Tippecanoe and Dunkin Too
...And a Tyler or two, too.
Laces Out!
Heading into the second week of March, Athennia had a bad ear infection manifesting as a whole-head headache.
We decided that the remedy for that was to get Qdoba (and McDonald's "chicken" nuggets for the Molerat).
Athennia sent me this picture when she stopped to grab dinner on her way home from work on Tuesday evening...
Obviously Tom Brady hadn't been anywhere near that thing: It was way plumper than regulation size.
Stealth and Domino's
Athennia called out of work the next day on account of her ear infection... and, as fate would have it, our neighbor Nicole's car died just behind Athennia's when Nicole was backing out to go somewhere.
Our one maintenance guy Ralph beat us to the punch in giving Nicole a jump; but Athennia urged her to stop at AutoZone around the corner and have them put in a new battery (a service which, unlike dealerships and many mechanics, most auto parts stores will do for free—as long as you buy the battery from them).
Neither of us felt like cooking later that evening; so we splurged for Domino's... and for some reason I was in a picture-taking mood...
Domino's makes you use the "Santa's sleigh" door with a bunch of bells on it...
...But I like being stealthy; so 99% of the time, I still manage to get us in and out in perfect silence even with the sleigh bells dangling from the handle :)
And, for being Domino's quality, my pizza was pretty gourmet...
Later that night we took a walk around the block and probably burned off one entire pepperoni slice worth of calories...
Dinner with the Neighbor(s)?
I'd been planning to make beef stew for dinner on Friday evening—and inviting our neighbors, since there would be a lot of stew—but it was a cut of meat I'd never worked with before... so I figured I'd prepare the stew first, to make sure it turned out okay; and then I'd invite everyone.
But, by the time I was confident in the quality of the meal, Keith and Rosie had gone out, and Lillian was at work.
Surprisingly the answer to that question was a yes.
And so Jeff came up by himself, and raved about dinner, and hung out with us for almost two hours :)
Tyler One
Saturday, Athennia and I headed over to Tyler State Park for a long-overdue hike. We parked at the "Danger Dam" and followed the creek into the center of the park...
Unfortunately we were not able to get any skating time in—even though ice-skating is an absolute favorite pastime when it's mid-March and like 15 degrees above freezing...
Look at the raw power of that Danger Dam though! Those dead sticks must weigh ounces, and the water can't even budge them...
I must document this pathetic showing for posterity!
Then we pressed onward.
We came to this sign—on which someone had scrawled "Love. Serve. Respect."
Probably respect, for sure. And maybe some love.
I told Kitten to watch out for this probably-haunted Snow White tree...
Actually, just about all the trees here looked haunted: Are tree hauntings even monitored in this area?!
Doubtful.
Kitten was liable to be snatched up by a ghoul if she didn't stay close!
So, of course she ventured off the path into a briar patch to take some artsy shots...
I wasn't dressed for briars though; so I stayed outside...
The last time we did this hike (autumn of '22), Athennia was healing from a knee injury and hadn't joined me climbing the mountain to duck down into this little streambed...
Incidentally enough, it had been much wetter back in October of 2022, and these mossy rocks were so slick that I could barely get traction (and I would've likely ended up out in the creek if I'd fallen).
...See?
...So, after I insisted that Athennia had to go check it out, my treadless shoes and I stayed up on the bank and out of harm's way, just in case ;)
Eventually we arrived at the main foot bridge over the creek—and found the culprits for all the horse-poop landmines we'd been gingerly avoiding for the past half mile...
Then we decided to follow the creek back in the direction of the car, but on the opposite shore.
Athennia got a few more artsy shots...
We spotted a well-camouflaged nest...
And soon enough, we were back at the Danger Dam—albeit on the wrong side!
But, this side... has a cliff!
These pics don't really do the terrain justice; but, if you miss a step here, you are definitely getting injured—and most likely going headfirst into the shallow water and rocky creekbed.
Absolutely a deceptively easy way to die... and yet, there was no warning sign in sight. Are the cliffs even monitored in this area, or is it like the ice?
This shot gives a somewhat better perspective...
Are lightning strikes monitored in this area?
'Cause I think we found one...
We finally made it to the top of the incline...
...only to have to head right back down the other side...
Ooh, but this was new!
Someone put in some steps—and a bunch of switchbacks, so you can feel like you're going through the maze to get to the teller window at the totally empty bank...
We ended up out on Newtown-Richboro Road and used this little sidewalk over the bridge that we've never had a reason to use before...
Then we headed under the bridge, because I heard there's an art museum down there...
It's a real loving and respectful one...
Is graffiti even monitored in this area?
(I do love all the branches and debris stuck under the bridge after being forced up there during floods. Pretty awesome!)
— Bender, Futurama
Stay out of the mud, Kitten!
Believe it or not, the mud level isn't monitored here!
And, you know what else isn't monitored?
The fact that these support beams aren't even touching the base of the bridge! How's this bridge even staying up?!
...Uh, yeah; maybe let's get the hell outta here ASAP!
