Where is October?

Wow I just realized I didn't bother to make any posts here all during the month of October. I guess I find it much easier to post to Facebook and Twitter now. Well, I just set up an account with Posterous.com, and with that I can push posts to both my blog and Twitter, so no more excuses for neglecting my blog.

As for what's been going on... well since we are moving back to Hawaii, we have to sell our house. It's been on the market now for just over a month. We have a buyer; now we are just hoping the deal will go through. Anyway house stuff has pretty much been consuming us for the last month or so, between getting the house ready to show and now maintaining house and yard so they look nice for potential buyers.

Last Sunday Tiffknee, Kenji and I went to the cornfield maze in Chester -- not the same one the three of us went to last year though, because that one was lame. We went to the same one as two years ago, though unfortunatley we we not able to go at night. On the night I had planned to go it rained instead. D'oh! Oh well, on that night a bunch of us went to dinner and bowling instead, and that was fun.

Aside from that, we haven't been up to much else. Looking forward to selling the house and moving back to Hawaii. :)

Best Baseball Park

This weekend Kenji and I drove out to Toledo, Ohio for our nephew's first birthday. To break up the 500 or so mile drive, we stopped for an overnight in Pittsburgh, where we planned to see a ballgame at PNC Park.

PNC Park is a relatively new ballpark, opened in 2001 or so. They did a really nice job of it, as it offers a really nice view of the city and its bridges from the infield, and has an awesome riverwalk built right into the park on the outfield side. Most importantly, PNC Park has relish, unlike some other stupid ballparks I can think of like, um, Yankee Stadium. ;)

When we got to Pittsburgh we though for sure the game would be rained out, as it had been raining pretty much the whole time as we drove through Pennsylvania. But since we already paid for the tickets we figured we might as well go and have a look at the stadium and eat hot dogs and have ice cream in a helmet. PNC Park has good ice cream too. You can get hard packed ice cream instead of soft serve if you want. And it's cheaper than the junky soft serve you get at Yankee Stadium. We had Moose Tracks, with chocolate syrup on top. :)

While we were eating out hot dogs, the rain seemed to let up, and the tarp guys started taking the tarp off the field. About an hour and half after the original game time the game started, and the Pirates whipped the Cardinals, 10 - 2. It was a really fun game because probably no more than 5,000 people were in attendance, so we pretty much had the run of the ballpark.

After the game, before going back to our car, which we paid a premuim of $12 to park in the garage right next to the stadium, we took a walk across the Roberto Clemente Bridge and back.

Most times when I hear people talk about Pittsburgh (except for my friend Thad), they don't usually have much good to say about it. But I rather liked it, at least what I saw of it.

Tubing on the Delaware

Last Sunday Kenji and I drove out to Frenchtown and rented innertubes from Delaware River Tubing for a nice relaxing five mile float down the Delaware.

I've wanted to go tubing down the Delaware for a couple summers now, but never got around to it I think just because I kept forgetting. But recently I came across a letterbox clue that informed me of the fact that there is a hot dog stand floating in the river between Frenchtown and Stockton, and that was pretty much all I needed to decide that we were going to go tubing.

We never found the letterbox, but we did find the Hot Dog Man. Of course he's impossible to miss as that's where hundreds of other tubers, kayakers, rafters and canoers all stop for their lunches. Kenji and I each had a cheeseburger, a lemonade and a bag of chips.

Between lunch and floating, the overall trip from start to finish took about three hours. The Delaware is a nice wide river, but there were many places where its depth was only a foot or two, and I doubt we encountered many, if any, places where the water was over our heads. There sort of were some rapids, but not really... instead I would say the water just got bumpy from time to time, but most of the time the river looked like this. :)

888

I have a few minutes before it's time for me to go deliver books for the library to elderly folks around town, so I thought I'd post something since it is 8/8/8 today.

