Pandemic: ugh

How's this past week been for the Laundry Faerie, you ask?

Public domain Cyclone image by Mark Houtzager

Well, to sum up: it's been a roller-coaster. First elated. Then nervous. Then terrified that this nation will experience a full-on coup d'état, with the tacit approval of about a third of the population. Plus, this last week -- due either to nerves or some kind of brand-new food allergy -- I've been continually breaking out in hives. 2020, you truly are the gift that keeps on giving. I had a televisit with the doctor, who prescribed an anti-steroid medication, loratadine and an antacid, but the thing that's kept me out of continual scratchy hell is Benadryl. Trouble is, Benadryl completely knocks me out. So I can either be awake and blazingly itchy from the back of my scalp all the way down to my knees, or I can have some temporary relief and stay zonked out in bed all day long.

Let's just say this week hasn't been very productive.

Fortunately, Captain Midnight came to my aid on days when I couldn't leave the house, picking up aforementioned Benadryl and emergency groceries (gotta have Mountain Dew, he says), and other stellar behaviors. He's a keeper.

Miss V has been busy working at a local business, walking a lot, getting trim and making some big life choices. But since they're her life choices, not mine, I'll let her discuss them elsewhere at her discretion.

Charlie-cat is being a furry little mendicant, as usual. It's a good thing he's so cute, or we'd have turned him into gumbo by now. He's also discovered that if anyone leaves the pantry doors open, he can sneak inside and hide out in the kitty-cat clubhouse area behind the food. We have accidentally shut him in there on more than one occasion, and only found his super-secret hiding place when he started knocking stuff over in the pantry and we looked at each other and said, "PA! DID YOU HEAR THAT SUSPICIOUS THUUUD?"

At the moment our biggest challenge as a family is staying 'rona-free until we can get vaccinated... which, realistically, won't happen until spring 2021, but it's a lifeline all the same. I've been trying to avoid risk whenever I can, but I realize we've just been lucky up to this point -- it's very easy to catch, and it's extremely difficult to tell who has it. I've got five siblings, and at this writing three out of the six of us have caught a case of the stuff. Soooooooooooooo that's fun.

I miss my mom. But I guess that goes without saying. I try to focus on the memories of her love for me; she and Dad always made sure we knew we were loved, and I'll need that knowledge to sustain me for the rest of my life.

Adventures in Pennsylvania: Angels, Bellefonte, knitting and laundry

On Monday night we watched Penn State's production of Angels in America Part 1: Millennium Approaches (well, the dress rehearsal). It was a remarkably ambitious production for a college to put on. While I obviously have some opinions on the depiction and accuracy of characters described as Mormons in this play, I think I'd be hard-pressed to write a play with, for example, Muslim characters without doing a whole lot of research and frequent fact-checking with people who are actually practicing Muslims. In any case, the play doesn't concern itself with specific religious beliefs as much as it is a meditation on human integrity and hypocrisy. (If you have any kind of belief or set of beliefs, you're probably going to act at least once against them. That's human nature. From there it's a question of whether you'll persist in selectively applying your beliefs, return to doing what you believe is right, or pick a new set of beliefs altogether.)

Tuesday was laundry day. If I'm going to be on a trip for more than three days, I'll do laundry so I don't have to carry dirty clothes home in my suitcase. (Besides, I have a moniker to uphold!) I picked up a tiny bottle of Gain at the Dollar Tree, took about an hour and a half chillin' & sudsin' at a local laundromat and spent most of the rest of the day decompressing, as you do. Especially when you're out of your typical comfort zone.

Nittany Lion image by Eric Firestine, Penn State Daily Collegian

On a tangentially-related note, it seems like everything in State College is named after the Nittany Lion, the Penn State mascot. If I opened a yarn store here I'd be legally obliged to name it Knittany.

On Wednesday, I took the advice of one of the Penn State theater professors and visited Bellefonte, a little Victorian town about 10 miles away from State College. It's wonderfully picturesque: built on a steep hill with a river winding through the bottom of the town, an old brick match factory, a historic railroad that offers fall foliage rides, lots of Victorian "painted lady" houses and storefronts, a county courthouse with a copper dome, maybe a dozen old churches, some gorgeous bed-and-breakfast houses -- and at the very top of the hill, behind the courthouse, there's an old Union cemetery overlooking the town and surrounding hills. It really looks like something out of a movie.

