Well, no, we’re not doing this for profit. But we sure as heck had fun doing it. And today I have the results of yesterday’s tie-dying experience. The shirts are currently air drying and I took photos of each. And here are the five shirts that judiang and I did yesterday.

Here is my rainbow colored attempt. I need to remember in future to wrap a bit looser and then I’ll get more color and less white in the shirt.

This was Judi’s tightly wrapped shirt. You will soon see why tightly wrapped isn’t as nice as loosely wrapped…

This is my red & yellow shirt. I love the colors! And you can almost tell there’s a spiral pattern there…

I *love* this shirt! It’s my favorite! Alas, it’s Judi’s shirt! (She did the wrap – and it was a wonderful loose spiral wrap. I did the actual dyeing.) You know, she lives ALL the way in Chicago… And it’s at MY house… And it fits me, too! Hmmmm…

Yet again, a spectacular shirt. This one was 100% Judi – the wonderful loose spiral wrap and her own dyeing method. She’s got talent, has our Judi!

So, a wonderful set of shirts, if you ask me! Judi’s a natural, in my opinion. I last did tie-dying nearly 10 years ago, but it was her first attempt at it. It was fun and messy – the best sort of activity. And we got to do it in my chemistry lab – another plus. Can’t wait to make some more shirts with Judi!

“Trina, how do you spell ‘zyland’?”
“Can you give me some context, Taylor?”
“I wanna do a cheer for King Zyland.” (Heh, doncha just love 1st graders?)

Well, judiang and I went to King’s Island yesterday. It was mucho fun. We started out riding the Racer, an “old fashioned” wooden coaster that has a forward route and a backward route. So we did them both. I didn’t squeal or scream during the forward run, but a few escaped during the backward one. It’s a bit more surprising if you can’t see where you’re going!

Sunday, when the folks were visiting, Deanna & Abby warned Judi and I about the new ride called Delirium. It spins and swings at the same time. I wasn’t too sure I wanted to do that one. I’m not terribly good at spinning things. (I used to be fine with spinning. But anymore I get nausea. Heck, I spin once around in a wheely chair and I get ill!) However, I told Judi I’d go on that ride (she was looking forward to it) if she’d go with me on the Drop Zone. So when we walked by Delirium, I had to get in line with her. As with the Racer, the wait wasn’t too bad. Only about 20 minutes. (The Racer was probably 15 for the backward, less for forward.) And it was FUN! I didn’t get ill at all, and we LOVED the blasts of air we got as we zoomed back and forth and round and round. Heck, we were nearly upside down at one point – that was pretty cool.

We were heading for the Action Zone where most of the thrill rides were and saw the Drop Zone next. The wait for this ride, alas, was almost an hour. Though I think part of the problem was the crew didn’t have a fast enough turn-around. I would imagine that they could have gotten the number of punters in the line through in half the time had they been a little more efficient. The Drop Zone itself is pretty basic – drop you from a massive height. Still, 315 feet is a damned impressive height. I don’t have a fear of heights, but was willing to have one once we got to the top. The drop itself was fun – though I think Judi had some interesting pressure changes in her head.

Since that ride’s line was so long, we figured we’d best get Son of Beast done before it got too hot in the day for waiting in line. And then were shocked to find the wait was about 20 minutes. Three years ago, when we came to King’s Island on Memorial Day, SOB wasn’t opened that day. The ride was brand new, but they didn’t have all of the rides open yet (season only just started) and that was one of ’em. So, after 3 years of waiting and anticipation, was it worth it? Hell no! SOB is a good name for the ride. Like Daddy, Sonny Boy is a hard ride. Knocks you around considerably. Why King’s Island insists upon wooden rides when the steel ones are so much smoother, I’ll never know! (Millennium Force, which was Cedar Point’s answer to SOB, is a far superior ride. It was even worth the hour and a half wait that Judi and I went through.) We’ve decided that we never have to do that ride again. (The only plus for this ride was the loop – that was the smoothest bit and I love a good loop.)

