Upgrade from Blogger to Blogger Beta

On December 4th my Blogger blogs were automatically updated to Blogger Beta blogs. I'm going to delete my Blogger Beta test log.

I heard a noise!

Time to check the mouse traps.

'Massive Fire Damages Gatorland" - WKMG Orlando

Local coverage of the Gatorland fire that happened while we were at Universal.

The link:
http://www.local6.com/news/10248992/detail.html?taf=orlpn

Daytona Beach Photos Online at Picasa Web Albums

Click the link below to see way too many photos of our Daytona Beach Trip.

http://picasaweb.google.com/TJMK50/DaytonaBeach2006

Daytona Beach

Day Nine - On The Road

Left about 7:30 this morning.

Daytona Beach

Day Eight

Best weather yet - a perfect day for the beach. We spent the whole day at the pool/beach then headed to Ponce Inlet to eat at our favorite restaurant, The Lighthouse Landing. We've eaten there every time we've gone to Daytona and it's always great. It's changed a little since last time we were there. They added an outdoor bar, a new dining area and some kind of Tiki Bar thing. The sun was just starting to set when we sat down. For starters, Natalie, Tom and I split a big order of steamed clams. Matthew had a bowl of clam chowder that he said was OK but a little too salty. Tom liked it enough to order a bowl for himself. For my main course, I got the best - a fried grouper sandwich. I'll have to ask the rest of them what they ordered.

After dinner we took the kids back to the condo and Natalie and I went out for a couple of drinks. First we went to Crabby Joe's, a pretty cool looking place on a fishing pier that you can just make out when you look south from Mike's condo. Now this was 9:00 PM on a Saturday night and the waiter said they were closing. Natalie said I got kind of nasty with the guy but I was genuinely shocked - a bar/restaurant closing at 9 on a Saturday Night? I really couldn't believe it. After that we went to Pirates Cove which is on the ocean at the Port Orange bridge. The hotel was half closed and all torn up for renovation but they were open. We got a couple of Coronas and went out on the deck. The deck would have been nice if it hadn't been enclosed in scratched up, dirty plexiglass the you couldn't see through. Oh well, at least the beer was cold. We left there and headed across the highway towards the bridge and stopped at D.J.'s Oyster Deck for one last drink in Daytona. Another nice place that we had been to before (I think I got frog's legs last time I was there). We sat on the deck and fed the catfish that congregate there. Little vending machines sell the fish pellets you feed them. We should have went there to eat instead of some of the other places we went to. After that it was back to the condo for the night.

Daytona Beach

Day Seven - Universal Studios/Daytona Beach

Beautiful day. We got up early and checked out of the hotel, picked up some delicious breakfast sandwiches from Burger King and headed over to the park. It was up in the air over which one to go to, but we decided on Universal Studios. Natalie insisted that this time we would do it in order instead of running from ride to ride. We got on all our favorites again - The Mummy, Back To The Future and The Terminator. We did ET's Adventure Ride, which we missed the first day. It was OK - the ride's cars look like bicycles. I nodded a little during the Terminator (for the second time). Must be sleeping sickness.

After we left the Terminator Show, a trolley came down the street carrying a bunch of cartoon characters. We got pictures with Scooby-Doo and Scraggy, Woody Woodpecker and the female Woodpecker (?) and Curious George and The Man In The Yellow Raincoat. While we were still in Hollywood, Natalie got pictures with Lucy and Desi Arnez and Maryln Monroe and Joe DiMaggio. They all went in the gift shop while I sat on the curb listening to the Ricky & Franky Ricardo Band. We must have missed Lucy and Ricky's show with them but I really enjoyed the band by itself. They were great. We left the park around 1:00. Matthew wasn't ready to go but I think the rest of us were. I know I wanted to get back to the beach and enjoy what was our best weather day so far.

We got back to Daytona around 2:30 and had sandwiches for lunch. We hung out around the pool and on the beach until it got dark. The beach was really nice and the ocean water had warmed up quite a bit, but that was nothing compared to the pool. The heater had been broken but it was definitely working now - the water must have been pushing 80 degrees. We got dressed and headed across the street and south a little to the China America Garden restaurant. The food was so-so. They had a big screen TV playing sappy Asian music videos in the corner. The videos were in one Asian language with sub-titles in a different Asian language. After dinner we walked up the street to the Congo River Miniature Golf course. They have about a dozen 4-5 foot long alligators out front that you can feed with fishing rods baited with hotdogs. The kids really liked that. The course had a lot of waterfalls and a real plane crashed into a fake mountain. Nice place.

Daytona Beach

Day Six - Islands of Adventure

Got up around 7:30. Beautiful day today. We had breakfast at the TGI Fridays that's actually part of the hotel. You couldn't order anything except the breakfast buffet. It was pretty good. We decided to take the hotel shuttle over to Islands of Adventure. We were dropped off a lot closer to the main entrance then when we drove over ourselves. The whole parking situation was stupid and expensive ($10.00). We could look across the highway from our room and see where we parked the previous day. We'd ended up at the back of the garage closest to our hotel and then had to walk quite a ways back to the entrance. We could have easily walked there but the hotel concierge had warned us about crossing the highway on foot - even though they had crosswalks and pedestrian signals. Other people were doing it.