Bellefonte train station image courtesy of Bellefonte Cultural and Historical Association

I also stopped by Giant, and serendipitously witnessed Marty, their loss-prevention robot, at work. The googly eyes on this guy turned what could easily have been a tall, somewhat intimidating robot with an Evil Empire vibe into something a little bit more whimsical.

Today (Thursday) brought with it snow flurries, wind and general weather cruddiness. This meant that even if we'd wanted to engage in some outside adventures, the elements were not with us. As a result, we mostly just packed up, ran last-minute errands, drove around for a while, and eventually got bored and headed for the airport.

The State College Airport is teensy. We're talking Fisher-Price Airport size. They have, I think, a total of 3 gates and a single restaurant/souvenir shop, plus bathrooms and a car rental area. When there aren't any flights scheduled to depart for a while, they just shut down the entire TSA security checkpoint and take a coffee break. We took a teeny airplane from State College to Chicago O'Hare -- which is sort of the opposite experience, a humongous international airport with multiple terminals -- and managed to catch our next flight back to Seattle just in time.

And now we're home again, home again, jiggity-jog. I'm going to sleep like a piece of lead.

Adventures in Pennsylvania: scrapple, caches and ice cream

Today was Miss V's first day visiting Penn State. After we breakfasted from the magic breakfast nook, I dropped her off on campus and began my daily quest for local adventure.

My duty was clear: this being my first time in Pennsylvania, I had a moral obligation to try the local delicacy known as scrapple. The Naked Egg Cafe, just off PA-26, was happy to oblige, with a plate of eggs, toast, home fries and scrapple with maple syrup served on the side. Paula, my awesome waitress, recommended trying maple syrup on the scrapple, and I am here to report that it took Mystery Pig Loaf to a whole new level. Scrappletastic! I was too busy wolfing down breakfast to take a pic, so you'll have to take my word for it that The Naked Egg serves some mighty good scrapple.

Seriously, if you've not tried scrapple and you don't have some dietary issue forbidding it, you should give it a shot. It's remarkably tasty. Crispy outside, creamy inside, very slightly smoky and sausagey with just a hint of pork liver. If you like sausage and/or fried mush, you will like this.

Thus fortified for the day's shenanigans, I did a bit of necessary shopping, then a bit of unnecessary shopping (ah, Five Below, how you tempt me with cheapie goodies! Why are you not in Washington yet?), then proceeded to look for a geocache. After a walk in the woods, during which time I got completely turned around (for future reference, maybe don't go caching alone in the woods on an overcast day in an unfamiliar area where you don't know your cardinal directions), I had success both in finding the cache and making it back to my rental car in one piece. Yay for another state souvenir! Yes, we've already established that I'm easily amused, thanks.

Back to the hotel to drop a few things off. Then I went to the one place where the camera actually came out: Berkey Creamery on the Penn State campus.

This little number is called Death by Chocolate. I can think of worse ways to go. Though it still doesn't hold a candle to German Chocolate Crunch from BYU Creamery. (Sorry, Penn State. You were a worthy adversary.)

Now I'm getting a few online-related things done and waiting for V to give me a call so I can pick her up from campus. As you do. If anyone asks, I DID ABSOLUTELY NOTHING today. heh.

Adventures in Pennsylvania: the breakfast nook

(As per usual, events are backdated to the day when they occurred, but will only be posted after the fact, because reasons.)

Miss V and I are on a graduate school scouting trip for the next few days. We've already finished our time in North Carolina, scoping out UNC Chapel Hill. (No pictures because I was too lazy to take any.) Now we're in Central Pennsylvania considering the joys of Penn State.

Well, at least V is doing that. Me, I'm prepared to wander around during the day and Goof Off, which seems to be what I do best in these situations.