Since the wait wasn’t long and Top Gun was right next to it, we went on that ride next. Ah, a nice, smooth ride! And thrilling! And only 20 minutes wait! Just what we needed to recover from that SOB. And we also headed over to Face/Off before we attempted lunch. When we got to the line there (again, no more than 20 minutes), the line for front/back seat was the same as for the regular seats. So we went in that line (and then the boys in front of us let us go before them – very nice!) It was fun being in front, even if it was only for half of the ride. Face/Off is another smooth ride and has a wonderful loop that you go on the outside of.

Lunch was at the FestHaus, the only air conditioned eating establishment. We needed a/c by then. I got two pizza slices, fries, and water. Judi just the two pizza slices and Coke. They had ranch dressing packs, which made the already tasty fries even better. The pizza had a crust like a Chef Boyardee pizza but without the yummy sauce). It was good getting food and a/c, but it made me even more susceptible to the heat once we left the FestHaus.

Judi loves the old carnie style rides and decided to try the Monster. I sat and waited while she went on the spinny thing. (Spins three ways – the car spins, it’s on a mobile with 3 other cars and that spins, and then that’s on a mobile with 5 other mobiles and that spins.) She said “wee!” a lot, she assures me.

Next was the Vortex. It used to be my favorite King’s Island ride. (I think Face/Off is, now.) It’s got 6 loops and I normally love it so much, I have to ride it again. But for some reason, my head got battered like nobody’s business on this trip. That, added to the slight nausea I had from lunch/heat/dehydration and I wasn’t feeling too well afterwards. I sat and waited while Judi rode it again. She then rode on the Flying Eagles and whizzed around over my head.

It’s rare that I poop out so early. I’m going to blame the heat on this one. Judi will back me up on this – the heat was miserable. So with my tender stomach and now aching head, Judi and I moved on to the Tomb Raider ride. I needed a/c and bad. I knew there would be a/c in an indoor ride. And, thankfully, there was. We were only waiting outside for 15 minutes or so, but inside – ooooooh! It was wonderful! The ride was fun too. I probably wouldn’t have gotten any nausea in normal circumstances, though I got a twinge this time. And you get to dangle upside down! And belly down! It’s pretty cool. Literally. Heh!

Feeling a world of better, Judi and I compounded that good feeling with a mango smoothie and an ice cream cone, respectively. The mango smoothie tasted good, but I needed something a wee bit blander. And the vanilla ice cream cone was just what the tummy ordered. Once replenished, we returned to Monster so that Judi could ride it again. This time with cooler seats. (Did I mention it was hot?) By now, it was finally starting to cool off.

I went on the Scrambler with Judi – this is an old carnie ride that I used to go on at the fair. I sat in the fat people seat and Judi whammed into me several times during the ride. It was mucho fun. We then got in Dodgem cars and whammed into each other and other peoples cars. On our way to the next carnie ride, Judi paid $5 to see how well Curves was building up my arm muscles. I did the ol’ sledgehammer thingy. Scored a 76 (out of 100) on the first hit, an 83 on the second, and a measly 70 on the last). Judi got a stuffed shar pei out of the deal, at least. And then we rode the Shake, Rattle and Roll. It didn’t shake, rattle, or roll, but it did spin. So Judi talked to me to get my mind off the slight nausea that was starting, and we survived the trip.

Well, by then it was after 8pm and we’d ridden all the rides we wanted to. (We avoided The Beast and Flight of Fear because we’d done them before and they were just too hard on our old bones). So back to the car for the drive home! Only to discover that Trina had left her window open! Silly gurl! Thankfully, my car was full of crap that no one in their right mind would want to steal, so everything was just as it was when we left it.

