Mom won 4 tickets to visit Cedar Point during the 2013 season in a Coca-Cola sweepstakes. She gave the tickets to me, and I gave the tickets to a friend as a wedding present on the condition that he take me along. He decided not to use them. His loss. My friend Coop and I decided that we weren't going to let good tickets go to waste, so we jumped in the car and made a week long road trip of it.

My last two Cedar Point trips were in 2012 and 2010. My first was in 2000, before I had a blog. This trip lasted 2 days longer than that one, but because of the free tickets, I think I spent about the same. I'm not getting older. I'm getting wiser!

This sign in Cartersville, Georgia, looked terrible. (But effective. We immediately stopped for a 6-pack of Coke.)

Dublin, Ohio, is serious about public art and water fountains. Ballantrae Park has both. (Better pics and details here).

This polar bear reflects on global warming as he spends a 90° day at the Columbus Zoo. Not an iceberg in sight!

Why a 2-hour detour to the Hard Rock Cafe in Cleveland, Ohio? Because we didn't have anything better to do.

The T-Rex at the front gate of Cedar Point is another year older and another year shittier.

Gatekeeper is the new ride at Cedar Point for 2013. It gets its name because the track goes over the ticket booth.

Gatekeeper steals the headlines, but the important change in 2013 is that you can now get a Coke at Cedar Point! Whoo-hoo!

That's just the first 3 days. More to come.

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After the last two weeks of plumbing disasters, I think I'm going to have to swear off bathroom repairs once and for all.

Last week: I took it upon myself (with no small amount of prompting from my mother) to fix the slow drip in my brother's guest bathroom. Despite all of my might, the stupid Moen Posi-Temp 1222 cartridge embedded in the tub faucet would not budge. Not with the official Moen replacement tool, not with a wrench, not with a hammer. I know when I'm out-matched: rather than risk breaking the pipes permanently, I called a plumber.

At least it wasn't just me. When the plumber arrived -- at 4:45PM the same day, a Friday! -- he admitted that it was the most stubborn sink cartridge he'd seen in at least 15 years. I'm sure he said that to soothe my ego, and it worked. It turned out that some knucklehead had overheated the pipe when soldering with the cartridge already in place, causing the rubber gaskets to fuse to the pipe walls. I'm certain that Moen doesn't cover "installer stupidity" in their Lifetime Guarantee.

[For the record, wriphe.com 100% endorses Tom Donnelly Plumbing. If you're in Dublin and your tub has started floodin', call Tom Donnelly.]

Yesterday: while trying to make my father's bathroom more handicapable following his foot surgery, I tightened the tank bolts and replaced the wax ring below his leaky toilet. Trying to maneuver the toilet back into place in the cramped space, I managed to spill toilet trap water all over my shoes and the floor. Of course, I promptly slipped -- Jerry Lewis would have been so proud -- dropping the toilet and breaking the base of the intake valve. This necessitated a third trip to Home Depot on the day to buy a replacement valve, a trip during which my car window motor broke in the down position. Grrr.

Finally, at 10PM, I got the toilet into place and turned the water back on, only to discover that the new intake valve stem and the existing water line don't play well together. So in the end, I replaced a leak at the base of the toilet with a leak at the tank. Truly a worthwhile endeavor.

[For the record, wriphe.com is 100% opposed to Oldsmobiles. If your car's AC is running hot and its electrical system's not, you're driving an Oldsmobile.]

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From page 5 of the June 6, 1882, edition of Atlanta's The Weekly Constitution:

To prove that was no aberration, from page 3 of the September 2, 1885, edition of the Dublin Post:

It's official! The citizens of Dublin, Georgia, have always been bat-shoot crazy.

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There's not really much to say about the Idaho State game today. The line for the game was 43 points, and Georgia beat that by 5 points in a very lopsided 55-7 contest. As far as the minimal crowd was concerned, the game highlight was the halftime introduction of the players on the 1980 University of Georgia National Championship team.

Trey and I arrived late, about halfway through the first quarter, thanks to bad timing for the departure from his house in Dublin. I didn't much mind the late arrival because the trip took us through Madison, GA, a naturally picturesque town whose charm was amplified mightily by the colorful autumn foliage.

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Question: What's at the end of the rainbow?

Answer: It's the Pitts.
[Actual photo taken 08/19 in Dublin, GA, where "pot of gold" = "used cars."]

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I've been busy this past week installing a fence at my brother's home in Dublin, GA. I've been calling it a cyclone fence, but you probably know it as a chain link fence. Turns out that cyclone fence got that name from the Cyclone Fence Company of Waukegan, IL, a trademarked brand now owned by U.S. Steel.

So I've been committing the same error as people who call a copy a Xerox, facial tissue Kleenex, a hook and loop fastener Velcro, and soda Coke. (For those paying attention, the grammatical error of substituting the specific for the general is called a metonym.) Worse, Cyclone Fence was initially a northern brand (though the concept of the chain link fence was invented by the British), so I have unwittingly been using a Yankee word! I apologize to ya'll for this error and will try to correct my usage in the future.

P.S. I'll post a picture of Trey's fence once I've developed my the pictures still in my kodak.

[UPDATE 08/03/10]: Pictures. Note the DirecTV dish in all three pictures for site reference.

Start of Day 1: It doesn't look that big, right? Next time you shovel the concrete.

Start of Day 2: I lost track of how many fence posts after I was attacked by the fire ants.

Start of Day 3: Another day, another $12.74 worth of rebar to fix what we did wrong on Day 2.

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