Category: Family

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Will’s birthday, part 2: Michigan Renaissance Festival

Will’s birthday week concluded yesterday at the Michigan Renaissance Festival, an annual southeast Michigan event of, um, fake historical fun. We’ve been a couple of times before, and both Will and Annette enjoy it quite a bit. Myself, I have kind of a Homer Simpson attitude about the whole thing. As long as I have a chance to drink some beer and eat several different kinds of meat, I too am a happy camper.

I put together this little flip video movie about the whole thing:

A few thoughts not captured in the video:

  • As far as I can tell, one of the requirements for working at the RenFest is you have to have some sort of facial piercing. Honest to God, every person I had to deal with at a booth or a food stand or whatever had lip rings or nose rings or lip rings with chains that hooked up to nose rings.
  • There are obviously some people who go to this every weekend who spend a bit too much money on their costumes. I won’t pretend to know what the line is between “excited fan” and “nut job,” but I’m pretty sure we saw some people crossing over on Saturday.
  • The funniest bit of the whole thing I didn’t film, which was the Washing Well Wenches, who, judging from this web site, appear to be kind of a franchise of Renaissance festivals around the country.
  • And now, Will’s birthday week is over. He is officially into double-digits.
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Will’s birthday, part 1: Great Wolf Lodge

Will in water after slideWe’ve just finished the first part of Will’s birthday week celebrations, a trip to Great Wolf Lodge. As an aside, I like to claim the idea of the “birthday week” as my own, though really, it’s something Annette S. and I were in on together. I like to drag out my birthday as long as possible, and I’ve even come close to making my own birthday week celebration stretch into a month. So far be it from me from denying my child the birthday week.

But I digress.

Part one of Will’s birthday week was an over-night stay at the Great Wolf Lodge in Sandusky, OH. This is a hotel with a water park built into the middle of it, and this particular one is on the strip of touristy stuff a couple of hours away from here near Cedar Point. Now, given that I don’t swim and just generally don’t like being in water, I personally find the idea of going to a water park about as entertaining as, um, going to a water park. But I’m happy to report that Will, his friend Eli, and Annette had a good time, and, to be honest, I had fun too.

Here’s a little movie:

A few additional random thoughts about our stay:

  • While I am certainly no specimen of fitness, many of the pale fatties walking around at this place really boosted my self-image.
  • Along these lines, it’s clear that a lot of people have made some very bad choices about tattoos.
  • I did actually spend a bit of time in the water– maybe 15, 20 minutes. I rode in the lazy river and I went down one of the water slides once. There wasn’t any water deeper than four feet, so that wasn’t an issue for me. I just don’t get into water, unless I’m bathing in it. I guess I just wasn’t in the mood.
  • Happily, the kiddie-oriented water park did feature adult beverages, so as the kids played until the park closed at 10 pm, Annette and I enjoyed beers and margaritas and read magazines.

A good time by one and all.

BTW, the video was made with my flip video camera, which I am very much looking forward to taking to the “Ren Fest” this weekend. Stay tuned….

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“Very Bad Toys”

I’m not completely sure how I stumbled across this this morning, but it’s one of those funny things that keeps me reading blogs and stuff on the web, and it’s one of those things that brings back memories. The story, from something called Radar Online, is “The 10 Most Dangerous Toys of All Time.” Most of what’s featured here pre-dates me, but who can possibly forget what the article called “the granddaddy” of all most dangerous toys. A quote:

Lawn Darts, or “Jarts,” as they were marketed, would never fly in our current ultra-paranoid, safety-helmeted, Dr. Phil toy culture. Lawn darts were massive weighted spears. You threw them. They stuck where they landed. If they happened to land in your skull, well, then you should have moved. During their brief (and generally awesome) reign in 1980s suburbia, Jarts racked up 6,700 injuries and four deaths.

he best part about Jarts was that they eliminated all speculation from true outdoor fun. (Is this dangerous? Hell yes, now chuck it!) And they were equal opportunity: All it took to play lawn darts was a sweaty grip. For good measure, it was also nice to have a small sibling around to stand on the other side of the house and tell you how your throw looked (and by how much you cleared the chimney).