It took a long time to get in again because of the fingerprint scanner. As soon as we got into the park, Tommy & Matthew went right to the Hulk rollercoaster. They ended up getting on that twice. Dr.Doom's Fear Fall was next. They liked it but thought it was too short. While they were on that ride, the Marvel Super heros arrived on ATVs. I wanted to shake Captain America's hand but I gave up after a couple of minutes. There was no order to the line and it wasn't worth getting into an argument with an 8-year old or their parents over who was next. All four of us got on the Amazing Adventures of Spiderman. It was pretty cool but those kind of 3-D multimedia rides make me a little nauseated.

Next up was Jurassic Park, which was kind of dissappointing. We didn't get on The River Adventure ride until later so we just watched it and then we split up. Tommy and Matthew went to get on the Dueling Dragons rollercoaster while Natalie and I went to the Jurrasic Park Discovery Center. That was OK. While we waited for the kids, we went into the Alchemy Bar, which looked like something from the Lord of the Rings. It was a nice place and the bartender was really excited about the Democrats taking the House and Senate the day before. We had a couple of Bass Ales then hooked back up with the kids. They were really pissed off. They had waited in line for 30 to 40 minutes when they finally got to the front of the line they shut the rollercoaster down and made everybody leave. We tried to do Poseidon's Fury. The entrance area was really cool but after making our way into the cave we found out that it was a forty-minute wait for a forty-minute ride. We were wondering why so many people were coming back through the line and leaving.

At 3:30 we went to the Eighth Voyage of Sinbad Stunt Show. It was pretty good but we all agreed it would have been much better if the actors had just played it straight instead of making stupid jokes. The high point of the show was the witch bursting into flames. That was pretty intense. After the stunt show, we got on the Cat In The Hat Ride at Seuss Landing. That was cute in a "It's Small World" kind of way. We also stopped at Snookers and Snookers Sweet Candy Cookers for some of the worlds most expensive candy. By this time it was getting close to closing time so it was time to hit the water rides.

First, we got on the Jurrasic Park River Adventure Ride that's very similiar to the Pompei Ride at Williamsburg. You ride a big raft through Jurrasic Park and come down a flume. We only got a little damp on that one. The kids got on that one twice. Dudley Do-Rights Ripsaw Falls was next. It's a flume ride with five people to a log. I thought it was scary. On most flume rides, you go up up, circle around and then come down the flume. On this one, you go up three levels then you come down. We were still only damp but not for long. We argued about getting on the next water ride - Popeye and Bluto's Bilge Rat Barges. I didn't want to get on it because it looked like we would get soaked. I was out-voted. It was a fun river raft type ride but we did get drenched. The sun was going down and the temperature was dropping. We tried to find a sunny spot to warm up in but it was too late. Tommy and Matthew got on the Hulk one last time while Natalies and I tried to dry off a little. I emptied the water out of my shoes and put my wet socks in my pocket. We headed back towards the main entrance. Natalie did a little shopping while Matthew and I got some smoked turkey legs. We found a little corner out of the wind and sat down and ate them. We were all freezing by this point and the shuttle bus wasn't coming until 7:00. There was a little shop near the entrance that had clearance items on sale. Matthew and I bought Spiderman Class Of 1962 sweatshirts and Natalie bought an Islands of Adventure sweatshirt. Tom didn't see anything he liked and insisted he wasn't cold. Me, I would have worn anything to get warm. We got some coffee and cold hot chocolate at Starbucks and wandered around City Walk until it was time to get the shuttle. We almost went on a tour of Orlando. The bus driver thought the bus was empty until I went up and said something to him.

We ate dinner at the Orlando Ale House. I thought we would finally have a decent beer in Florida. No such luck. They had exactly one ale on the menu (Sierra Nevade Pale Ale) and they were out of that. I had the lobster special, which was good and a bargain. I'll have to ask the others if they remember what they ordered. After that, snoozeville.

Daytona Beach

Day Five - Universal Studios

Left Daytona for Orlando and Universal Studios this morning at 7:30. Traffic wasn't too bad - seemed a lot better then the last time we made this trip. We arrived at the hotel around 9:30. They let us check in early and we headed across the highway to Universal Studios. Then we had to park the car, take the long trek to the entrance, get our tickets and wait in line to have our fingerprint scanned. That fingerprint scanner was a real pain, the attendants tried all kinds of things to get it to work - constantly cleaning the lens, wiggling your finger around, etc. It was around 11:00 when we finally got in the park. Weather wasn't too good - cloudy and dreary.

