So apparently I missed the Zombie Apocalypse because I was at the amusement park yesterday and Great America is always kind of like that so I didn't notice anything out of the ordinary. C'est la mort. Would explain why I feel like shambling around the house this morning -- what was in that water-ride "water"...?
It was "fun", anyway, although whatever their imagined demographic is certainly doesn't include someone whose underlying skeletal structure is a size 12, and I had to beg off from the IronWedgie Wolf and the Batman, because sticking a 4-inch-wide post through my crotch and still expecting my thighs to end up inside the Designated Molded-Plastic Zone was simply not going to happen short of some major surgery, and you're not allowed on the rides after you've had major surgery. Ah, well, even coasterheads ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
atlanticat and epa_flip were looking a little green after coaster #8, and Visiting Brit Alasdair seemed to have gone into a fugue state long since, so by mutual agreement the party decided to go home without getting to the Superman head-first coaster. Sunburned and aching now, but socialized up for the week.
Did I mention that we ended up watching the Belmont on Saturday by accident, because the sump pump had a psychotic break and we had to adapt our plans to waiting around on workmen? I re-dyed my hair that morning with some of the remaining After Midnight Blue, because it had faded back to bad-bleach-job blonde, and then discovered when I threw open the back door to go out for the day that the reason the toilet had just refused to flush for me was that the stairwell was flooded with three or four inches of standing (and blue) water that had apparently come up through the drain at the bottom of the back steps. The workmen who eventually turned up to deal with the problem dismantled the sump-pump closet and then the sump pump, and determined that the reason water was coming out of the drain when the toilet flushed was a glob of ex-paper that had lodged in a delicate part of the pump, possibly left there by the original builders because god knows I've never flushed what looked like an intact roll. The upside here is that now our fragile-minded toilet seems to be behaving much better, so this may have been what's been wrong with it all along. Still, it's worrisome to realize that the drain out back has such a direct and easily compromised link to raw sewage, and now I'm going to worry even more when it storms.
It was "fun", anyway, although whatever their imagined demographic is certainly doesn't include someone whose underlying skeletal structure is a size 12, and I had to beg off from the Iron
atlanticat and epa_flip were looking a little green after coaster #8, and Visiting Brit Alasdair seemed to have gone into a fugue state long since, so by mutual agreement the party decided to go home without getting to the Superman head-first coaster. Sunburned and aching now, but socialized up for the week.- New Thing Learned for 8 June: David Mamet wrote the screenplay for The Untouchables, which I suppose kind of makes sense when you think about how Ponderous and Meaningful the "Chicago Way" speech really is. [Source: film credits.]
- New Thing Learned for 9 June: Rags To Riches was the first filly to win the Belmont Stakes since 1905, and the first at the race's current distance of 1.5 miles. [Source: race commentary.]
- New Thing Learned for 10 June: "Hoi polloi" and "polyp" both come from the same Greek root meaning "many", which is something to think about next time you feel like running over some shambling moron with your cart out at IKEA. [Source: Unfortunate English : the gloomy truth behind the words you use, William Brohaugh.]
- New Thing Learned for 11 June: Evandale, Tasmania, hosts an annual penny-farthing festival, which might help to explain why that guy rode one across Australia in period clothes a while back... [Source: Australian phrasebook : [understanding Aussies and their culture].]
- New Thing Learned for 12 June: PVC pipe is a lot easier to cut with the miter-box, although this may be more of a comment on the quality of my hacksaw blade than anything. [Source: still working on a Mad Scientist project...]
- New Thing Learned for 13 June: Crinolines were originally made out of horsehair, as reflected in the word: crinus (Latin, "hair") or possibly crin (French, "horsehair"). [Source: What Jane Austen ate and Charles Dickens knew : from fox hunting to whist : the facts of daily life in nineteenth-century England, Daniel Pool.]
- New Thing Learned for 14 June: The device that makes the holes that the tuning pegs go into on a violin or similar stringed instrument is called -- wait for it -- a peg hole reamer. I love obscure hand-tools. [Source: How It's Made.]
Did I mention that we ended up watching the Belmont on Saturday by accident, because the sump pump had a psychotic break and we had to adapt our plans to waiting around on workmen? I re-dyed my hair that morning with some of the remaining After Midnight Blue, because it had faded back to bad-bleach-job blonde, and then discovered when I threw open the back door to go out for the day that the reason the toilet had just refused to flush for me was that the stairwell was flooded with three or four inches of standing (and blue) water that had apparently come up through the drain at the bottom of the back steps. The workmen who eventually turned up to deal with the problem dismantled the sump-pump closet and then the sump pump, and determined that the reason water was coming out of the drain when the toilet flushed was a glob of ex-paper that had lodged in a delicate part of the pump, possibly left there by the original builders because god knows I've never flushed what looked like an intact roll. The upside here is that now our fragile-minded toilet seems to be behaving much better, so this may have been what's been wrong with it all along. Still, it's worrisome to realize that the drain out back has such a direct and easily compromised link to raw sewage, and now I'm going to worry even more when it storms.