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Miscellany, Wedding and Otherwise
Jun. 9th, 2005 06:12 pm(written around 7:30am AZ thyme)
Homeward Bound. I'm about an hour away from landing in Phoenix, returning from Ohio.
Very mixed emotions. I'll be glad to be home, I hate leaving my new wife, and I really hate leaving my new father-in-law as last night is probably the last time that I'll see him alive. Russ and I discussed potential plans in terms of travel arrangements for what we'll do when he passes.
The only certainty is that it won't be good and that it will be extremely rough on Russet – she's never been to a funeral. Her parents came over from Scotland in the early 50's and almost all of her relatives are still there, so she hasn't had the exposure. Likewise, she apparently hasn't had death of friends or co-workers. I consider her fortunate as I think I've had far too much of a share of those events. Let's do a quick tally, shall we? Cousin murdered, best friend in HS became a motorcycle policeman and was killed on duty in a traffic accident, former co-worker murdered by his brother, former co-worker committed suicide, MANY funerals of people at the church that I attended, and three members of my film club over the previous three years, to be fair only one of those three was really close, the others were more acquaintances. And that's all excluding family, there's probably a dozen there including grand parents and numerous uncles (great and not-great) and aunts. I figure 2-3 dozen funerals have been attended by moi.
So I'm pretty familiar with funerals.
I definitely will go to her father's funeral as she will need all the support she can get. And I'll be doing some grieving, too, he's a heck of a guy.
Why all this talk of funerals? Brian has completed his run of radiation treatments. He's very weak and has visiting hospice care. He's now sleeping downstairs, originally they put a bed in the tv room for him to nap on during the day so that he only went up and down the stairs (assisted, of course) once per day. The doctors say he has a matter of weeks, perhaps a couple of months. There's never any way to know for sure, but the consensus is that he probably won't see Labor Day.
Let's talk about better stuff, shall we?
Honeymoon. Mr. and Mrs. Wayne and Russet West had a great honeymoon. We spent it mainly in a town called Put-In-Bay on South Bass Island in Lake Erie, Ohio. Very nice bed & breakfast called The Grape Leaf Inn, I recommend it. They're working on some improvements, I imagine we'll be revisiting them for our 5th or 10th. The woman is fantastic at making breakfast! My fav was Tuesday's, a French Toast Casserole, Russ really liked an egg soufflé Monday. When Russ suggested to her that we should have come back to her and paid her for lunch, she said no way, she's good for breakfast only. Her husband is in the process of opening a restaurant in town, more of a formal sit-down dining. It'll be located on the waterfront behind the Dairy Queen. Sounds like a stupid location, but if you see the place, you'll understand it's reasonable.
Put-In-Bay is a great place for boozing, which Russ and I really don't do. Still, it's a pretty good place and has lots to recommend it. The Boardwalk restaurant has a fantastic crab cake sandwich and allegedly great lobster bisque, I wasn't too impressed with the bisque or the lobster sandwich that I had, but I loved Russet's crab cake sandwich. Pasquale's has pretty good Italian food, definitely worth the visit. I think the other place that we ate at was called The Boat House, it did nothing for me. Well, that's not entirely true. Russet's monster-size club sandwich was very good leftovers.
A winery that we went to had a woman's tshirt that said 'Put-In-Bottle, Put-In-Glass, Put-In-Bay.'
The War of 1812. PIB is also home to the Perry Victory Column/Peace Memorial commemorating a very important naval battle fought on Lake Erie during the War of 1812 between Oliver Hazard Perry (USA) and some British git whose name eludes me for the moment. VERY tough fight, particularly since some guy named Elliot held back his boat from the engagement, said boat was sister to Perry's and represented a good 40% of his small fleet's power. Perry's boat got shot to kindling, it suffered 80% casualties killed and wounded before he struck his flag and transferred to Elliot's. But he'd inflicted significant casualties on the two major Brit ships, including taking out their captains and senior commanders.
Once he took over Elliot's, it was over in 15 minutes. Elliot's ship was undamaged, Perry had the wind advantage, and he quickly was in a position to Cross the T of the two Brit ships. They tried to separate to prevent Perry's shot, but screwed up and one ship's bow got caught in the other ship's rigging, remember, junior officers were in command.