We got on the first ride we came to, Shrek 4D. It was OK but geared towards little kids. After that, we started heading for the rides we wanted to get on most, instead of going through the park in order. The next ride we got on was Men In Black: Alien Attack. I thought it was disappointing. You're supposed to shoot the aliens, like in the test Will Smith takes at the beginning of the movie. Natalie wanted to ride it again and not bother with the guns but we never got back to it. Then came the best ride - Revenge Of The Mummy. Great beginning, great indoor rollercoaster and a cool ending. At the very end of the ride, the actor from the movie talks to you but because we were backed up behind another car, it was out of sync.

By this time the weather had gotten worse - it drizzled a lot and poured a couple of times. We stopped at Finnegan's fake Irish pub to get some food and regroup. We had pasties, Scotch eggs and soda bread with apple butter. The soda bread was great but Natalie was the only one of us who really liked the other stuff. Some guy played acoustic guitar with electronic backing. We could hear him but not see him. Southern rock and country music - yeech. We saw Beetlejuice's Graveyard Revue at 3:30. Beetlejuice was trying to turn Dracula, Frankenstein, Frankensteins Bride and the Wolfman into a band. It was lame. After a stagehand set off some big explosion, Beetlejuice asked him "Where do you think you are, Gatorland?" Gatorland had a big fire the night before. When the audience groaned, he said "What, too soon?" That was the first of several Gatorland jokes.

As far as the other rides go - Twister: Ride It Out and Earthquake were live action shows. I liked them both. The Earthquake show started with a green screen special effects segment using volunteers from the audience and scenes from the movie "U-571". Jimmy Neutron's Nicktoon Blast was OK. I liked Jaws but the rest of the crew wasn't impressed, although Matthew really jumped in one part when the shark showed up on his side of the boat and there was a big explosion. All of us really liked Back To The Future: The Ride. Towards the end of the day we went to the Horror Make-Up Show. It was OK. The prize for the volunteer from the audience was tickets to Gatorland. I know I was freezing during the show. By then I was soaked and the air conditioning seemed to be running full blast. Somehow, we missed the exhibit of props from the movie "Van Helsing". It was right next door to the Make-Up Show. I remember seeing the carriage from the movie sitting in front of the theater. The Terminator 2 - 3D was really cool. It was a mix of live actors and 3D. I snoozed for a few seconds during it. One thing they had in "Hollywood" by the T2 ride was a Lucy Tribute. It was a room full of Lucy & Desi Arnaz memorabilia. There were monitors playing the show and home movies, dresses and jewelry worn on the show, her Emmys, Lucy records, Lucy comics - all kinds of stuff. You could take a Lucy trivia quizz. I really like the section about the technical aspects of the show, how they were the first TV show with permanent sets and multiple camera angles.

We all were soaked by the time the park closed at 6:00. On our way back to the parking garage, Natalie fell off the people mover. She was turned around talking to Tom, when it came to an end. She didn't hurt herself but she made a lot of noise and everybody was looking at her. Back at the hotel, we changed and sat around for a couple of hours taking it easy. We drove back across the highway to the Universal City Walk to eat. Universal City Walk is a free area before the entrances to the parks with two levels of shops and restaurants. We went to Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville. The food was very average. I had conch chowder without a trace of conch flavor. Natalie had crab corn chowder, the highlight of our meal. The two of us split an order of Jamaican jerk chicken. It was bland, really just barbequed chicken without any jerk seasoning. Matthew had a burger and fries, and I think Tom had some kind of chicken sandwich. There was a band playing, Blue Stone I think they were called. They were really good but most of the songs they played I am sick of - lots of 70's stuff like "Gimme Three Steps, Brown Sugar, Etc. And although I hate country music, I liked one song they did that's borderline - "The Devil Went Down To Georgia". One of the two guitar players switched to violin and he was great. After we left Margaritaville, we walked around the lake and went into the Hard Rock Cafe to look at all the memorabilia. When we got back to the main drag of City Walk, we decided to head back to the hotel.

Daytona Beach

Day Four

Pretty nice today but it's still very windy. This morning Natalie and I went for a walk on the beach then the four of us went to Ponce Inlet State Park. It's a really nice park that's really there by chance. During the 1920's, a hotel and resort was being built there when a bad hurricane came through and destroyed it. The place was never developed. A later hurricane unearthed parts of the original foundation. We walked out to the end of the jetty and then back the other way, along the inlet and Halifax river. There were a few surfers out in the ocean catching some good waves. We skipped the lighthouse this time around, I kind of regret that now. The weather turned bad again and it started drizzling.

Natalie crashed when we got back to the condo. For dinner, Tommy and Matthew and I went on a quest to find a cheese steak sub for Tom. First we headed south but couldn't find a subshop. We ended up at some dumpy-looking place called Pizza King that was only a block from the condo (right next to the "Biggins" strip club.). I wasn't optimistic. For one thing the name on the printed menu was "Antonio's" and the place was deserted. We were pleasantly surprised by the food - it was very good. We just hung out at the condo for the rest of the night.

