You can plan on me

So on to Christmas. bunny_hugger and her brother hoped we'd be able to open presents quickly and make time for board games or similar activities. And we had all agreed it was going to be a skinnier Christmas. I did my part, getting about half of what I usually would. Even once I had the job I didn't go wild on buying stuff, although it felt easier to put stuff on my credit card. To my disappointment one of the things I had gotten --- and had ordered even before the job came through --- hadn't yet arrived. That's the 2023 roller coaster calendar, from the American Coaster Enthusiasts. They had some problem with their printer and the calendars are running late. They'd hoped to get them out by New Year's, but that didn't happen, and I haven't heard what the schedule now is.

bunny_hugger's brother and partner were almost embarrassingly generous, especially to us. I certainly felt inadequate having gotten just the one thing for each of them, while they had several gifts for both me and bunny_hugger, and some more that would arrive in the mail later. But they waved off this difference on the grounds that there've been years we gave more to them than they did to us and if they're feeling flush with capital this year, that's fine. And it is, really, but it gets in the way of a quick presents exchange.

bunny_hugger got some quite choice and useful presents. one from me was a button-maker that she'd had her eye on for a long while. This will be useful in her pinball activities since it'll be easier to make buttons as trophies for people winning side tournaments and the like. We had used easier plastic medals and buttons from Michael's, available as kiddie craft projects, but for some reason those have been discontinued. Buttons at least we hope will stay in production longer. She also got some nice gardening tools, including a plant cutter much like one she'd given her brother.

bunny_hugger's father gave to me something he warned would be controversial, and her mother rolled her eyes at this in the way she does when she said not to do something and he did it anyway. So. I had put a book about airships --- zeppelins and the like --- on my wish list, mostly because The Space Review had a good review of the recently-published history. Her father took this as indication that I was really into the one zeppelin that any person could name. So he bought a certified piece of Hindenburg debris, mounted on a huge plaque with a photograph of the zeppelin burning in the crash. And then another huge plaque with a painting of the Hindenburg wheeeling out of an aircraft hangar. As I tried to process all this he pointed out how the artist had cleverly composed the painting so the swastika was in shadow, where it's harder to notice. And then, judging the certified-debris plaque to have an inadequate mounting, he grabbed it and took it off to attach a much more secure hanging wire to it. And, later on, got to asking if I'd seen the mid-70s disaster movie Hindenburg, which apparently is built on a conspiracy theory that the zeppelin was destroyed by time bomb and ... well, I haven't seen the movie and don't think I'd heard that conspiracy theory.

Well, he came to understand that bunny_hugger did not want to hang these two things in our house. Maybe even that I don't want to, either; I mean, even putting aside that it's picking remains of a tragedy, the Hindenburg was (among other things) a piece of Nazi soft-power propaganda. I can acknowledge its slight historical importance without wanting to make more of it. Anyway the important thing is I think I'm not going to be getting a train of further Hindenburg memorabilia in coming years, although for all I know I'm going to get chunks of the airship Los Angeles for my birthday.

Several times over the day I disappeared onto my computer. My brother had said he was going to try arranging a family Zoom chat. So I held off on calling my parents for that, though I did e-mail to say why I wasn't calling. I was glad to avoid talking about my phone problems anyway. But the planned Zoom chat never got organized and while I've talked with my parents since then, I haven't seen them on video since ... oh, I'm not sure. Maybe not since Easter? Something like that.

After dinner --- so much lasagna and other sides, plus two pies for dessert, enough food that I wasn't feeling hungry the next day --- we did make time to watch something. We had brought the DVDs for A Charlie Brown Christmas and for Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas, figuring we had time to watch one. We went with Charlie Brown, and I admit that besides watching it I was curious about bunny_hugger's brohter's partner's reaction. She had grown up in Jamaica and had never seen either of these specials, not as a child nor as an adult. Of course I wondered whether it means anything to a person who didn't remember loving it as a child. I mean, the story is elliptical, the animation is most charitably described as ``unpolished'' and there's a lot of phonetically-learned voice acting. By many technical points this should be a fiasco. Well, she seemed interested and smiled and laughed at appropriate spots. It's comforting to have my tastes confirmed by occasional glances at someone who hasn't got reason to share them.

It was somehow late. Not for us, but for bunny_hugger's brother and his partner, who would have to leave about 9 am for the airport. They briefly entertained thoughts of getting an Uber or Lyft to Detroit Airport, or getting some livery service, all of which would probably have been possible if they checked sooner than nighttime the 25th of December. I think they even tried in the morning to see if anything had opened up and of course it hadn't. bunny_hugger's parents would drive them to the airport. Before bed I thought about how I should move my car so as not to block them in, but move it to where? I imagined that someone would get me, or I might wake up in the morning, when it was time to move the cars around, and was wrong.

Enough of that. How's the parade going, back in November?

Now for a real crowd favorite, the Petoskey Steel Drum Band. It's a huge, multi-level bus with dozens of steel drums all playing. And bouncing.

You see just how much action there is; this is the loudest float in the parade and such a merry one.

The linen service photo may not be very interesting but you can spot where yesterday I had that picture looking west along Michigan Avenue, and you could just make out this truck there. The time stamps tell me that it takes about ten minutes to get from Michigan Avenue one block east to Michigan Avenue and Capitol.

Potter Park Zoo's van. I swear there's a picture of a red panda underneath those lights and behind the snow.

The Capital Region International Airport's fire and rescue vehicle. I hope the airpot doesn't need that for a couple hours.

Around here my camera decided it had had enough of the cold and insisted it was critically low on battery. So I let it rest, missing a bunch of interesting pictures such as the Cata-pillar. After a while it was willing to try a couple pictures and here's one from around the end of the parade, before the actual tree lighting.

Trivia: The Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company built nine electrical turbines, and sent engineers to supervise the installtion, for the Dnieporstroi dam and hydroelectric complex in Ukraine, which was the largest in Europe when it opened in 1932. Source: Behemoth: A History of the Factory and the Making of the Modern World, Joshua B Freeman.

Currently Reading: The Rise And Fall of the DC-10, John Godson.