God save Donald Duck

Our trip began with a traditional prelude, that of bringing our pet rabbit to bunny_hugger's parents. We spent the whole day there, naturally, eating too much and getting a heap of leftovers we decided to save for an easy meal the day of our return. (And then ended up not eating until the day after we came back, because it was too hard even to reheat that many leftovers.) We made another try at that Mice and Mystics bonus chapter and failed again. And bunny_hugger worked on getting her father's new, not-2G, phone set up. If I reconstruct his issues rightly, he couldn't set it up himself because he got partway through the tutorial it gives you when you first turn it on and then gave up. (Laugh if you want; I have to replace my 2G phone before the end of the year myself and am not looking forward to it.)

Our original itinerary was to drive from Lansing to Toronto, then from Toronto to Rochester, then from Rochester to Sylvan Beach (near Syracuse), and drive back from near-Syracuse to Lansing in one day. That last struck me as a little bit too far, even with bunny_hugger driving relief. So we rescheduled: Lansing to Toronto, then Toronto to Sylvan Beach, then Sylvan Beach to Rochester, and for the last day, Rochester to Niagara Falls to home. Apart from the Rochester-surrounding legs all these would be drives of five or more hours.

I got my antidepressant prescription filled the morning we were to set out. Its instructions warned about drowsiness being a side effect. Mm. I know hese are not guaranteed effects, but that's still ominous. So that's how I chose to take my daily pill at about midnight. If it added to my drowsiness, I still can't tell; it takes a couple days to recover from a trip like his anyway.

Novel to us was filling out paperwork ahead of going to Canada. Part of the faded remnants of Covid-19 fighting is that Canada demands the filling out of ``ArriveCan'', a declaration that one has been vaccinated and has no known symptoms or recent exposure, and a plan for what to do in case one must quarantine. This has to be filled out within 72 hours of entering the country, which presented the interesting problem that we planned to enter twice, once last Wednesday and once again on Sunday. We could fill out the Wednesday one already, but the Sunday one we couldn't do until we were already in Canada. In the event, we actually filled it out Saturday and there will be a follow-up to that.

The actual driving ended up unremarkable. At the customs checkpoint going into Canada the officer turned away our printed-out ArriveCan receipts, telling us they were linked to our passports anyway. All right. Did ask us what was going on in Canada, which is the sort of open-ended question I don't really know how to answer. Like, I'm aware Ontario recently had a provincial election won by the Make People Suffer party but it would be very suspicious if an American knew that. We offered, tourism, Canada's Wonderland, and felt the need to explain that we like riding roller coasters. Customs person also asked what we do for a living and I ended up over-explaining how I'm hoping to get a web development job again.

But the drive was all about usual after there. Our first rest break stop in Ontario ended up being, I believe, at the same rest break stop we picked when we visited in 2019, although this time bunny_hugger noted the existence of a working pay phone. She's joined a Facebonk group looking out for working pay phones, and while that one is specifically for Michigan phones, she imagined Ontario would be of some interest. I don't know how that's worked out for her. We got to our hotel room in early evening, found a Thai restaurant that wasn't yet closed, and brought dinner back to our room. There we discovered we didn't have any plates, so ended up spilling various curried sauces on the table on my own pants, but, you know, dinner. We were in a good spot to spend as much time as we could at Canada's Wonderland the next day.

Here's more photographs of Livonia Spree and the unexpected delightful surprise at its center.

Piglet racing! Each of the piglets had a name that was something punny, but I didn't have the time to write any of the names down. All were cute, though.

After the second race the PA played ``Who Let The Dogs Out'' and we had a race of wiener dogs wearing hot dog costumes, which was as funny as you'd think.

One dog really didn't feel like running and so puttered around in costume.

Piglets jumping over the obstacles of a later race.

Wiener dogs, not in costume, trying the same trick.

One dog got mixed up and started running the wrong way around, to the crowd's approval and delight.

Trivia: John Watkins Brett, who financed and oversaw the first submarine telegraph between the United Kingdom and France, was a retired antiques dealer. Source: How The World Was One: Beyond the Global Village, Arthur C Clarke.

Currently Reading: An Awkward Truth: The Bombing of Darwin, February 1942, Peter Grosse. The header says ``Special 75th Anniversary Edition'', by which they mean the 75th anniversary of the bombing. The book was first published 2009.

PS: How July 2022 Treated My Mathematics Blog, or, somehow I am suddenly popular in Romania?