Daytona Beach

Day Three

It was overcast and rainy when we got up this morning, so we decide to go down to the boardwalk. The boardwalk in Daytona is only a couple of blocks long and only half of that has game rooms and stuff. The Go-Cart track looks like it's shut down for good and the place that has kiddie rides wasn't open. At one end you go up some steps to this bridge across an access road for cars to get on the beach - that's how you get on the pier. I think you used to be able to continue across the bridge to a bar that we went to with Mike and Rita, BK (before kids). That was a neat place, can't believe they tore it down. I remember they had an old gas pump at the bar. There is a big vacant lot there now that will probably be a big high-rise. Behind the commercial part of the boardwalk is another big vacant lot that is going to be the Boardwalk Hotel.

The whole area was pretty deserted, I guess because of the weather. We played some video games Natalie got a beer and sat out in front of the arcade. By then the sun had come out. We took the kids back to the condo and Natalie and I went back towards the boardwalk and went over the bridge to the Halifax Art Festival. It was held along Beach Street, which fronts on the Inland Waterway. Really nice area, full of old stores straight out of the 50's and 60's. Lot's of bars and restaurants, an old theater and parks along the water. We stayed there a couple of hours and it was actually hot.

It wasn't hot back at the condo. The sun kept going in and out and the wind was still howling. Tommy, Matthew and I got in the ocean for a little while but the water was cold. For dinner that night we ate at Aunt Catfish's Restaurant, over the bridge in Port Orange. It was OK. It didn't help that the waitresses started cleaning up while we were still eating. The salad bar and "fish camp fixins" were great but the entrees were just so,so. I got the Pirates Trio - fried shrimp, scallops and catfish. Tom got catfish cooked three differrent ways. Natalie got a salad. There's a pier behind the place that's pretty nice.

After dinner we went back down to the boardwalk. We were going to park right behind it but there was no one around and it was kind of creepy. We checked out Ocean Walk in the Hilton right behind the boardwalk bandshell. Not much really. After that we wondered around the bandshell for a while then called it a night.

Daytona Beach

Day Two

I think we got up around seven at the hotel in Fayetteville. We enjoyed our fabulous "expanded" Continental breakfast, gassed up next door and hit the road. We stopped at the Georgia Welcome Center right over the state line. This book we took with us mentioned a chain of drive-in restaurants called Sonic so we decided to go there for lunch. It was about 10 miles further on. After pulling off of 95, we passed the place had to continue down this busy highway and make a u-turn. The Sonic was behind a couple of businesses and not very scenic. It looked new. Our waitress didn't have roller skates on and the food was just so - so, like McDonalds. Pretty much a waste of time. I got a Chicken Toaster sandwich. We stopped again about 5 miles from the Florida border and gassed up again ($1.99 a gallon).

We got to Daytona just before dark, around 5:30. Mike's place is really nice, you walk out on a little porch and it's just a couple of steps to the pool and the ocean. It was very windy but there was a bright full moon. Tommy and Matthew went swimming in the pool. We overheard some people saying the pool heater was broken and wouldn't be fixed until Monday. For dinner, we had pizza from Genoveses's, a place just before the Port Orange bridge. I thought it was good but everybody else thought it was just OK.

Daytona Beach

Day One

We left Baltimore for Daytona Beach on friday at 7:00 PM. We got to our room at the Fayetteville Econolodge at around 1:30 AM - just about the time we figured on (six hours ). I had thought it would take us seven hours, but a friend of Natalie's at work said it would take six hours and he was right. We had no problem getting around DC, we took 295 right to the Woodrow Wilson bridge. Traffic wasn't a problem until the HOV lanes ended in Northern Viriginia and then it was slow going until we got to the 295 bypass around Richmond - that's a nice road and a real pleasure after the stop and go we had experienced.

Fayetteville was pretty much a dump. I didn't sleep well - maybe because of the jet-powered toilet in one of the rooms close by. It made a loud, wierd sound. The Continental breakfast was probably the worst we've ever had. We decided on that particular hotel because the AAA website said they had an "expanded" Continental breakfast. That was a load of crap.

Maryland Millions At Laurel Park

Maryland Millions at Laurel Park - Saturday, Oct 14th . We didn't win.

Blue Oyster Cult At The Rockville Music Festival

Natalie and I went to see Blue Oyster Cult today at the Rockville Music Festival. The weather was iffy but we decided to go anyway. I'm glad we did. We got there a little after 4:00, right before BOC came on. We ended up getting pretty close to the stage and the band was great. My only complaint was the lack of decent beer. This is a partial set list:

• The Red & The Black
  
• Od'ed On Life
  
• Shooting Shark
  
• Career Of Evil
  
• Don't Fear The Reaper
  
• This Ain't The Summer Of Love
  
• Godzilla
  
• Cities On Flame
  
• The Vigil
  
• Burnin For You
  
• Hot Rails To Hell

After the show, we ate at the Hard Times Cafe. Although the place was nuts, the food was great. I had the Steak special and Natalie got Texas-style chili. We sat at the bar and they cooked the food right there. In fact, they didn't have a bartender, the cooks waited on us. One of the guys working there let me have a poster for the festival. We picked up some Chinese food from a place next door to take home for the kids. We thought it would be a big treat for them, but Tom had picked up some burgers from McDonald's on his way home from Ridge. Oh well.