But before I do anything else, I must share with you the wonders of the Breakfast Nook. See, every other hotel I've ever stayed in that offers complimentary breakfast has some sort of breakfast room where the meal is offered buffet-style to all patrons who care to rise and shine for it. But in this particular little budget motel, when we checked in they gave us a short order form asking what kind of continental breakfast we wanted (coffee, tea or hot chocolate; bagel with cream cheese or several different flavors of danish; apple, orange or cranberry juice), and every morning at a time we specify, they come by and deliver our order to the in-room breakfast nook.

"Wait, what on earth is a breakfast nook?" I hear you cry.

I'll show you.

Here's the breakfast nook (helpfully labeled), just beside our door. There's another opening (not shown) on the outside.

And at 7:30 every morning, here's what we find inside the breakfast nook: breakfast! Complete with a small carafe of hot water to make hot chocolate. Noms.

While offering breakfast this way might be more labor intensive for the hotel, there's less waste -- much less uneaten food to throw away later, because they find out in advance what customers want to eat and provide only that. Kinda clever, no?

Besides, I kinda like how breakfast magically appears. As regular as the mail, but much more tasty.

Later: adventures around State College.

Adventures at the Seattle Aquarium

Recently Miss V's been under a bit of stress. As previously mentioned, there are many projects she wants to complete before she heads off to her summer job. For the last several days she hasn't left the house, because she's been buckling down on a specific time-sensitive project, and it's been taking its toll on her physically and mentally. Yesterday she decided she needed a chance to stop, breathe and maybe decompress a little.

So we went here. (King County Library System patrons: you can go too, for FREE! Get wise to the joy of museum passes and start visiting sundry Seattle-Tacoma area museums -- including the Seattle Aquarium -- without breaking the bank. You can thank me later.)

The first thing you see (after the big Wall of Fish in the lobby) is the tidepool area.

Beautiful green anemones (or as Nemo put it, "an anemonemone") wave serenely in the artificial surf.

This area is the touchable tidepool, where visitors are allowed to reach out and touch someone. The invertebrates, specifically, like anemones, sea cucumbers, urchins and sea stars. (Don't poke the fish. They don't like it.)

(For that matter, don't poke the humans. Some of them may like it, but you should always ask first. That's just polite.)

Having poked our fill of tidepool creatures, we wandered through the big donut fulla jellyfish (does this make it a jelly donut? hmm.) and into the next area, which turned out to contain...

...a Pacific giant octopus. (He was hard to photograph.) These guys are at least as smart as -- possibly smarter than -- dogs, and there are stories of them temporarily escaping their tanks in order to eat crabs and other delicacies from other tanks nearby.

We proceeded to the big tank full of reef fish: blue tangs, wrasses, unicornfish (really, that's what they're called) and one big pufferfish cruising along looking genial. V spent a lot of time in front of this tank, enjoying all the various creatures.

As you may have noticed already, I don't take the best pictures of creatures in tanks -- I tend not to keep track of shadows and reflections, and my camera doesn't capture the quick movements of fish very well -- but I got a few acceptable shots here and there.

While V remained mesmerized by the big tank, I took a few photos of corals and the fish that love them.

This one resembled nothing so much as a big pink head of cauliflower.

(insert additional obligatory Finding Nemo reference here)

Dwarf cuttlefish image courtesy Seattle Aquarium press photo library

We spent a lot of time watching the dwarf cuttlefish tank, for two reasons: 1) it's entertaining to watch them change color, which they do very quickly, and 2) we happened to be there around feeding time, and watching them zap out long feeding tentacles to catch little shrimp in the water (very similar to watching a frog catch flies with its tongue) was worth the visit all by itself.

Although we spent a lot of time watching the cuttles, I completely forgot to photograph one, so HOORAY FOR STOCK PHOTOS! Thanks to the Seattle Aquarium for making so many images available to the public.

This lovely creature is a longnose butterflyfish, or as it's called in Hawaiian, a lauwiliwilinukunukuoi’oi. Don't ask me to say it three times fast.

More jellies! I do like to watch them merrily glooping their way through the water. Always think of the Lewis Carroll word "galumphing" when I see them doing their thing.