8/8/8 began with Kenji picking up my friend Lex and me from the Newark Penn train station. Last night Lex and I took the train into NYC to go dancing at Frim Fram, and our plan was to return to the Orange station, where Kenji would pick us up so we wouldn't have to walk the mile home. On our way in, we lucked out and got a free ride into the city since the conductor walked past us three times but never collected the money that we had in hand for him.

However on the way out, we overpaid our fare, since it does not cost as much to go from NY Penn to Newark Penn as it costs to go to Orange. We left the dance with plenty of time to make the 11:49 train to Dover, purchased our one-way tickets, and then discovered that our train had been cancelled! The next train to our destination wasn't scheduled for almost another hour (by the way, as I type this, it's now 8:08 on 8/8/8 :) ), so we consulted with Kenji and decided it was best to catch the 11:42 train to Trenton, which makes a stop at Newark Penn. So, after all was said and done, by the time we got home, it was just after 12:16am, which was the time our original train was scheduled to get us back to Orange anyway. :)

Old Graffiti

Last Thursday was the last night this summer for Midsummer Night Swing at the Lincoln Center for Performing Arts in NYC. I had never been to this event before, even though we've been in NJ for nearly three years now, and the event has been happening each summer for the last twenty. So when shoechanger friend Joe Bopp said he was going into the city on Thursday, I jumped at the chance to carpool.

In addition to going to Lincoln Center, Joe planned to stop in at the Ellen Christine Millinery on 18th Street to pick up a boater hat to top off the seersucker suit he recently purchased. So instead of heading in after work, Joe planned to take the day off and hit the millinery sometime after lunch, then stop in at the Met for an hour to two and then go to Midsummer Night Swing. Fortunately I was able to rearrange my work schedule to accommodate all of this, and it was a good time.

I was fascinated by the Egyptian Temple of Dendur, which has been on display at the Met since 1978. Sadly what I found most captivating about the exhibit was how it had been defaced with graffiti dating back to the early 1800's:

I guess people have always wanted to leave their mark no matter how small and insignificant. I don't know why it never occurred to me before that graffiti isn't just a phenomenon of the 20th Century. Well, I suppose drawings on the walls of cave dwellings, petroglyphs and the like are sort of graffiti, but somehow they don't seem quite the same as carving your name and date into a wall or a tree.

Fan Fest!

Yah, I know these events are not in chronological order, but I have been neglecting my blog lately and don't wish to spend the time putting them in sequence. :)

The other weekend ago (July 12) Kenji, Tiffknee and I took the train into NYC for the All Star Game Fan Fest at the Jacob K. Javitz Convention Center. It was fun to look at all the baseball memorabilia, and Fred Lynn was there signing autographs. Not that we lined up for 800 years like many people did to get his autograph... I just like him because he played for the Red Sox in 1978, back when I cared enough about baseball to actually know all the players' names. :)

Because we're in Yankees territory, I let Tiffknee be in the picture with the World Series trophy. Last time Kenji and I went to the All Star Fan Fest was in 2001 when the All Star Game was in Seattle at Safeco Field. That time I got to be in the picture.

Battlecat Rebekkaka Comes to Visit

Or came to visit - I am woefully behind in blog-updating department. A few weeks ago our friend Rebecca, who lived in the building next to ours in Salt Lake, and who we stay with when we visit Hawaii, came to NJ to visit us. She was on the east coast for not quite a week, and two of those days she spent in Delaware with her family, and we still managed to do a whole bunch of stuff. Oh, and that fish picture was from one of the NYC subway stations.

Without doing a complete play-by-play, we had a lot of fun. The first two days (Tuesday and Wednesday) Rebecca and I took the train into NYC and visited with another of her friends who also used to live in Hawaii, Erin. I think Rebecca's favorite activity of those two days was giving away coupons from our Entertainment Books to random people on the street. While in the city we also visited the International Center of Photography Museum, had lunch twice at two different locations of Havana Central (we had coupons), had egg creams at Katz's deli, walked Erin's dogs along the promenade in Brooklyn, spent an afternoon in a lesbian bar (which didn't seem to have any lesbians in it), ate Thai food (no coupons), ate ice cream (coupons), and gave away some more coupons.