Jack Nance Bio/Obituary

He played such a nice guy on Twin Peaks


http://www.lynchnet.com/absent/nancepre.html

OC Panoramic 2006

Stolen Photos (Well, not really)

This is from Found magazine. They didn't know where this place was.

Bengies Labor Day Dusk To Dawn Show

Mike, Matthew and I sat through five movies at the Bengie's Dusk to Dawn show Saturday night. It had been raining for days (the remains of tropical storm Ernesto) but it was supposed to clear out that afternoon. It was still drizzling when we first got there but stopped just as the first cartoon started. I dosed off a little bit during My Super Ex-Girlfriend, but other than that, I made it till dawn. The line-up and order was:

1. Cars (Better the second time around)
   
2. The Wicker Man (It was alright)
   
3. My Super Ex-Girlfriend (The beginning was funny but then, as usual, it turned serious)
   
4. The Da Vinci Code (Good but hard to follow)
   
5. The Descent (The Best of the Bunch)

Ocean City 2006

The whole clan spent the week of August 19 - 26 in Ocean City at the Contado condiminiums on 78th Street.

Harper's Ferry and Charlestown

Today was the annual Kelly Clan trip to Knoebel's. Natalie and I spent the day in Harper's Ferry. It was great. First, we took the ranger's advice and hiked the Murphy farm trail. It was OK but not very scenic, at least not until we got close to the Shenandoah river. Also, an ambulance came through while we were there and they were cutting the grass and planting trees, just a lot of commotion. You walk along a gravel road in the middle of a field to the river and then come back along the edge of the woods to where you began - it's not a really loop. All the information signs were laying on the ground, stripped of their plaques, so we didn't know what we were looking at. I guess we saw the Murphy family's farmhouse (complete with vinyl siding)and the foundation of John Brown's Fort (The Armory Engine House). It had been moved there from town in the late 1800's. It was moved back to it's original location in 1968. We should have tried one of the other trails.



After our hike, we took the park's shuttle bus into town. We walked down Shenandoah street and listened to a park guide giving a little talk on the raid in front of John Brown's Fort. We took the footpath on a train bridge over the Potomac and walked along the dry C&O canal bed. A train ran on another bridge over our heads into a mountain tunnel. The train bridge that has the footpath on it is still in use but we didn't see any trains on that. Lots of ruins everywhere. We saw a lot of tubers and kayakers in the rivers, most of them came down the Shenandoah. I jumped down and walked on the canal bed for a while.



We ate lunch at The Armory Pub on Potomac Street, facing the train station. We just had appetizers to eat, Avacado Salza and Skewered Shrimp, but the best thing about the place was the beer - draft from The Frederick Brewing Company. That was Natalie's favorite part of the day. By then it was about 4 o'clock and the park closes at 5, so we hit a few exhibits on our way back down the hill to Shenandoah Street. Natalie went shopping and bought an iron rooster while I checked out the John Brown museum and the house across the street. This house had been excavated inside, showing that it had once been two houses, with an alley between them, built right on the bedrock. After 5 o'clock we walked along the Shenandoah river and saw the ruins of several mills with intricate water tunnels and raceways. We caught the bus back to the national park's visitor center and headed out to Charlestown Races & Slots.



Each of us started with $20.00 at Charlestown and did pretty good. We stayed for a couple of hours, played a lot of slots, bet on two races and still came out $5.00 ahead! For dinner, we ate at the food court. We both got something Italian from the Tuscan place. It was good and reasonable priced. We left after we ate. It took about an hour and a half to get home.

Frederick Keys

Went to a Frederick Keys game last Tuesday. They lost, 7 to 2, to Kinston. I've wanted to check out the Keys and Harry Grove Stadium for a while and it was now or never (at least for this season). Also, Jay Gibbons was rehabbing out there and was supposed to play the whole series. He didn't. I read in the Sunpapers the next day that he didn't play because of "general soreness". I did see another Oriole, pitcher Tim Byrdick. He came on in relief and wasn't very effective. He has since been called up by the Orioles and been pitching really well.

The stadium was nice but I think the Shorebird's Perdue Stadium is better. I wanted to take a picture of myself in front of the main stadium entrance but there wasn't a facade, just an entrance with chain link fences around it. I don't remember even seeing a name plate . But they had good beer. A minor league stadium with not one but two brewpub stands - Brewer's Alley and Barley & Hops. I tried an IPA from Brewers Alley ($6.00) and a pale ale from Barley & Hops ($8.00 but a bigger cup). They were both good but I seem to remember liking the pale ale from Barley & Hops a little better. I bought a pennant and an Orioles 50 year anniversay patch that was a real find. I almost bought the same patch at Camden Yards in 2004 but they were $10.00. When I tried to get one later that year, they were all sold out. The one I got at Frederick was $2.00 and the last one they had.

