Last year when Jeb and I went to Six Flags we were able to ride most of the rides with fairly short lines until after lunch, but we still got in everything we wanted and maybe then some. This year Bob, Andrew, and David wanted to go. Figuring that it wouldn’t be as crowded during the week, they picked Wednesday. I bought tickets online with Bob’s credit card and printed them out and then met at one of my work’s branch offices out that way so I wouldn’t have to pay parking and they wouldn’t have to come pick me up. The plan was to meet at 10:00 and we met that within a few minutes, which means Bob did a great job of getting the boys moving first thing in the morning. We got to the park and in the front gate at about 10:20, which was fine since the park wouldn’t even open officially until 10:30. As we sweltered in the sun waiting to get entrance to the rest of the park, I said “Man, it’s going to be hot today.” I eventually said this so many times that Bob had to tell me “You’re not helping.” Everybody already had sunscreen on and I had drunk a big cup of water on the way out, so our first ride we took was to the bathroom (no line!).
Category: Uncategorized
Post Office Officially Obsolete
This morning I went to the post office to get 2 stamps for my last two letters to Nicole before she leaves her site. My post office isn’t open on Saturdays (they’ve never been open on Saturdays, but I’m sure they don’t have the budget for it), so the only time I can get stamps is first thing in the morning on my way to work, though I have to be a little late to work since the post office doesn’t open until 8:30. I went in this morning and spent 15 minutes in line, stuck behind one guy with 2 packages and then a woman signing up for a P.O. box. I was still third in line and they lady was still doing the paperwork for her P.O. box when I gave up. They only had one register open, probably because of budget cuts. I have been there before when they had more than one register open. To his credit, the guy at that register is one of the nicest people ever, but they need to open more registers or provide some kind of vending machine for basic stuff like stamps. But they did away with the vending machines years ago, no doubt to cut costs. I liked the vending machines because they were open any time and I could make a big dent in my supply of spare change buying $8 worth of stamps. But the post office has now cut their budget so much that they really are no longer effective, at least in terms of having a store front. Anyway, this is the second time out of the last few visits where the time I was spending in line made no sense relative to what I was getting and I wound up leaving. So I will just e-mail until she comes back. I can get regular stamps at the grocery store and otherwise can hopefully avoid the post office.
Jet Torch Lighter
Some years ago, Susan asked me to get her a crème brûlée kit for her birthday or Christmas. It had some custard mix, four little ramekins, and a butane-powered kitchen torch along with a can of butane to refill the torch. The torch was very impressive and some of you may have seen it when I took it to Anna Maria one year to light cigars. It had all the menacing danger of a blowtorch, but smaller and cuter.
I don’t know how I started looking for lighters at DealExtreme, the Chinese website where I get a lot of flashlight stuff, but I found out they have jet torches that are lighters. I don’t smoke, so I didn’t realize they also have those in stores here too. I found one that got positive reviews and was less than $3, including shipping. I figured I couldn’t afford not to buy it. They include just enough butane to make sure it works, so when I got it, I got maybe 2 seconds of flame.
Blackberries
This morning as we were getting back from our walk, Austin sniffed around in the thicket in my front yard that may have once been a pine island. There were these big fat blackberries and most of them were ripe. I’ve never seen such perfect wild blackberries. They were round spheres of fat individual drupelets (this is the correct term which I just learned from Wikipedia), like plump little soccer balls. I had about 10 or so and they tasted good (though I don’t like the seeds in blackberries). I did not eat the lower growing ones in Austin’s range.
New HDTV Receiver
A few months ago my HDTV receiver stopped working. I had been switching it off with my surge protector after finding out how much energy it used and maybe it didn’t like that. It would take it a long time to reboot, but at some point the green light started flashing rapidly and there was no picture no matter how long I waited. I tried turning it off and unplugging it to reset it, but got the same result. I spent some time today trying to figure out solutions and found some discussion areas that said the flashing green light means it is dead and there is no way to fix it. I took the cover off to see if there was anything I could see that stood out and could be fixed, but the only thing I saw I could fix was a small fuse and it was not blown.