I Got No Idea What's Goin' On

It can't be healthy taking two different antihistamines... one at double dose... It really can't. But that's what it took before I finally stopped sneezing. That's gotta be good for something. Hello? Well, I guess I better go slip into that coma now. Seeya later.

And I Feel So Much Safer Now

Rough Summer Is On the Way for Air Travel
By JEFF BAILEY, May 21, 2006

CHICAGO, May 20 — Brace yourself for a summer of miserable air travel.

Planes are expected to be packed fuller than at anytime since World War II, when the airlines helped transport troops. Fares are rising. Service frills are disappearing.

Logjams at airport security checkpoints loom as the federal government strains to keep screener jobs filled. The usual violent summer storms are expected to send the air traffic control system into chaos at times, with flight delays and cancellations cascading across the country...

http://www.nytimes.com/...etc.

Well, that's just great. The one summer I have to fly because a car trip to my brother's wedding in San Francisco would be even more expensive, and shit like this is happening.

Futurist

"I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past."

Kind of a neat quote, huh?  It popped up on my random quote of the day thingie just after I emailed that last post in.  And isn't it cool, btw, that I can just email my blog posts in (with a password) and they get posted automatically?  That's one of the reasons I jumped to this site.  Anyway, you know whose quote that was?  John Lennon?  Jules Verne?  Think farther back.  It was actually my favorite "founding father," Thomas Jefferson.

History's interesting too, of course.  No denying that.

Tigers, Lambs, and Volcanoes

So I was looking at this picture.  It shows a big troupe of mostly African animals all walking along the savanna together.  I think it was meant to be sort of an idyllic scene, but there are really all kinds of animals - tigers, giraffes, lions, gazelles, etc. - just walking together, not eating each other or anything.  Every time I look at it, despite the pleasant-looking scene, I think of some horrible catastrophe.  Why would all those animals be moving in one herd unless they're running away from a volcano or a fire or something?

Squirrels!

We were at the park today and I saw something I've never seen before: a black squirrel. It was cool. Turned out there were actually a bunch of them there. Of course, I'm hardly a squirrel expert. I hadn't seen red squirrels either until I moved to Cleveland. They're all red in the neighborhood where I live now. Before that, I thought they were all gray.

Okay, really. Future posts will be more interesting than this. Probably better written too, although I make no promises. It is a blog, after all.

Welcome

Yeah, I'm trying out yet another blog site. This one looks like the best yet... but I suppose the others did too. This is the first one so far that's not based on the "corrosive" theme from my home page, though. I figured after three "Corrosive Strangeness" blogs, that theme was getting a little tired. Look, this one's not even green! Maybe I'll actually stick around this time.

Halloween

We live in an upstairs apartment, so Tom got these candle-holders that were basically metal pails with jack-o-lantern faces carved into them. Then we hung them off the porch on string. When trick-or-treaters came by, we'd lower a Halloween basket with candy down to them. We also brought the TV out and ran old black & white horror movies (Frankenstein, Dracula, Mummy) while we waited. There were tons of kids, so many that we ran out of candy. We could look down the street and see costumed kids in all directions. Was great to see so many people getting into the spirit.  It was a perfect night, too. There was just a little bit of a chill in the air and lots of leaves on the ground.

We had already done our haunted house tour on Thursday night (part of my birthday celebration). We hit one "Warehouse of Terror" with a zombies-on-the-loose theme that turned out to be somewhat mediocre. The next one was on a riverboat in Lorain (west of Cleveland) and was incredible. For one thing, they understood the importance of cheap startle tricks. Everybody knows there's nothing to be scared of in a "haunted house" but if you keep the adrenaline going with a few well-timed boos, it gets a lot easier to suspend disbelief. On top of that, and a good maze with the usual creepy stops, they had some great sets. One spot created a nice illusion of walking a plank over a deep pit, and the dining hall and ballroom (near the end) were amazing. They made sure our path wound all through the cobwebbed tables and skeletal patrons, while keeping us on track with more animated spooks.