Surprisingly, Perry's ship, pretty much a toothpick collection, apparently wasn't sunk. After the war was over, a disarmament treaty between USA and England resulted in both Perry's and Elliot's ships being sank. Later they were raised and refurbished.
The Column is really neat. It was constructed for the centennial anniversary of the battle on top of swamp land on the island. I believe it was former President Taft that was the head of the commission. It is built of rose marble, but it doesn't appear pink. Apparently if you use white marble for something this tall, the sky will make it appear blue. The pink marble counters the blue and makes it look white. It is quite a structure. Most monuments don't do much for me, this impressed me. It's a great example of elegant simplicity.
It is taller than the Statue of Liberty, it's also taller than the tallest roller coaster at nearby Cedar Point Amusement Park. From the top (not the very top, but the viewing platform) on a clear day you can see details of Cedar Point, the nearby nuke power plant (apparently the worst managed in the US! Yeah!) and Canada. The museum and column are well worth spending two or three hours at. And be sure to watch the 15 minute movie in the museum/visitor's center.
Wedding Flashback. While getting ready for the wedding in her friend Hope's room, Russ is putting the hair drier back into its cradle, it falls out, towards the toilet, and Russ starts reaching after it… Meanwhile, her brain is going 'this is stupid!' as her hand continues reaching for it. Fortunately the ground fault outlet tripped and nothing untoward happened. Hope got to ridicule her a bit and Russet was suitably abashed.
Miscellany. Huh. The pilot just announced that it's 76 degrees in Phoenix right now. It was 74 degrees when I landed in Cleveland two weeks ago. I imagine Phoenix won't be as humid, but I also know that the temperature will be going up six or seven degrees an hour for the next four hours. Well, it's probably not that linear, but I'm sure it will be over 100 degrees by noon.
Scream Machine! Russ and I spent part of yesterday at Cedar Point. We had less than four hours there, but we really packed in the rides! We didn't go on any long wait rides, with one exception we practically walked straight onto the ride. The exception was a water ride which is guaranteed to soak you. Russ was visibly wilting due to the heat and humidity, it was low to mid 80's with a similar level of humidity, pretty miserable. And drinking water, which I was forcing on her, wasn't really helping. The ride did, once we were soaked from head to foot, she picked right up and was good for the rest of the day!
Unfortunately I ended up putting my camera in a locker, the rule there is that if you can't fit it in cargo pockets, you can't take it on the ride. So next time, I'll get a good very small digital camera and carry a couple of Ziploc bags with me.
We got two pictures, one is the icon that will theoretically accompany this post, the other was one of those 'scream shots' that are taken on some rides. Prior to yesterday, I don't recall having ever ridden a wooden roller coaster before. Yesterday we rode three! One, the biggest, had the camera. We were in the middle of the train, and just had an amazing time! I laugh when most people scream, my voice is so deep that I'm not a good screamer. The photo shows Russ and I grinning/laughing like idiots, the kid in the row in front of us looks like he's about to lose control of one or more biological functions.
One surprisingly good ride was called Tower Of Power IIRC. It's four towers of two flavors. One shoots you straight up 250', the other shoots you straight down 250' (hopefully after lifting you up more than 250' first). We saw this walking up and walking around. We did the one that shoots you up and it was pretty wicked! One good thing about this ride is since there is effectively only one "car" on the ride, they have storage bins for shoes, pocket contents, etc. that you can use. And a word of warning – if you wear glasses, make sure you have a strap for your glasses, otherwise you have to take them off! Russ and I were still a little damp from earlier in the day (this was our last ride) and taking off my shoes and riding it in my damp socks was literally cool.
Walk-In Geode. OK. Geodes: rocks that are cut in half that have these neat little crystalline caves. Well, on PIB, you can walk into one.
You can't miss the signs for Crystal Cave, it's on the property of Heinmann(?) Winery. They were drilling for a well and poked through into a geode cave. An actual cave. The material is called Celestite, it's a soft mineral of very little value. The owners built steps into it and turned it into a tourist attraction. The temperature change is quite perceptible as you walk into or out of the cave, which is not very big. You can take a group of 6-10 into it with no difficulty. There's really not much to see, because Celestite is not one of your pretty crystals. It's soft, it's kind of a cloudy white. Not particularly remarkable. You walk in, the tour guide tells you how it was discovered (I guess I could get a second job as a tour guide!), you walk around and walk out. Elapsed time: 5-10 minutes. There's really not much to see. And as it costs $6 to tour the crystal cave and winery (with a complimentary glass of grape juice, fermented or not, afterwards), it's of dubious value. But if you want to see the winery, you might as well.