Thursday we spent in NJ since we planned to drive down to Atlantic City in the evening. Rebecca loves to discount shop, and in Hawaii her favorite favorite favorite store to go to is Ross Dress for Less. We don't have a Ross near us, so I took Rebecca on a tour of other discount stores in the area like Marshall's, TJ Maxx, Daffy's, Loehmann's, Annie Sez, and I forget where else.

We finished shopping, Kenji came home from work, and we all packed for the weekend, hopped in the car and headed for the Tropicana hotel in Atlantic City. The reason we went there was that it just so happened that Rebecca's good friend from Germany, Stephan, was in Atlantic City on business. So we had a nice meal with him on Thursday night and we had lunch together on Friday.

During dinner on Thursday we learned from our waiter that there's a Ross near Atlantic City. So guess what we did on Friday while we were on our way to drop Rebecca off at her brother's in Delaware? I bet you can't guess. ;)

While Rebecca spent time with her folks in Delaware, Kenji and I continued on to go stay in Chesapeake City. This time we tried staying at the Blue Max Inn. It was quite nice - the room was larger than the one we stayed in the last two times at the Inn at the Canal. Breakfast was quite yummy, and they have a pirate guy hanging up from the second floor out in front.

On Saturday Kenji and I spent the afternoon in Annapolis, MD, mostly hunting for letterboxes. There was a series of boxes we hunted for in a park - we found four of the seven we were after. One box we found the location of but didn't manage to spot the box, and there were two more that we likely would have gotten but there were too many people around watching us, and we didn't want to risk giving away the location of the boxes. Along the way we found a basketball next to an empty basketball court, so we tried shooting some baskets.

When we were done with Annapolis, we drove to a Metro station on the Beltway and hopped on a train that took us to the new Nationals baseball stadium to see them play against the Texas Rangers. We rooted for the red team (the Nationals) but they pretty much got creamed by the Rangers. Oh well I guess we're pretty much used to that - that is, rooting for the losing team.

On Sunday, Rebecca and her brother, sister-in-law and parents all came down to Chesapeake City so we all walked around for a couple hours before heading back up to NJ. It was a really hot day so when we weren't ducking into shops for the air conditioning, we were sitting in the shade out of the sun. While we were sitting in the shade, we spotted a guy riding around on a really old-time bicycle. I don't know how he gets up on that thing, but he rode past us a couple of times anyway. Unfortunately I didn't have my camera or phone immediately handy, so this was the best picture I was able to get of him.

Rebecca took this picture of us with the Cheseapeake City bridge in the background. All the nice quality picutres in this post of course came from her camera. :)

So you'd think we had enough fun already but after driving the 120 or so miles home, Rebecca and I had one more adventure to partake in. One of my swing dancing friends, Denise, had her 40th birthday in June. So her mom threw a party for her at a restaurant only about a mile away from our house. She hired the Gas House Gorillas to play, and pretty much all of my NJ swing dancing friends were there. I think Rebecca had the most fun making up stories about me and her to all my friends. Something about the two of us being sisters born in Massachusetts and that she was naughty so our parents sent her away to boarding school in Wisconsin and who knows what else.

Pine Creek Mini Golf

Today was a lovely day outside and we drove down to West Amwell to play mini golf. We went with Kenji's friend Matt and Matt's wife Nicole to Pine Creek Miniature Golf. It's a really nice course, complete with shade trees, a pond, fakey adirondack chairs, and a snake! We saw little snakey as he crossed the 18th hole to go for a swim in the creek on the other side. :)

Last Weekend

Sorry, been lazy about posting lately. Last weekend we went to two Mariner games at Yankee Stadium. Now we have been to four freezing cold games so far this season. Mariners lost both games, so they don't deserve to have any pictures taken at their games and posted here.