When we got near the Dayton Mall (which is in Miamisburg, go figure) area, we looked for someplace for supper. First place we saw was Steak & Shake – so we were about to head there when I saw the Atlanta Bread Company. Hmmmm, a restaurant I’d never heard of. I drove there instead and we arrived 15 minutes before they closed. I got half a chicken & pesto panini and a half bowl of baked potato soup, plus an IBC cream soda. Ah, just the type of comfort food I needed. And since we were at a bakery, I bought us croissants and cheese danish for breakfast. Best of all, they were buy one get one free since it was closing time. Mmmmm!

We finally got back to the cottage around 10:30 and promptly crashed. By 11:30, we were in bed.

This morning, we slept in until 9:30am and had our lovely baked goods. Then we putzed around (oh, OK, we slept, all right?) until 12:30. I started a fire and we grilled hot dogs and ate grape salad. Then we picked up the place (though I still need to go back and vacuum the place) and packed the car. Onto my house and then to the school. We had shirts to tie-dye!

This was Judi’s first time at tie-dying and it’s been a few years since I last did it. But we did it and we think we’ll have some pretty cool shirts when they’re done. I’ll find out tomorrow evening when I rinse them out. I’ll have to take photos for Judi – and might even put them here as well. 🙂 After the job was done, we drove to Friendly’s for supper (which is becoming a tradition by now) and had a nice meal – carribean grilled chicken & shrimp with broccoli & garlic bread. Very nice healthy meal – only it had a free sundae attached to it. Which, of course, we both partook of. I got the hunka chunka PB fudge ice cream with hot fudge topping for my sundae. Judi went for traditional vanilla with chocolate topping.

After a short stint at Meijer where Judi bought a couple of computer games (what, Diablo isn’t enough for you?), we headed for the airport. I dropped Judi’s sorry butt off and returned home, where I’ve since been reading e-mail and LJ and writing up this long piece. Judi’s home, BTW, and hopefully will be posting about a VERY interesting sight that we both had the misfortune to witness at King’s Island. It was a great weekend (as I expected it would be) and I thank Judi for coming! PS – don’t forget to order your MSP tix!

Thanks to dreethal and barbthebrazen on IRC last night, judiang and I finally got our ad hoc network working. And then we played a TCP/IP game of Diablo II. My assassin was having trouble killing the Big Bad at the end of Act II, but Judi’s druid recently kicked butt and got him, so she joined into my game and we killed Duriel together. Woohoo! Thank you, Judi!

So anyhoo, that’s how Judi and I spent the last 3 hours of the evening last night. 🙂 As for the rest of the time…

Well, on Saturday, we tootled about all day, having lunch at El Sombrero in Piqua and going to see I, Robot at the Piqua Mall. ($3.50 – such a lovely price for a movie.) As Judi said, it’s based upon Asimov’s book title, but is still a fun movie. And I experienced plenty of “edge of my seat” action. (Well, those robots swarming over things – eeek! It was like spiders crawling on things!)

We then shopped around Piqua, Troy, and eventually down at Stop Eight (a little restaurant infested area along I-75) looking for stuff to tie-dye. When we were finished there, we drove back up to the Lake and grilled steaks, veggies, and peaches for supper. Once again, the folks joined us.

The evening was then spent unsuccessfully creating an ad hoc network and we then played Diablo II separate from each other. For about 3 hours straight. (Well, for Judi it was more like 4 hours since she was still going at 2am when I went to bed.)

Yesterday I went off to the grocery, hardware store, and Pizza Hut to get the last ingredients that we needed for ice cream and the gathering (and to get Judi and I some lunch). Thankfully, the 3 bags of ice didn’t melt away to nothing while I waited for our personal pan pizzas to bake.

The folks arrived around 2pm while I was working on the ice cream. Aunt Becky, Granny, Deanna & her friend Abby all arrived around 3:30. Since Abby was able to join us, we were able to play a game of Dutch Blitz. This is one of the most violent card games to come around since Spoons. 😉 As usual, Abby & Deanna won. And, oddly enough, Judi & I lost. (Mom & Becky, therefore, in third. With some spurious points that we gave ’em.)