Coming home was a breeze until I got within a couple of miles of the beltway. Both entrance ramps to the beltway were closed.. What a nightmare! And I was lucky - I got there soon after they were closed. All traffic had go past the closed ramps down to where 70 dead-ends, make a u-turn, and then come back up to the beltway from the other side.

Up next - The Hagerstown Suns

Artscape

Went to Artscape yesterday (Saturday, July 22nd). Natalie bought a pair of earrings, with a matching necklace, from Just My Imagination - Metal & Wire Wrapped Jewelry. They're made from leopard skin jasper. We wondered up Mount Royal Avenue - Natalie looked at the stuff on display in little tents while I checked out the the sculptures set up on the median strip - one of my favorite things. We heard Lake Trout play a few songs. I liked them, they seemed kind of psychadelic. After that we practically ran back down Mount Royal Avenue to the Meyerhoff to catch a free show by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. It was perfect timing, it started to pour right after we got inside. This was the second show of the day - the first featured traditional classical music prior to the 20th century. We saw the second show - music of the 20th century and beyond. It was great. They started of with a waltz by Katchetarian. One of the members of the orchestra, Chris Dudley, played a piece he wrote for the EVI - Electronic Valve Instrument, a kind of synthesized horn. Next, one of the orchestra's violinists, Ellen Pendleton Troyer, did a piece of fiddle music in three parts by Mark O'Connor. The pieces featured fiddle music from Ireland, Appalachia and Texas. She also did a song by Jean Luc Ponty called "New Country".

Next they did a piece by Michael Daugherty called Hell's Angels, about the motorcycle gang. The bassoon section came walking through the crowd dressed as bikers. I really liked it but Natalie thought it was too long. I think bassoons have been on the soundtrack of every horror movie ever made. When the show was over it had stopped raining and we walked over to the food court, which was packed. Natalie bought a blooming onion that she liked but I wasn't thrillled about (it wasn't crispy enough). We sat under a tent by another stage and listened to the Pale Stars play a few songs. They were good. It poured again while we were sitting there. We made a break for the "Shorts In A Tent" pavillion and saw a couple of animated shorts. It really started blowing and raining while we were inside - the tent, which was huge, started lifting off the ground and a couple of the side supports fell out. That was it for us and we headed back home.

Father's Day

Father's day today. It was kind of overshadowed by Grandmom's passing and all the arrangements and stuff.

Ichi

Bengies, Yard Sale Finds & Patrick's 10th

Went to the Bengies again Sunday with Matthew. We saw Cars and X-Men III. They were both pretty good. If you liked Toy Story, A Bugs Life, etc., you'll like Cars. X-Men III was pretty dark and depressing (for an action/adventure film). Although all three of them have been good, it's been kind of downhill with this series since the first one. D.Vogel told us to make sure we stayed till the end of the credits or we'd miss something.

I bought a lot of stuff at a neighborhood yard sale over on Hazelwood Avenue Saturday. A bunch of CDs and VHS tapes, two pairs of pants, a cool Orioles hat, a marble cheese slicer, a briefcase, a couple of audio cassettes and an adjustable arm lamp. It's a sickness. Later on the three of us (Tom didn't want to go) went over to Howard and Dolores for Patrick's 10th birthday party. I'll post some pictures of that later.

Bengies Drive-In: 50th Anniversary Show

"I bet the three Vogel brothers, who opened this drive-in 50 years ago tonight, never thought it would still be here for it's Silver Anniversary".

Tuesday night was the 50th Anniversary of the Grand Opening of the Bengies Drive-In. The features were all from the 50's: Humphrey Bogart and Rod Stieger in The Harder They Fall and Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis and Gina Lollobrigida in Trapeze .(Edge to Edge on the biggest screen on the East Coast!). I thought I had never seen The Harder They Fall until the bus with the fighter cut-outs on the side showed up - I must have seen it on broadcast TV when they used to show movies. Trapeze I remember very well, maybe I saw it at the Earl Theater. In those days, it wasn't unusual for theaters to have a movie that was made years before. Maybe it was part of a double-feature. Anyway, I had fun and both movies were good. D. Vogel (the owner) seemed pretty choked up about the whole thing, especially when he talked about his father.

HTML copied and pasted from Yahoo 360

Thomas Dolby At The Ram's Head

Last night, Mike and I went to see Thomas Dolby at the Ram's Head Tavern in Annapolis. He was great. It was just him and a bunch of electronic gear. He had cameras mounted on his head and on his equipment that were mixed in with videos and projected on a screen behind him.

Song List

• Wind Power
  
• Europa
  
• One Of Our Submarines
  
• Hyperactive
  
• Blinded Me With Science
  
• Flying North
  
• Budapest By Blimp
  
• Airhead
  
• I Live In A Suitcase
  
• Dissidents?
  
• Leipzig?
  