Russet had to buy a 'egg' of Celestite because she was missing her poodle considerably.
Return to Oberlin. Through clever timing and dawdling at Cedar Point, we were a bit late getting back to Oberlin. We picked up Celeste, but it was too late to do a couple of other errands, including picking up our wedding photos. Russ picked up the photos today, apparently they all came out pretty good. I had them double-print them, she's leaving one set with her parents and my parents will get the second set. I get the CDs that I had all the rolls scanned to! One roll came out blank, so either Terry didn't shoot it and thought he had or he got a little sloppy loading it and it didn't catch in the camera. So it sounds like we got a really good take of photos for our wedding! I'm looking forward to seeing them.
Celeste's boarding over our honeymoon included getting her groomed. Unfortunately a poodle requires more brushing and grooming than Russet was willing to follow, i.e. daily. So in addition to shaving her muzzle, they also pretty much shaved her body! It's an amazing transformation, she went from a largish dog that looked sort of a black mop to actually looking like a poodle.
It was rather funny taking Celeste to Russet's parents. I was in the copy center in Oberlin before the wedding getting some stuff copied and they had these keychains that had a little stuffed cow. The accompanying sign said that they mooed. I couldn't resist and squeezed them. It started with a conventional moo or three, then it rose in pitch and some guy starts shouting 'MOO!' and laughing maniacally.
Those of you who actually know me will realize that this is a perfect toy for me.
Back to taking Celeste to the parent's. The cow is in my suitcase, and Celeste just happens to step on said suitcase just right and it starts mooing. It drives Celeste nuts! (Russ had already seen my cow, and she's already nuts.) Celeste knows that anything that's squeaky or makes other noises of a similar class that it is a toy for her to shred, but there was no toy visible! So she starts scratching at my suitcase, trying to get inside. It was rather amusing. Honestly.
Welcome to the Hotel California (or at least the Oberlin Inn). Several people associated with the wedding party stayed at the Inn: Audrey & Michelle, Terry & Deb, Hope & Joy. All of Russet's family were all local with the exception of Hope and Sally, Sally and husband and daughter drove down from Chicago and stayed at a different hotel that had a pool so her daughter could have some fun. As it happened, Terry/Deb & Audrey/Michelle ended up in rooms across the hall from each other. We frequently left the doors open and moved between the two rooms, there was always someone sitting in such a position that they could see the other room.
Yesterday Russet's brother Stephen books us at the Inn. We get to the Inn after picking up Celeste, we wanted a change of clothes and to unload the car before we went to the parent's. The Inn has absolutely no information on us. Sigh. So off to the parent's we go.
Five minutes after we arrive, the phone rings. It's for Mrs. West, which is a bit of a joke as Russet is not going to take my name at this time (she might if/when we have children). It's the Inn. We'd also found out from Steve and Russet's mother Clare that they had already registered us and signed us in, thus the Inn had no record of reservations and no one thought to check for registered guests. Well, we spend the evening with the parents, I say my goodbyes as I'm leaving, we return to the hotel (after I do some interesting photography outside in the dark without benefit of tripod or monopod). We get keys to room 243. I comment that it would have been amusing to get keys for 245 or 246, Audrey/Michelle and Terry/Deb rooms respectively. I cart my suitcase upstairs and open the door and hear noise. I figure room service had left the radio on, something I've encountered numerous times. Then I open the door further and there's a suitcase on the floor, open, the TV is on, and stuff is strewn about. Obviously someone is in the room. So I quietly close the door and back away.
A woman is coming down the hall whistling. I comment that the hotel must have screwed up either my key or my room assignment as clearly that room was occupied. She agreed, it was her room.
Back downstairs, we tell the clerk. She confirms that we're in 243, then pulls up whatever on the computer, and finds that it's 245. One quick re-keying and we're in the Audrey/Michelle room.
Mildly humerous.