After the game, Judi and I worked on freezing the ice cream and grilling the chicken boobies. (And managed to not mix those two jobs up.) Supper was a success, as was the ice cream (on brownies that Becky brought – mmmmm!) We cleaned up the table and it was time for Shanghai Rum!

Mom was the early leader, but Judi eventually took over the number one spot. However, as often happens in our games these days, Becky was lurking around the 3rd place spot throughout the game. And in the very final round, she passed both Judi and Deanna. (I came in a respectable 5th. At least I beat Granny & Abby! Oh, Abby managed to get a record 1040 points! That’s pretty bad!)

Everyone bugged out soon after and Judi and I were left to work on our ad hoc network and Diablo II game. Now we’re getting ready and will soon be off to King’s Island for a day riding rides! Woohoo!

So, fellow geeks, anyone know how to set up an ad hoc Peer to Peer network between two machines with 802.11g wireless cards? judiang and I tried last night to set up something like that, but never could see each other. We’re using Winders (she’s XP Home and I’m XP Pro).

Any advice accepted! Please help! Soon! Thanks! 🙂

(If this connection to the Internet lasts, I hope to later write more about yesterday. The connection has been sporadic this trip to the Lake. Meanwhile, I’m off to the grocery to get sugar for making ice cream.)

If anyone who is mutual friends with judiang and myself were wondering where Judi’s daily post was, well…. We had a connection to the ‘net once we arrived at the cottage yesterday afternoon (which, of course, only Judi’s warbussing computer could access), but, unfortunately, by evening, their cable was down. We checked a number of times, and no go until this morning.

Now the wonderful irony of all of this (we’re still using the connection from one of the neighbors – who, btw, has since said it was fine for us to do so) is that had my parents actually gotten RoadRunner for the cottage, we’d’ve had NOTHING last night. The cable to our cottage is down. And by down, I mean the actual cable connecting the cottage to the main line is broken and now wrapped around one of the nearby powerlines. Thank goodness we brought several DVDs with us!

So, on to updating y’all about yesterday. After we finished up at my house (where Leo was SURE that he now had 2 people to pet him all weekend – poor disappointed kitty!) we headed to Walmart to buy some supplies and groceries (chicken boobies for Sunday’s gathering – woohoo!) We were very good – we got lots of fresh fruit and veggies. And no snack foods at all. Ingredients for the vanilla ice cream, too. But for the steaks, we decided to try the frozen individually packed steaks that mom & dad like from Aldi’s.

Dunno if you have any Aldi’s groceries near you, but these are places where the cheap-ass food goes. And the one near us has really nice cheap veggies and fruit. I mean, $2 for a fresh pineapple! (We’d already gotten one from Walmart at twice the price, but when I went in, I couldn’t pass up a $2 pineapple! So now we have 2.) Judi stayed in the car and I went in. I bought a 3-pack of peppers (1 green, 1 red, 1 yellow), the last pack o’ frozen steaks, the pineapple, and a container of cream puffs. I swear, they leaped into my arms!

Onward and upward we then drove until we got to the cottage. And just as we finished getting everything out of the car, mom & dad showed up. So we sat around and watched the rain sitting high and dry in the 3-season room. Once it was closer to suppertime, I went out in the steady drizzle and started the fire. We opted to have hot dogs that night and steaks the following night. Mom cooked up the 10 ears of corn that we bought (for $2 – and they were the excellent Fulton Farms sweet corn) and I shucked (aw, shucks!). So with nicely charred hotdogs, loveingly grilled by Judi and I, and the corn, we had a lovely supper. (Since father only ate 1 ear, and mom and I only had 3 ears each, Judi had to take one for the team and eat 3 ears herself.)

Eventually the folks headed back home and Judi and I realized then the neighbor’s cable was down. Alas! So we sat in the living room and watched Life of Brian, which Judi had never seen before. She agreed that it was a funny movie. Then I came up with the great idea that if I could find a way onto the network, Judi and I could play a networked game of Diablo II. Alas, even sitting in the kitchen with my wireless card touching the window and pointing to the neighbor’s bedroom where the router is, I couldn’t get a stable connection for more than a few seconds.

