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It’s summer time!
One thing I like about summer days is the chance to take in a carnival. It is months away before the Dixie Classic Fair but with the warming days upon us, to go on a ride or just get a funnel cake is an opportunity not to pass up.
So it was that we took in the annual stop of the Michaels Amusements carnival at the Hanes Mall here in Winston. It is not Carowinds nor the Dixie Classic when it comes to rides but they have a decent selection, more for the youngsters than the adults, and for the price, it is good enough for the family without spending a small fortune at Carowinds.
Madeleine had a great time. There were plenty of rides that she wanted to go on. The carousel is always a favorite of hers but we steered her away from it so that she could try something different. A few of the rides were a bit on the sedate side like the motorcycle ride which was just a different sort of carousel.
Her new favorite, though, was the scaled down Scrambler. The rotating seats along the different pivots going in faster and faster rotations seem to alternately thrilled her and frightened her. I do not think she ever experience speed like that. At the end, all she should say was that she wanted to go again.
As for Christen, there was not too much for her to ride. But she did went on the Tower of Doom drop ride. Personally, I do not see the thrill of the ride where you are just raised up and then dropped just to feel the sensation of everything falling below you along with the 4G’s of force. After that expereince, Christen was notably weak in the knees.
We wandered around a bit. As usual, I avoided the games as I never had any luck with them. I also passed on the food kiosks. Was not that hungry really and while I was a bit tempted by the funnel cakes, I just gave them a pass also.
Before we knew it, we spent all of our alloted tickets and with that we called it a night. For a pleasant diversion, an evening at the carnival is hard to beat.
Photos from the evening at the carnival can be found in the Carnival Days gallery on Snaps.
It’s nice to be a long weekend. I have been feeling run down the past few weeks and it seems that every weekend to date just had too much to do and I never had an opportunity to relax.
So this weekend, my intentions were to do as little as possible and for the most part I succeed at that. Just some light shopping on Saturday to refill the pantry was the only task I did of any consequence other than replacing my vent filters on the air conditioning intakes.
The other big thing for the weekend was a Sunday afternoon with the Days. It was good to get out and be with them for the day. Like most other families on this weekend, the highlight was the barbecue. Nothing elaborate with the good old standbys of hot dogs, sausages, and hamburgers with all of the standard sides like corn on the cob and potato salad. It was a lot of food to eat.
The day was sunny and quite warm. The girls went swimming in the pool in the backyard. Madeleine is certainly a water baby. She looks to immerse herself in the water though with a life preserver on, it does make moving through the water a bit difficult. Christen managed to enjoy herself as well especially with her cannonball plunges.
Another notable tradition with Memorial Day weekend is that the highlight film of the summer season usually premieres this weekend and this weekend is no exception as I took in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. A decent film with the usual thrilling stunts and discovery of ancient civilizations. Still, the original excitement of the first one has never been really recaptured in the subsequent films but for a bit of escapism, this film did the trick.
Now the weekend is over and the time to return to work. Five more weeks before another long weekend. Far too long between holidays.
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A family portrait of the Day family, friends of ours of many years.
According to Best Life magazine, Winston-Salem is the 99th best city to raise a family in the United States. Greensboro came in at 96. Honolulu was the top ranked city noted for its education, low unemployment along with endless opportunities to enjoy the outdoors especially with all of that oceanfront property. I must say, in the six years we have been here, this is a very good area to raise a family. Much better than Jacksonville Florida.
The primary results went as expected with Hilary Clinton winning Kentucky while Barack Obama won Oregon. She netted more votes overall for the night but in the only metric that mattered, Obama continued his advance on the pledged delegates giving him the majority lead for pledged delegates. It is just a matter of time now but it appears Clinton is not taking the hint to move off quietly. She is determined to see it to the end and then some…. So it is Detroit and Pittsburgh in the Stanley Cup Finals. Not a bad match up and one I will probably watch…. The circus is coming to town and I may take Madeleine to see it. I think she can appreciate it.
When Salon.com dropped its daily download feature last year, I was really bummed out by it. It was an incredibly good source of new music and from it I learned about such acts like New Pornographers, Arcade Fire, Bloc Party and so on. The tracks they offered were not throwaways either but solid pieces that were featured as Single cuts later on by the acts.
Indeed, it was the loss of this feature that decided for me to drop my annual subscription to the site. I rarely visit the site as it was for its articles and political commentary as I moved onto other sites which offered the same for free.
Still I missed that source. I still get free music from my monthly subscription from Paste magazine. iTunes was also pretty decent but they had only 2-3 songs a week with one of them always a Latino act of some sort. But it is not enough for me to satisfy my desire for new and exciting acts from any genre.
So it was gratifying when I came across the free MP3 feature from Crave through MP3.com. Apparently, this was a new feature that was added a few months ago but one I never noticed in my infrequent visits to the site. It was like being the proverbial kid in the candy store when I saw all of these songs. It took me about two days to download them all, about 90 so far. it did not matter who they were or what genre they were classified, any free music was worth listening to at least once.
After going through the list once, the quality was consistent with what I have experienced before with Paste magazine CD’s: two or three top cuts interspersed with a dozen mediocre or uninteresting songs. I figure that our of the 90 songs, there are a dozen I really like and would listen to again and again. M83’s We Own the Sky is a killer track for me with its synth beats and ethereal vocals. Jenny Lewis’s country rock tracks were uniformly good all around especially Charging Sky. While I am not a fan of hard rock, the many free tracks of MudHoney were appreciated. I like the hard driving chords of the Straight Life.
On the downside, after listening to the Flight of the ConChords, I do not know why they are such a hit among critics; Jimmie Reign’s R&B tracks just were not my thing along with Ghislain Porter electronica version of hip-hop.
All in all, a decent mix of indie rock and electronica have found a home on my playlists and for that I am appreciative of Crave and MP3.com
