizza, then broke out the Singstar 80s edition. melted_snowball and I know all but a few of the songs. And I even hit some of the notes. I still had a lot of fun, even if MJ and Chris were looking a bit leery at the videos. But c'mon- it's our childhood here! :) J was game and played a few songs he'd never heard before. Then a bit of anime video, and home.

Sunday morning was Quaker Meeting (small turnout- four regular attenders and three visiting Bible School students!). We spent a while answering their questions afterward- I think we did well. I'm glad I took a workshop on outreach this summer; the students seemed to be really working to try and fit Quakerism into their own religious models.

Sunday afternoon, melted_snowball and I went to a local-food tasting where we ate foods from 19 of 20 local farms, prepared by local restauranteurs. We ate very well.

A CSA basket.



Arctic char by Peel Street Bistro.

Here I am in Banff. I spent a few hours this morning walking around the conference centre shooting photos and getting dive-bombed with mosquitos. I flushed a bunch of groundhogs Columbian Ground Squirrels, two deer (who didn't seem to care about humans either way), and a worker smoking a joint. He didn't seem so concerned, either.

The view is tremendous- I'm afraid to look at the photos I just took, because they won't compare at all with the real thing. These cliffs are huge. I want to take a hot-air balloon flight from here, just to get some sense of the scale. I saw a gondola/ski-lift running on one of the peaks; I might try to track it down this afternoon (and go up it with d., if he's interested).

I walked a bit around the campus, went swimming, and now I'm going to head to lunch. I'm feeling a bit short of breath due to the altitude (just 4000 feet). I wasn't too worried about taking deeper breaths than usual this morning, but now seems like a good idea, as now that I'm sitting down quietly I've got all the signs of not quite enough oxygen. Ah well.

The Bellagio Fountains re-created with Diet Coke and Mentos. A pretty fine show. Work-safe, though maybe turn down the volume first.
Their website is full of neat explosion science too (yay, nucleation sites!)

The Errant Aisle of Manhattan. What would happen if Manhattan went wandering? The rest of Radical Cartography is also worth browsing if you like maps. I like his animated time-zone map. (work-safe, doesn't seem to work well in linux grr). He's also done a proper map of Boston's T system with real geographical distances and a time-series on Boston's landfilling. Yay cartography!

The first one seen via epi_lj.

[edit: I knew I forgot one.

bbumweblogomat has been experimenting with high-speed photography. He's getting some neat shots, like shattering ice.. I found his site while looking for mac info, and added his feed to LJ because he has some great photography as well.]