So after the fruitless attemtps, Judi played Diablo with my Assassin and tried to kill Duriel for me. No success, alas, but perhaps another time. Judi opted to sleep on the air bed in the 3-season room, so for the first time in ever, I actually got to sleep in the bedroom when I have guests here. 🙂

Judi’s snoring away right now as I type this up. Dunno what our plans are for the day other than to have steaks for supper. I’ll probably bore inform you of the details later.

judiang arrived (a little late, as usual, thanks ATA!) and we’ve had a nice lunch at Cafe Anticoli’s and some of my decadent chocolate ice cream. She got to see a REAL country store (aka a store which is in the country). We bought 2 vanilla beans from the Spice Rack so we can make some decadent vanilla ice cream for Sunday.

We’ll probably go see I, Robot today and then hang out at the Lake. No idea if the ‘net connection is still available, but, hey, we can cope. 🙂

Just in case any of you are ever called upon to set up a school full of computers, let me suggest something that might make your life easier…

When you’re working on the music room, make sure the sound cards work on the computers before assigning them to the room…

(Thankfully, there are just 2 computers in the music room. But I didn’t even think of checking the sound until I was nearly done setting them up. Gee, thanks JVS (Joint Vocational School) for giving us computers with sound cards that don’t work! Swapped those two computers out with two of our usual computers (not from the JVS, in other words) and we now have sound.)

(Oh, in a similar pique of irony, the computer gods had one of the art room computers stuck at only 16 colors. Just what I needed to cap off the day – an art computer with broken video. Thankfully, that was a quicky fix, unlike the music room computers.)

In other news, 48 new computers arrived today! Woohoo! Dad got them all unpacked (which just amazes me) and I’ve started setting up the master computer for most of ’em. I also finished the art room, music room, and junior high math room. (I spent yesterday, however, working on the art room and music room, so it isn’t as impressive as it sounds.) Tomorrow, I dunno if I’ll work or not. I will pick up judiang from the airport. YAY!

Oh, and I have just been talking with elsaf on AIM. She’s at the hotel (she’s in Los Vegas for a writer’s convention), but alas is relying on dial-up. Yay – she got to Nevada OK!

Ever since our trip to Cambridge, Mass, where I had some truly decadent bittersweet chocolate ice creams, I’ve been wanting to make some of my own. I did a half-hearted search online, but had pretty much decided that I wanted to try the Chocolate Truffle Ice Cream recipe from The Ultimate Ice Cream Book, a book that elsaf gave me for Christmas when she got me the ice cream machine. It uses a ganache, which is scalded cream on melted chocolate. I used Ghirardelli’s bittersweet chocolate for the ganache and Hershey’s cocoa as the cocoa. I noticed that Hershey also makes a Dutch Cocoa, which I might have to get some time. I believe that’s another bittersweet chocolate.

So last night, I made the concoction (and it was fun to lick the bowl) and this morning I froze it after cooling it in the fridge over night. And after lunch, I had a couple of scoops. The verdict? Damn, it’s mighty fine! Dad assures me that I’ve exceeded myself. I think mom might think it’s too rich. (She’s only had a quick spoonful so far, though.) I’ll let judiang tell you what she thinks of it when she comes this weekend. I think she’ll be impressed. It knocks Friendly’s Forbidden Chocolate ice cream out of the race, I think. And it’s so damn creamy and smooth! Gah! You just can’t argue with a cup and a half of heavy cream in your ice cream! (This is NOT low-fat by any means of the imagination. And I don’t give a f*ck…)

Mmmmm – ice cream! Gotta love it. (I’m thinking of making some ice cream for Sunday, when my folks, aunt, granny, and cousin join Judi and I at the Lake for cards and eats. But I think I’ll go with decadent vanilla. Aunt Becky said she might bring brownies to go with the vanilla. Mmmmm – brownies!)