All in all, it was quite a strenuous and riveting walk.
We decided to commemorate it with half a dozen doughnuts from Dunkin on the way home.
...And Tyler Two, Too
Sunday was supposed to be rainy; but we woke up to find that it wasn't... at least not yet.
So, we decided to go for a hike.
But where?
We haven't been there in... God, probably 23 hours!
We tried to get the Molerat to tag along, but she backed out: Big day of video games, sleeping, and talking on the phone.
Time sensitive, those. Can't reschedule 'em.
Kitten and I parked near the foot bridge and backtracked up to the gardens at Bucks County Community College, to take a route we hadn't hiked since the final hours of 2023.
Kitten has her artsy shots...
And I have mine...
Oh, and she has hers again...
We stopped by the Orangery for a few minutes, because she likes old architecture like this...
And me? I like dangerous cliffs and terrain.
And guess what this little-known corner of not-actually-part-of-the-park had in stock?
This sign is ambiguous to me though. Is it...
\[Dangerous(Cliffs + Terrain)\]
...in which both the cliffs and the terrain are dangerous?
Or is it...
\[(Dangerous Cliffs) + (Terrain)\]
See, because—in my mind—the word "cliff" already connotes some degree of danger just by itself... whereas "terrain" only means exactly that and nothing more, absent further qualification.
And so, a sign that were to read, say, "Cliffs and Dangerous Terrain Ahead" would both completely remove the ambiguity while also covering the sign-poster's ass in cases of some pedantic pissant (like probably me) coming along and taking an interest in arguing the semantics of precisely what constitutes a cliff.
At any rate, there is a legitimate cliff just past this overhang—which I explored countless times when I was in my teens, and in shape, and wearing shoes with decent tread...
...But this time I was middle-aged, and out of shape, and wearing three-year-old shoes with zero tread left... So, for reasons that would have been readily apparent to us even in the absence of some nagging warning sign, we kept our distance :)
And, of course, the rest of the area is more like a very steep hill than a full-on cliff. But, who's counting?
Caution: Raging Psychos Abound! One minute, you're happily living your life; then, the next, some stranger is drilling the back of your head open like Jeffrey Dahmer so he can literally hang a dumb sign from your broken body.
Shame on you.
Our plan was to backtrack along the creek until we returned to the foot bridge, where we'd parked.
...And to hopefully not get dumped on by the coming storm—the same storm that had already killed more than three dozen people across the country.
The wind was insane and we smelled smoke though; so we also wanted to be sure we weren't walking into a forest fire.
Everything seemed good as far as we could see though...
Maybe this could be our ticket down?
I wasn't trying to fight two homeless guys on a dangerous cliff plus terrain. All we could do was hang around up on the high ground and wait them out.
Then we proceeded down to the water...
As usual, the pictures don't really do justice to the incline. This was a hell of a slope—made only marginally easier by "cheating" and using an eroded streambed to make our descent...
Athennia wanted a closer look at the remnants of the old pumping station that's still here...
Turns out they have standards though, and I wasn't allowed in...
A couple more artsy shots, compliments of Kitten...
Then it was mostly smooth sailing—or pathing—back to the parking lot...
I would've preferred homeless people, personally.
After the hike, we said to ourselves, "You know what we haven't had in forever? Half a dozen doughnuts from Dunkin!"
That was... a one-time experience: We stood in front of the counter for a good three minutes while no less than five staff members made eye contact but none moved to greet us or take our order.
So then, we assumed they must be expecting us to take our own order at the kiosk—since that seems to be the trend in fast food, where we'd all rather grunt at a screen or use The Mobile AppTM so that one day soon we'll never have to talk to another human being ever again.
Fine.
But, no sooner did we start our order on the kiosk, when three different people approached to ask if we were "all good."
But, I just want some !@#$%^& doughnuts; and we've come too far to back out at this point.
We completed our six-doughnut order and paid by card... only to stand there for another five minutes—again making eye contact with countless people—while nobody moved to start putting doughnuts into a box.
When the bitchy shift manager finally got around to handing over our doughnuts, she couldn't resist lamenting what an impossibly stressful day she was having.
I'm steeped in logic all day long; and you don't even want to begin to know some of the garbage my wife puts up with at her job.
So, let's maybe cut the drama in half. And then in thirds. And then in quarters. And then just throw the whole thing in the trashcan, and stop whining. Pretty please, with a cherry on top.
The rest of the afternoon and evening were pretty uneventful...
Athennia took Riley out swimsuit shopping for a swimsuit for Riley; and I pulled my laptop out of cold storage for the first time in I don't even remember how long: I've been working on Untouchable again recently, and two of my characters are computer hackers. And I want to make sure my subject matter is true to life; so that means I've gotta brush up my hacking as well :)
I must say, Kali is looking quite sexy right out of the box these days...
...and my 2014 laptop is still chugging away like a champ, even though the people that built it for me had their livelihoods stolen from them by crappy government policies during The Scamdemic.
I miss you, ZaReason :(
But I'm looking forward to hacking something and then scapegoating The Russian for it :)