Fish fry on the ceiling! No, not fried fish, that's down the street at Ivar's. These are little fishies hatched here at the aquarium, who will some day grow up to be big salmon.

My favorite room in the Seattle Aquarium: the dome, where the people are on display under glass and the fish get to come stare at them. It only seems fair.

Well, let's move on to the mammals.

It was a nice warm spring day, so all three of the harbor seals were out of the water and basking in the sun. Some of them twitched and rolled a bit in their sleep, as though they were dreaming.

We happened to come around feeding time, so we watched the sea lions being fed buckets of various small silver fish, which they caught expertly.

Finally, it's really difficult to get pictures of these guys since they move so fast and they're always on the go, but here's the best photo I took of the river otters playing underwater. They were super cute.

We went to a few other places along the waterfront and finished up our outing at Pike Place Market near closing time.

No, we didn't go on the Great Wheel today. V is no longer a huge fan of Ferris wheels. Ever since she and Jenny had that Sun Wheel incident at Disneyland...

Thanks, Seattle, it's been fun. We'll be back soon to goof off some more.

And thanks to you for reading all the way to the end of this photo essay. Here, have a fish!

Funko HQ

Miss V is home for a couple of months before she starts her summer job. So, of course, there are a few things that need to be done in the short time she's here.

One of those things was to visit Funko headquarters in Everett. So on Tuesday, that's what we did.

It was a beautiful day in early spring and... hey, is that Grape Ape? I haven't seen that big lug since Saturday mornings in the '70s!

Let's take a look inside this place.

If you've never been, be aware that Funko HQ is essentially a glorified gift shop for all things Funko, including some items you may never have heard of before. For me, that included Wetmore Forest, a product line named after the street where Funko HQ lives. Lots of little enchanted animalesque critters in this area...

...including Mr. Wetmore Wizard here. (His real name is Magnus, for the purists among you.)

There's also a Japan-themed area, which includes Sailor Moon here (and Super Saiyan Goku on the other side of the torii gate, but I didn't take his picture).

What else can you find in Japan?

Pfft. Like you have to ask. AIIIEEEEE GOJIRA! And, you know, MERCHANDISE!

They do a pretty good job of Funko-ing up Tokyo in here.

Oh no, watch out Gojira! All those Huckleberry Hounds on the bullet train are about to meet their maker! I can't look.

There are quite a few other themed areas, including Star Wars, Marvel, Disney...

... and of course, DC. (Sorry about the slightly blurry Batman. He's a hero on the go. Hard to get a nice sharp fotie.)

We got to see the Joker...

... and Killer Croc in lockdown.

Because JUSTICE.

Quick, Robin, to the Batmobile! *farrago of trumpets*

There may or may not exist a picture of Miss V riding shotgun with Batman. Just saying.

The aforementioned Disney section with JUST MY FAVORITE DISNEY CHARACTER EVER. (Brown-haired bookworm in her own little world? Um, yep, I'll take a half dozen.)

OK, fine, they also had Tiana.

And Elsa. Big deal.

And then there was the area where I spent the majority of my time.

This shouldn't be much of a surprise to anyone who's ever talked to me about books for half a second.

I'm not a fan of the hypercephalic squared-off head look, so much of Funko's merchandise doesn't thrill me, but I was highly tempted to pick up a T-shirt of Hermione sitting on a stack of books. Again, brown-haired bookworms are My People.

This area was full of nifty details. There are, of course, the obvious characters like Hagrid and the trio above, but if you look you might see Dobby hanging out in a window.

 Some of those windows contain creepiness, like this display from Borgin & Burkes.

I also spied Dumbledore hanging out on an upper floor.

And the Noseless One himself skulking around Knockturn Alley.

Everybody say bye to Pete the Dementor. "Bye, Pete the Dementor!"

Thus ends our small adventure at Funko HQ. Miss V picked up some DC-themed goodies and I took a raft of pictures, and we subsequently departed in search of lunch.

If you want to go: admission is free (it is basically a big gift shop), but parking in the Diamond garage across the street costs $5 for 2 hours as of this writing. Start with the minimal time (and money) investment for parking unless you're really, REALLY into Funko stuff.