Ah yes, good times, good times….

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I like Ikea, but not this much

Via Boing Boing comes the news that Ikea in Oslo is opening up a hostel-like/hotel-like space so that shoppers who just don’t want to leave can get up the next morning and keep on shopping. Yikes! By the way, that link above also has lots of other cool Ikea links, including this one, Ikea Hacker, which is a blog space about making various mods with Ikea products.

Will and I went out to the Canton Ikea yesterday. Originally, we were supposed to meet up with Bill HD and family, but the timing was off and once we got there, my cell phone didn’t work in the store, thus thwarting our plans for meeting up. But alas, another time. Anyway, Will and I first had lunch where Will ate 13 out of the 15 Swedish meatballs we ordered (I had two and a salad) and about two-thirds of the cake-like thing we always get. I bought a magnetic white board (note the cheesy painting of Will in the right part of that image, the hat collection, and other “basement boy” office decos), a Billy book case (I’ve moved over some of my snow globe collection to this shelf), and a few other things, including cardboard magazine holders like the ones in the picture of the book case.

It’s been a while since I bought an Ikea book case, and it seems like the quality of materials and ease of assembly has improved a great deal. On the other hand, it turns out that the white board function of the metal bulletin/white board isn’t quite like the white boards at school. I wrote on my new Ikea purchase with an old dry erase marker from school I had around here, and it is most certainly not wiping off. This picture of the stain is after much elbow grease and rubbing alcohol. Not good, though easily concealed behind some photos, so as long as I use the official Ikea markers, I should be fine.

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How the Wii was won

Finally, we got one. But first the story:

Yesterday was quite the day for people waiting around in lines for things. There was the whole Harry Potter frenzy, of course. Three small tangents about that: first, the Huffington Post collection of Harry Potter stuff, including some spoilers, some funny parodies, some interesting analysis, etc. Second, I heard that there was a mob scene at the midnight party at Arborland Borders– like thousands of people packing the entire parking lot. This was not on the radar for anyone in my household, including my wife the HP enthusiast and scholar. And third, Annette is about two-thirds done reading.

BTW, here’s a kinda cool flickr set of pictures from a HP book sale party in London.

In more local line-waiting news, there was the Ann Arbor Art Fair (which we avoided entirely, though yesterday would have been a nice day for it weather-wise), and the grand opening of an Apple store in Briarwood Mall. I’ve been waiting for this arrival of a branch of computer Mecca right here in town and the first 1,000 customers got a T-shirt. So since Will and I had some errands to run anyway, we went out to the mall. A lot of other people had a similar idea. At 9:30, a half-hour before the store opened, the line looked to me to be over 1,000 people (though the newspaper suggested it was a lot less), which seemed like a lot to go through to walk through a store and to get a T-shirt.

So Will and I wandered down to the EB Electronics game store. There was a small line there and we got in it, and, by about 10:30, I had spent way WAY too much money for the Wii that Will and I had sought for so long. It turns out that Nintendo, the Wii’s maker, had asked retailers to hold Wiis until Saturday this week. Lucky us.

On the way out of the mall, we walked back past the Apple store. There was still a gazillon people patiently waiting to walk through a store in the mall. Crazy.

Anyway, there wasn’t much Wii-ing until late in the day because we needed to get ready for some friends coming for dinner and to continue the housecleaning for the in-laws who are arriving today. But we did finally hook it up and it was good. Here’s Will this morning playing Wii tennis:

There’s a ton of other features with this that we’ll have to figure out, but so far, it looks like the Wii is delivering on what it promises: a different and group-oriented approach to the video game experience. Wii on, my friends, Wii on.