Lots more stuff to talk about, but I've got to hit the road as I'm going to Las Vegas for a couple of days.
Homeward Bound. I'm about an hour away from landing in Phoenix, returning from Ohio.
Very mixed emotions. I'll be glad to be home, I hate leaving my new wife, and I really hate leaving my new father-in-law as last night is probably the last time that I'll see him alive. Russ and I discussed potential plans in terms of travel arrangements for what we'll do when he passes.
The only certainty is that it won't be good and that it will be extremely rough on Russet – she's never been to a funeral. Her parents came over from Scotland in the early 50's and almost all of her relatives are still there, so she hasn't had the exposure. Likewise, she apparently hasn't had death of friends or co-workers. I consider her fortunate as I think I've had far too much of a share of those events. Let's do a quick tally, shall we? Cousin murdered, best friend in HS became a motorcycle policeman and was killed on duty in a traffic accident, former co-worker murdered by his brother, former co-worker committed suicide, MANY funerals of people at the church that I attended, and three members of my film club over the previous three years, to be fair only one of those three was really close, the others were more acquaintances. And that's all excluding family, there's probably a dozen there including grand parents and numerous uncles (great and not-great) and aunts. I figure 2-3 dozen funerals have been attended by moi.
So I'm pretty familiar with funerals.
I definitely will go to her father's funeral as she will need all the support she can get. And I'll be doing some grieving, too, he's a heck of a guy.
Why all this talk of funerals? Brian has completed his run of radiation treatments. He's very weak and has visiting hospice care. He's now sleeping downstairs, originally they put a bed in the tv room for him to nap on during the day so that he only went up and down the stairs (assisted, of course) once per day. The doctors say he has a matter of weeks, perhaps a couple of months. There's never any way to know for sure, but the consensus is that he probably won't see Labor Day.
Let's talk about better stuff, shall we?
Honeymoon. Mr. and Mrs. Wayne and Russet West had a great honeymoon. We spent it mainly in a town called Put-In-Bay on South Bass Island in Lake Erie, Ohio. Very nice bed & breakfast called The Grape Leaf Inn, I recommend it. They're working on some improvements, I imagine we'll be revisiting them for our 5th or 10th. The woman is fantastic at making breakfast! My fav was Tuesday's, a French Toast Casserole, Russ really liked an egg soufflé Monday. When Russ suggested to her that we should have come back to her and paid her for lunch, she said no way, she's good for breakfast only. Her husband is in the process of opening a restaurant in town, more of a formal sit-down dining. It'll be located on the waterfront behind the Dairy Queen. Sounds like a stupid location, but if you see the place, you'll understand it's reasonable.
Put-In-Bay is a great place for boozing, which Russ and I really don't do. Still, it's a pretty good place and has lots to recommend it. The Boardwalk restaurant has a fantastic crab cake sandwich and allegedly great lobster bisque, I wasn't too impressed with the bisque or the lobster sandwich that I had, but I loved Russet's crab cake sandwich. Pasquale's has pretty good Italian food, definitely worth the visit. I think the other place that we ate at was called The Boat House, it did nothing for me. Well, that's not entirely true. Russet's monster-size club sandwich was very good leftovers.
A winery that we went to had a woman's tshirt that said 'Put-In-Bottle, Put-In-Glass, Put-In-Bay.'
The War of 1812. PIB is also home to the Perry Victory Column/Peace Memorial commemorating a very important naval battle fought on Lake Erie during the War of 1812 between Oliver Hazard Perry (USA) and some British git whose name eludes me for the moment. VERY tough fight, particularly since some guy named Elliot held back his boat from the engagement, said boat was sister to Perry's and represented a good 40% of his small fleet's power. Perry's boat got shot to kindling, it suffered 80% casualties killed and wounded before he struck his flag and transferred to Elliot's. But he'd inflicted significant casualties on the two major Brit ships, including taking out their captains and senior commanders.
Once he took over Elliot's, it was over in 15 minutes. Elliot's ship was undamaged, Perry had the wind advantage, and he quickly was in a position to Cross the T of the two Brit ships. They tried to separate to prevent Perry's shot, but screwed up and one ship's bow got caught in the other ship's rigging, remember, junior officers were in command.