Um, is this a good time to admit that I finally got my weight down to where it was before the first time Judi visited me this summer???

My dad tells me that one definition for insanity is “doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” Well, today I had first hand experience that computers are responsible for insanity.

I actually got 3 rooms done today (yesterday’s goal was 2). Well, I say done, but one room has a newish computer with a dead power supply, so I have to wait on the replacement for it. Another room has an oldish computer with a bad power supply (more about it later) and we’ll have to order a replacement for that one as well. And the third room I need to reset most of the computers to send print jobs to the right place (I was too tired to rectify that before leaving today). So yeah, 3 rooms done today. 🙂

My first example of insanity has to do with Clean Slate. In a room of 21 computers, all cloned exactly the same, 15 gave a blue screen of death when shutting down, 2 gave a blank screen with cursor, and 4 shut down properly. Funny me for figuring they’d all act the same, seeing as how they were all identical…

OK, you say, “identical” isn’t the best way to describe any two computers. There are lots of little variances here and there which could cause them to behave differently. Yeah, yeah… I’ve got more stories where that one came from.

Today’s new and exciting problem was a computer that decided to have a Himem.sys error on start up. Indeed, it had the error twice in a row. So why did I bother turning it on yet again? Well, cuz the third time it worked! Did I do anything differently? Nope.

I used the same sort of “well, might as well” behavior concerning the second bad power supply of the day. This power supply doesn’t seem to be giving enough juice to things. Case in point – the computer was actually on when I came into the room and I didn’t notice. For one thing, the numlock indicator wasn’t on, and this particular batch of computers has that on if the computer is plugged in (doesn’t even have to be on). The fan on the processor was running, but the fan for the power supply wasn’t. (So that’s why I didn’t notice the machine was on.) I actually unhooked the harddrive from it! No beeps or anything. (I didn’t discover the “on” thing until later when I went to put the harddrive back in). Cloned the drive in another room, brought it back, hooked it up (and went “ooops!”) but nothing happened.

I later stuck that nicely cloned harddrive into the machine next to it and then had its drive cloned (it was being a bear too, but for other reasons). After I installed this second HD into the misbehaving computer, I turned it on again, just for grins. (Cuz I am, after all, insane!) And guess what? Everything came on. The P/S fan, the CD-ROM, the HD – as if nothing was wrong. So I access the computer and change the name of the machine to suit it’s computer number and room number, and it reboots… But of course, doesn’t come on. Gah! Well, I’ll get a replacement P/S and hopefully things will be OK. (Though I’ll probably have to change the computer name again – it tends to revert back if it doesn’t get a proper reboot.)

So today, don’t talk to me about computers. I’m not in the mood. They’re making me CRAZY, I tell ya, CRAZY! :-p

I dunno how people can work 8 hour days during the summer… Summer is a time for goofing off. Work if you have to, but, man, 8 hours? (Spoken like a true teacher…. Where during the school year, we would KILL for an 8 hour day.)

But, despite my lazy summertime ass, I did work 8 hours today. I had a goal and, unfortunately, to meet that goal, I had to keep on working. Alas, Clean Slate still isn’t working, but I called and they said they’d sent my e-mail on to the developer. Gee, that’s pretty, um, powerful. Hope they can get a fix for this – the teachers will not be happy if the computers give them a BSD every time they shut down.

So tomorrow I have a goal as well. (You’d think I’d’ve learned my lesson today, wouldn’t you?) I’m going to finish 2 rooms tomorrow (gah!) and maybe I’ll remember my headphones so that I can listen to the latest Big Finish audio. I have 11 more days available for working (though I have more than enough hours available – I’ll run out of days before I run out of hours and if that’s confusing, I can explain it if you’d like). Sheesh – 11 days to get the rest of the school ready. I think I’ll just curl up in a ball until August 25th…