• Mulu The Rainforest (He used this piece to demonstrate how he used various equipment to put a song together live on stage)

That was the first time I had ever been to the Ram's Head. It was a nice place. The food was good - I had Soft Tacos and Mike got a Crab Pretzel. I liked the Tavern Ale, Mike was drinking the light. The beers were only 10 oz. My father said he got a pitcher out in the bar and took that in with them when they went into the concert hall - sounds like a good idea. We had good seats and could see everything but you probably can't see the stage from some of the seats. Getting there and back was a breeze. We parked in the Gotts Court Garage on Calvert Street - five bucks for "Event Parking" whatever that means. When we got up to West Street there was some kind of festival going on but we didn't have time to check it out. Fun night.

HTML copied and pasted from Yahoo 360

First Thursdays at the Walters Art Gallery

Cat Mummy

On the first Thursday of the month, a lot of the museums in Baltimore have free admittance. Last week, I took the No.15 bus down to the Walters Art Gallery. I was there with Matthew's class a couple of years ago but I didn't really get a chance to look around. The bus ride took about 45 minutes at that time of day (around noon), which isn't bad. I went through the first three floors of the main section but ran out of time before I made it throught the fourth floor of the main section and the Hackerman house, which has their Oriental collection. I took the light rail out to the Falls Road station where Natalie met me on her way home from work. Except for the smell, it was a nice ride. I left the museum at about 4:20, walked seven blocks to the Centre Street station and was at the Falls Road before 5:00. Pretty convenient. I took a lot of pictures but not many of them turned out. When I'm finished editing the good ones, I'll put them up on my 360 page.

HTML copied and pasted from Yahoo 360

Bengies Drive-In: Our First Show of 2006

Matthew and I went to the Bengies Drive-In

Saturday night. They had a pretty good line-up for a change (in other words, it wasn't all G-Rated family crap). It was packed - I don't know if I've ever seen it so crowded. Cars as far as the eye could see. It was the opening weekend for Ice Age and Scary Movie IV.

First up was Ice Age II: The Meltdown - it was good. I liked it better than the first one, I think ( I'll have to go back and watch the first one again to make sure). Next up was Scary Movie IV. If you have seen any of the Scary Movies you know what to expect. It wasn't as good as the first and not nearly near as raunchy. Last up was The Hills Have Eyes, which was really good. My only complaint - not enough Billy Drago!

"I'm not fat, I'm poofy"

"No problem, I've taken balls to the face before"

"Lizard, kill the baby"

OC Panoramic from 2005

It won't be long now

Ben Stiller Show

I just finished watching The Ben Stiller Show DVDs. It wasn't as good as I remembered - the extras were the best part. Originally shown on the Fox network, it's actually a spin-off of a show Stiller did for MTV. There was a little bit of that in the extras. I wish they could have included all the MTV shows.

Pioneer 6-Disc Changers

Worked on stuff taking up room in the basement today. I have three Pioneer 6-Disc CD changers that were/are broken. One I bought new back in 1991, Mike gave me one, and the other one I picked one up at a flea market for $2.00. The lady I bought it from said she didn't have any idea what it was, that her daughter had left it home when she went off to college. It worked perfectly for a couple of years.

The first one - the one I bought, is a PD M630, the best one of the bunch. It has a remote and features the other two don't have. I had looked around on the Internet for tips on what could be wrong with it. One article mentioned that, because the laser points down (you put the CDs in upside down), sometimes the laser's lens comes unglued and falls out. When I took the cover off and checked, sure enough, the lens was missing. After some shaking, I found the lens and glued it back in with Gorilla glue. It works - so far.

Next I opened up the PD M501, my $2.00 flea market find. The first thing I noticed was that the metal ring on the bottom that pushes up on the CD had come off and was stuck to the magnetic ring on the top side. I glued that back into place and tried it out. It played a complete CD fine but then stopped working. I thought the laser assembly was getting stuck at the inner edge of the CD, where it comes to a rest after playing. I tried greasing the gears and the runner the assembly rides on but it was still intermittent. After some poking and prodding, I found out the ribbon cable running from the main circuit board to the laser assembly was bad. I bent it till it worked consistently and put one of those black clips you use to hold papers on it to keep it in place. Now that's jerry-rigged but it seems to work. Time will tell.

The last one, the one Mike gave me, is a PD M435 with intermittent problems. I'll probably just clean the lens and close it back up for now. I could just junk it and keep the cartridge assembly as spare parts for the PD M630, they look identical.

Wasn't that fascinating?

Philadelphia Experiment #3

I turn 50 in Philadelphia.

(I can still raise my arms!)

Saturday

Arrived in Philly around 11:30 AM. We went to the Reading Terminal Market first. Nice place. We split a bag of Fisher's Soft Pretzels to start with (half butter, half plain). I got Bourbon Chicken on a stick from a Chinese place - a real bargain at $1.75, and a mango punch from some deli. The chicken was good but the mango punch was way to sweet. Tom got a gyro he really liked from some Greek place. From there, we went around the corner to the Independence Brewpub. We didn't like it - the beer wasn't very good. We wondered through Chinatown to the historic area. We went to Franklin Court, where there is an underground Benjamin Franklin museum, a recreation of his print shop and lots of Franklin-related stuff. At the print shop, we saw a printing demonstation that Matthew and I really liked the first time we saw it, on his school field trip last spring. Next to the print shop is a house that has had all the renovations stripped away to reveal the original 1700's interior. I really liked that. We went to the Second Bank of the United States, which is a portrait gallery now, and then walked around Carpenter's Hall. On our way to check into our hotel, The Hampton Inn, we checked out The Bourse, a mall that used to be a stock market. That night, we ate dinner in Chinatown at the Imperial Inn. The food was good.Tom didn't like his too much, it tasted like fried chicken with gravy, not very Chinese. Matthew liked the Pu Pu platter with it's little fire to heat the food.