Surprisingly, Perry's ship, pretty much a toothpick collection, apparently wasn't sunk. After the war was over, a disarmament treaty between USA and England resulted in both Perry's and Elliot's ships being sank. Later they were raised and refurbished.
The Column is really neat. It was constructed for the centennial anniversary of the battle on top of swamp land on the island. I believe it was former President Taft that was the head of the commission. It is built of rose marble, but it doesn't appear pink. Apparently if you use white marble for something this tall, the sky will make it appear blue. The pink marble counters the blue and makes it look white. It is quite a structure. Most monuments don't do much for me, this impressed me. It's a great example of elegant simplicity.
It is taller than the Statue of Liberty, it's also taller than the tallest roller coaster at nearby Cedar Point Amusement Park. From the top (not the very top, but the viewing platform) on a clear day you can see details of Cedar Point, the nearby nuke power plant (apparently the worst managed in the US! Yeah!) and Canada. The museum and column are well worth spending two or three hours at. And be sure to watch the 15 minute movie in the museum/visitor's center.
Wedding Flashback. While getting ready for the wedding in her friend Hope's room, Russ is putting the hair drier back into its cradle, it falls out, towards the toilet, and Russ starts reaching after it… Meanwhile, her brain is going 'this is stupid!' as her hand continues reaching for it. Fortunately the ground fault outlet tripped and nothing untoward happened. Hope got to ridicule her a bit and Russet was suitably abashed.
Miscellany. Huh. The pilot just announced that it's 76 degrees in Phoenix right now. It was 74 degrees when I landed in Cleveland two weeks ago. I imagine Phoenix won't be as humid, but I also know that the temperature will be going up six or seven degrees an hour for the next four hours. Well, it's probably not that linear, but I'm sure it will be over 100 degrees by noon.
Scream Machine! Russ and I spent part of yesterday at Cedar Point. We had less than four hours there, but we really packed in the rides! We didn't go on any long wait rides, with one exception we practically walked straight onto the ride. The exception was a water ride which is guaranteed to soak you. Russ was visibly wilting due to the heat and humidity, it was low to mid 80's with a similar level of humidity, pretty miserable. And drinking water, which I was forcing on her, wasn't really helping. The ride did, once we were soaked from head to foot, she picked right up and was good for the rest of the day!
Unfortunately I ended up putting my camera in a locker, the rule there is that if you can't fit it in cargo pockets, you can't take it on the ride. So next time, I'll get a good very small digital camera and carry a couple of Ziploc bags with me.
We got two pictures, one is the icon that will theoretically accompany this post, the other was one of those 'scream shots' that are taken on some rides. Prior to yesterday, I don't recall having ever ridden a wooden roller coaster before. Yesterday we rode three! One, the biggest, had the camera. We were in the middle of the train, and just had an amazing time! I laugh when most people scream, my voice is so deep that I'm not a good screamer. The photo shows Russ and I grinning/laughing like idiots, the kid in the row in front of us looks like he's about to lose control of one or more biological functions.
One surprisingly good ride was called Tower Of Power IIRC. It's four towers of two flavors. One shoots you straight up 250', the other shoots you straight down 250' (hopefully after lifting you up more than 250' first). We saw this walking up and walking around. We did the one that shoots you up and it was pretty wicked! One good thing about this ride is since there is effectively only one "car" on the ride, they have storage bins for shoes, pocket contents, etc. that you can use. And a word of warning – if you wear glasses, make sure you have a strap for your glasses, otherwise you have to take them off! Russ and I were still a little damp from earlier in the day (this was our last ride) and taking off my shoes and riding it in my damp socks was literally cool.
Walk-In Geode. OK. Geodes: rocks that are cut in half that have these neat little crystalline caves. Well, on PIB, you can walk into one.
You can't miss the signs for Crystal Cave, it's on the property of Heinmann(?) Winery. They were drilling for a well and poked through into a geode cave. An actual cave. The material is called Celestite, it's a soft mineral of very little value. The owners built steps into it and turned it into a tourist attraction. The temperature change is quite perceptible as you walk into or out of the cave, which is not very big. You can take a group of 6-10 into it with no difficulty. There's really not much to see, because Celestite is not one of your pretty crystals. It's soft, it's kind of a cloudy white. Not particularly remarkable. You walk in, the tour guide tells you how it was discovered (I guess I could get a second job as a tour guide!), you walk around and walk out. Elapsed time: 5-10 minutes. There's really not much to see. And as it costs $6 to tour the crystal cave and winery (with a complimentary glass of grape juice, fermented or not, afterwards), it's of dubious value. But if you want to see the winery, you might as well.