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Home again

We had a lovely time “Up North” this past week. Here’s a link to a collection of flickr picts. In no particular order, here are some random thoughts:

  • This is the first time I’ve been up near Traverse City when I actually didn’t have a whole lot to do with Traverse City. We were staying out at a place near Lake Ann, and we actually only went into to TC one day, in part because we were up there during the dreaded Cherry Festival. Mostly, we hung around Glen Arbor, Empire, and the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lake Shore.
  • My parents rented this gigantic vacation home/cabin called “The Eagles Nest.” We never inquired, but hopefully it had nothing to do with Hitler. Seriously though, it was a great place. Slept 18 people comfortably, great views, very comfy, etc., etc. It made me appreciate cabin aesthetics, too.
  • This is the first trip I’ve taken like this where I’ve thought about how it would be cool to have a cabin. Nothing like this place we stayed of course, but just a place a few hours away in the pseudo-wilderness. It’d be nice to have a place like that to go and write and read and hang out. Maybe someday.
  • Lotsa hiking around with friends (John and Karen M!) and family, mostly through good weather.
  • Some fun golf at a place just down the road from us called Mistwood which turned out to be just a fantastic course. My dad and I played there one day with Will and one of his cousins (just 9 holes, and Will spent most of the time reading), and then the next day me and him for 18, and then my mom and dad the day after that for 9 holes. There’s a lot of great deals up there– my regular golf friends and I might need to check out some of the deals up there.
  • It probably was a good idea for me to not have regular Internet access up there. Relaxing. I might have to figure out how to ration my WiFi access in “real” life, too.

And now we’re here in Ypsi-Arbor for the rest of the summer. No European travel this year, but maybe some gardening.

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Up North

Up North PictureBlogging (and most everything else, happily) will be very slow or completely on hold this week as I am with my extended family (my parents, sisters, brothers-in-law, kids, etc.) “up north,” in a small town near Traverse City. This is the view from the back porch of this house; very peaceful.

I suppose it’s a good thing too that there isn’t any internet access out at this place—I’m sending this message now from a coffee shop in TC. It’s perhaps a good thing for me to unplug at least a little before I head into full-frontal sabbatical-fueled scholarship/ research work.

Anyway, I might post again, I might not.

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The futility of Wii stalking

All right, you Wii making bastards, I give up. Eventually, Will and I will get one; but it’s going to be based on luck/chance and that’s it. Here’s why:

On Thursday, I dropped off Will at his day camp and then went over to the Food (W)Hole to have some coffee and a bagel and to check my email and browse blogs. There’s a GameStop store in this strip mall complex, and I’ve gotten into the habit of poking my head into the store when I’m around and asking if they have any Wiis. The answer is always no. But on Thursday, when I was there when the store opened, the dude at the counter said “no, but I think there might be some coming in on today’s UPS delivery,” which was going to come in some time between 11 am and noon.

So I went next door to the Panera, got some coffee, and set myself and my laptop out front. I was able to get some work done from Panera’s wifi connection and enjoy the lovely day while waiting for the UPS truck to bring the Wii that would soon be mine. Life was good.

Around 11:30 or so, the big brown truck arrived. I packed my stuff up, feeling very clever at my Wii stalking and very confident that I too would soon be playing virtual tennis and boxing and bowling. But when I walked in the store, I saw a small group of geeky guys hanging around. It turns out they were in line, and, as one of the geeky ones informed me, if you weren’t in the store, you weren’t in line. Two of these guys had been there since the store opened– that is, they were standing around inside a game store for 90 minutes waiting for a Wii. In other words, while I was hanging around outside and actually enjoying some fresh air, these guys were hardcore stalking.

Well, since I was sixth in line, I thought it was worth hanging around. So me and my five fellow geeky Wii stalkers waited anxiously as the UPS guy disappeared into the back of the store followed by the game store dude. Oh, the anticipation! Would there be six games? Would there be only two? But a few minutes later, the game store dude came back out and said “Sorry folks, no Wiis today.” Jeez. He might as well have said “Sorry folks, Christmas is canceled this year.”

Bastards.

So that’s it for me. As far as I can tell, the only way to buy a Wii console nowadays is by spending way too much money or by pure chance. One of my former students bought a Wii this way, and this seems like my best bet.

By the way, if anyone out there want to buy me a Wii, let me know.