Sunday

Bitterly cold, with tempatures in the 20's and strong winds. A perfect day for a long walk up Benjamin Franklin Parkway to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. On the way, we walked through the grounds of the Rodin museum. Sunday is "Pay What You Want" day at the Art Museum and it was packed. We really liked the Arms & Armor display, the Japanese Tea House, the Cloister and the French Gothic Chapel. We didn't have enought time to check the whole place out, I don't think Natalie and the boys would have wanted to anyway. We ate dinner at the Nottinghead Brewpub on Sansom Street. Nice place. Good food and good beer (Billy's Pale Ale was our favorite). Natalie and I had the French Dip, Matthew had a burger, and Tom got a Cajun Chicken sandwich. We were all kind of worn out from the cold and the walking, so we just stayed in the hotel Sunday night. The kids went swimming in the tiny hotel pool.

Monday

Checked out of the hotel and went back to the Reading Terminal Market for lunch. Since we had to have a Philadelphia Cheese Steak while we were there and didn't make it to Pat's, we went to Pat's relative's place in the market, Rick's Philly Steaks. They were good but nothing to rave about (maybe I should have gotten one with Cheese Whiz). After that, we drove down to the historic area. We visited Elfreth's Alley, an area of houses built in the 1700's and still lived in. After finding a bridge over 95, we went to Penn's Landing - a Harbor Place type area without all the crappy stores and restaurants. Across the river, you can see the the battleship New Jersey and the Campbell Soup factory. Supposedly, you can see Nipper, RCA's dog mascot, over there in Camden but I must have missed that. The place was deserted when we were there. After checking out Penn's Landing, we drove back to Mom & Dad's for my 50th birthday party.

HTML copied and pasted from Yahoo 360

Otto Arrives

Two weeks ago we got this beast from The Defenders of Animal Rights. At first, we called him Shadow, until we found out a dog a down the street was named Shadow. We changed his name to Otto. He's a little spaz like all puppies but he has a good personality. Time will tell, I guess.

HTML copied and pasted from Yahoo 360

A New Car

Yesterday we took the plunge and got a new car - a Hyundai Sonata. It's silver with gray interior. Pretty much your basic model with a few extras, a sunroof and alloy wheels. We now have our Saturdays back.

HTML copied and pasted from Yahoo 360

I Hate Computers

I've been having fun installing new software for the last couple of days. Turn down the lights and read this tale of horror.

Paint Shop Pro X

Stuck the disk in, and installed the program. Internet Explorer started and I registered the program with Corel (I think). Then a page came up saying I was entitled to some freebies - frames, picture tubes, blah, blah, blah. I downloaded that. So far, so good. Then a page came up saying there was a critical update/patch for Paint Shop Pro X. Like a dummy I clicked "install" instead of "download" , figuring there was no point in saving a patch on my computer. Big Mistake. I "installed the patch" and tried to run Paint Shop Pro X - it never made it past the startup screen. I had to physically turn off the computer with the power switch it was so locked up. And I actually paid money for this.

To make a long story short, after about 2 1/2 hours I had this crappy software installed. And of course it worked perfectly - Not.

Magix MP3 Maker 10 Deluxe - Not just plain old Magix MP3 Maker 10 but the "Deluxe" version.

Stuck the disk in and it spun and spun and spun - for a couple of minutes. I'm not sure how long it was doing it's thing, I went and cleaned up the kitchen, figuring I would just have to re-boot the computer when I came back. But lo and behold, up popped an install screen. It wanted to install itself at C:/Magix not at C:/Program Files/Magix like it should have. So I "browsed" to C:/Program Files for the install location figuring the program would be smart enough to create it's own Directory - no such luck. It started installing itself right at C:/Program Files. I had to open up the install log it created and then individually deleted the files it had already installed before I aborted the install. So, I created C:/Program Files/Magix for it and restarted the install. And of course, when all was said and done the program worked perfectly - Not. First, I got an error window "File Info Not Found" or something and then the program connected to the internet for me to register it. Got another error window "Program too big for Screen, Continue anyway?" I bravely soldiered on and when I finally got to the program itself after registering it - it was too big for my screen. I can only see about 3/4 of the program. Seems it was written for 1024 x 768 resolution and not the 800 x 600 I have my monitor set to. So to see all of this stupid little program, I have to change how we have used this computer for years. And I haven't got my $20 rebate back to boot.

HTML copied and pasted from Yahoo 360