Russet had to buy a 'egg' of Celestite because she was missing her poodle considerably.
Return to Oberlin. Through clever timing and dawdling at Cedar Point, we were a bit late getting back to Oberlin. We picked up Celeste, but it was too late to do a couple of other errands, including picking up our wedding photos. Russ picked up the photos today, apparently they all came out pretty good. I had them double-print them, she's leaving one set with her parents and my parents will get the second set. I get the CDs that I had all the rolls scanned to! One roll came out blank, so either Terry didn't shoot it and thought he had or he got a little sloppy loading it and it didn't catch in the camera. So it sounds like we got a really good take of photos for our wedding! I'm looking forward to seeing them.
Celeste's boarding over our honeymoon included getting her groomed. Unfortunately a poodle requires more brushing and grooming than Russet was willing to follow, i.e. daily. So in addition to shaving her muzzle, they also pretty much shaved her body! It's an amazing transformation, she went from a largish dog that looked sort of a black mop to actually looking like a poodle.
It was rather funny taking Celeste to Russet's parents. I was in the copy center in Oberlin before the wedding getting some stuff copied and they had these keychains that had a little stuffed cow. The accompanying sign said that they mooed. I couldn't resist and squeezed them. It started with a conventional moo or three, then it rose in pitch and some guy starts shouting 'MOO!' and laughing maniacally.
Those of you who actually know me will realize that this is a perfect toy for me.
Back to taking Celeste to the parent's. The cow is in my suitcase, and Celeste just happens to step on said suitcase just right and it starts mooing. It drives Celeste nuts! (Russ had already seen my cow, and she's already nuts.) Celeste knows that anything that's squeaky or makes other noises of a similar class that it is a toy for her to shred, but there was no toy visible! So she starts scratching at my suitcase, trying to get inside. It was rather amusing. Honestly.
Welcome to the Hotel California (or at least the Oberlin Inn). Several people associated with the wedding party stayed at the Inn: Audrey & Michelle, Terry & Deb, Hope & Joy. All of Russet's family were all local with the exception of Hope and Sally, Sally and husband and daughter drove down from Chicago and stayed at a different hotel that had a pool so her daughter could have some fun. As it happened, Terry/Deb & Audrey/Michelle ended up in rooms across the hall from each other. We frequently left the doors open and moved between the two rooms, there was always someone sitting in such a position that they could see the other room.
Yesterday Russet's brother Stephen books us at the Inn. We get to the Inn after picking up Celeste, we wanted a change of clothes and to unload the car before we went to the parent's. The Inn has absolutely no information on us. Sigh. So off to the parent's we go.
Five minutes after we arrive, the phone rings. It's for Mrs. West, which is a bit of a joke as Russet is not going to take my name at this time (she might if/when we have children). It's the Inn. We'd also found out from Steve and Russet's mother Clare that they had already registered us and signed us in, thus the Inn had no record of reservations and no one thought to check for registered guests. Well, we spend the evening with the parents, I say my goodbyes as I'm leaving, we return to the hotel (after I do some interesting photography outside in the dark without benefit of tripod or monopod). We get keys to room 243. I comment that it would have been amusing to get keys for 245 or 246, Audrey/Michelle and Terry/Deb rooms respectively. I cart my suitcase upstairs and open the door and hear noise. I figure room service had left the radio on, something I've encountered numerous times. Then I open the door further and there's a suitcase on the floor, open, the TV is on, and stuff is strewn about. Obviously someone is in the room. So I quietly close the door and back away.
A woman is coming down the hall whistling. I comment that the hotel must have screwed up either my key or my room assignment as clearly that room was occupied. She agreed, it was her room.
Back downstairs, we tell the clerk. She confirms that we're in 243, then pulls up whatever on the computer, and finds that it's 245. One quick re-keying and we're in the Audrey/Michelle room.
Mildly humerous.
Lots more stuff to talk about, but I've got to hit the road as I'm going to Las Vegas for a couple of days.