On Sunday morning I went to church with Tiffknee because afterwards we planned to drive out to our friend Mickey's house to watch Raiders of the Lost Ark in Mickey's little home theater. After the movie we each got to go for a short ride on the Mickey's motorcycle.

After that we came home to Kenji grilling chicken in the back yard. And since it was such a warm beautiful day, we decided to pull out the folding table and have supper outside. Kenji was in charge of the grilling, Tiffknee was in charge of the chicken-cutting, and I was in charge of iced tea and taking pictures. :)

Bowling with no arms

Yep, then after our inaugural quest for the perfect dessert, Kenji Tiffknee continued on with our plans to go bowling in West Orange. The lanes in West Orange are way busier than the ones in Roselle Park. It's cool and all that they turn the lights down and crank up the disco balls and music, but it was super noisy and we had to wait like 45 minutes to get a lane.

The other cool thing about having the lights down low is that it makes your arms disappear!

Lionel Richie Rocks...

... or something like that. :) After bowling and Panera Bread this evening and before the American Gladiator championship, the guys played a little karaoke. It's too bad we only have one microphone. But anyway there's Kevin and Kenji singing All Night Long. Hehe!

A Turkey for Lex

Yep we went bowling again this Sunday. This time Kevin came with us. Lex didn't come with us because she's not into bowling, and she had laundry and other stuff to do anyway. But she told Kevin to prove that he loves her by bowling a strike for her (oh, they are getting married in July for those who don't know who Kevin and Lex are). Anyway, Kevin started his first game by bowling a strike, and then he finished his second and final game by bowling a turkey. :)

New Bowling Terminology

Kenji, Tiffknee and I went bowling again tonight at Roselle Lanes. We made up some new bowling-related terms:

• Cheese - The last pin standing when you only mange to knock over nine by the end of the frame.
  
• Cheese Ball - The ball that knocks down the would-be Cheese in the second ball of the frame.
  
• Field Goal - The second ball of the frame that goes between two pins without knocking any down.
  

Pretend Fish Supper

Kenji and I went to a fish supper with Tiffknee at Tiffknee's church this evening. It was a fund raiser for the local Boy Scout troop. I call it a pretend fish supper because we didn't arrive until about 7pm, and by that time they were all out of fish. But they still had chicken. The chicken was deep fried in the same batter they use for the fish, so it still looked like we were eating fish and chips. We even still used tartar sauce on the chicken. :)

While we were waiting to be served by the Boy Scouts, I folded a tiny paper crane out of the blue paper napkin ring that came on our plasticware. The Boy Scouts were rather slow in their duties, so Tiffknee's dad shared some of the bread from their table with us. In return, I gave him the crane I'd just folded.

A little while later, the little paper crane ended up in the hands of Grandma Willson who was so impressed with it that she took it home with her, carrying it carefully in one hand, and in the other hand, her leftovers.

Just as we were about to leave, Grandma Willson's daughter came by our table to tell us that Grandma liked the crane so much that she forgot to take her purse home - and that's why she was back - to fetch the forgotten purse. Tee-hee-hee!

Gaffer Tape Wallet

Back in 2002, I had my wallet (and whole purse) stolen at a swing dance at the Kapiolani Park bandstand. The next day I was telling some of my chat friends about it, and one of them suggested I make a new wallet out of duct tape.

Well I didn't have any duct tape, but I had a nice big roll of black gaffer tape that my friend Christopher gave me as a going away present when I moved away from Connecticut. So I made a nice black wallet out of gaffer tape, and it served me well for five years.

My black gaffer tape wallet would still serve me well, except I saw some nice pretty bright colors of gaffer tape at the art supply store. All of the sudden I wanted a funky colored wallet. First I tried a pink one with velvet that had smiley faces crushed into it. But the smiley faces became uncrushed when I had my wallet in my back pocket while swing dancing. Also, the velvet was purple and I didn't like the way it clashed with the pink gaffer tape.

On Saturday I finally bought another roll of gaffer tape - this one's bright green. So now I have a funky pink and green gaffer tape wallet, with zig-zags and tiny hidden triangles. :)

Kenji is a Turkey

The proof is in the picture:
Yep, so anyway today Kenji, Tiff and I went bowling at Roselle Lanes. It was fun because for a while we were the only ones there. A bit Twilight Zone-ish really.

Woo check out that form! And all the other empty lanes!

More proof of Kenji's turkey. Notice where in the 5th and 6th frames, Kenji, Tiffknee and I all got strikes in a row. That's because the lane got screwed up and wouldn't put pins back down on the lane at the end of Kenji's 5th turn. By the time the bowling alley folks fixed it, all three of us had strikes (because the system sensed that there were no pins left behind after the reset). Well we decided to keep our free strikes, and I'm glad I did since without it I probably wouldn't have made my usual goal of getting to 100 by the end of the game.


Oh, also notice that in the far left column of the scoreboard, our initials are Mr. T. Tee-hee-hee!

Chop-head

I intentionally lost this hangman game because I wanted to see what would happen to the little orange guy. The guillotine blade dropped down and chopped his head off! Eek!

Music Video!

This week at work we are having our semi-annual "summit", which means that all the folks who work outside the main office come to town for meetings and junk like that. It also means doing fun stuff together, and this time it was bowling.

One of my favorite out-of-town work buddies is Lynn. We like to drink girly martinis (like chocolate or fruity-kine mmm yummy!), and he has an infectious laugh. :) He also says funny things like "intermship" and "upsad" and I can't remember any of the others right now, but we have a whole list of them.

Anyway at bowling Lynn and I starred in our very own little music video. Well you can't hear the music we were grooving to, and it's not much of a video.


Here are some other pictures from our bowling expeditions:


This one is from Tuesday night - we went to Dover Lanes, which is in Dover (I know, surprising....).

And tonight bowling was at a tiny little bowling alley in Mendham called Pastime Bowling Lanes. They only have four lanes, and even get to keep score with a pencil. :)

Just Another Errand

In spite of today's heat, this morning I decided to have a little fun while I was out running errands. In between mailing some packages at the post office, dropping off books to donate to the library, taking all of our empty containers, shredded and un-shredded papers and cardboard to the recycling center and food shopping, I did a little bit of letterbox hunting all by myself.

Today's box was located at the Essex County Environmental Center in Roseland. It was a very easy find, but took a lot longer for me to retrieve than it should have. The box is hidden in a tree that is in plain sight from the parking lot. When I first surmised which tree to look in, there was a car parked directly in front of it, not more than 25 feet away. The driver was in the car, and he was facing the tree and me. So I wandered around the walking trails for a bit in the hopes that this person would leave. By the time I returned, he had. It occurred to me that if anyone did see me, they might think it was drop for drugs or even better, national secrets!

It appears I'm the first person who's found this letterbox in nearly a year. The last dated entry was from August 2006. The stamp is a hand-carved image of a tree, and the keeper of the box includes a yellow and a green marker so that you can make the tree two colors when you stamp your book.

What Lies Beneath

After leaving my folks' house and before heading back to New Jersey, Mommy, Daddy, Kenji and I all went to visit the southern side of the Quabbin Reservoir.

Quabbin Reservoir is a large man-made body of water in central Massachusetts that was created in the early part of the 20th century to provide a source of clean drinking water for the city of Boston and various other communities. In order to build the reservoir, four Swift River Valley towns had to be dismantled, with the residents, buildings trees and everything moved elsewhere or dismantled. This meant moving the cemeteries too. Most of the deceased that had been buried in those four towns were moved to Quabbin Park Cemetery, which is just across the street from the three main entrances for visiting the Windsor Dam and Goodnough Dike. The cemetery is also the site of the letterbox we found today, entitled What Lies Beneath. Dig that creepy hand reaching up from the grave!