A bit of last minute planning has me going on a road trip with my parents in the not too distant future to see Lincoln's Tomb.  I think we're also going to see some other dead president related stuff during the trip.

You could call this a 'reunion' trip or sequel, I guess as going to see a dead president was our standard spring/summer break trip when I was in middle school and high school.

I'm not making this up. My dad would plan a whole trip around seeing the burial site of a president and/or his home. Bonus points if he had been assassinated. Having already seen McKinley, Garfield and Kennedy, this Lincoln trip will add to my collection (I think we've also seen Hayes...if there's a dead prez within a few hours drive of Michigan, I've probably seen him). 

There is a reason I really enjoyed the book Assassination Vacation--I could related to everything going on (to a point...we never went looking for John Wilkes Booth's grave, but believe you me, if Dad had wanted to it would have happened).

The amusing part of this is that I haven't gone on a trip like this with both my parents in quite a few years. How will I handle a family road trip as a 27 year old instead of a 17 year old? It shall be interesting. I'm toying with taking notes, pictures (well, I'd do that anyway) and audio recordings of the trip and perhaps turning it into some kind of wacky memoir.

Oh and we're taking my 13+ year old cousin as well (he'll be my younger sister's proxy, I guess, even though she is 24), which adds another layer to this outing.  I guess it would make for a good compare/contrast aspect.

Below is the Family Christmas letter I wrote for Mom to send out to friends and relatives.  Last I heard, this was given the OK by both parental units.  I changed some things in this version to protect the innocents (mostly names).  Remember, I did this in the style of a hard boiled detective story. It was fun to write and of course meant to be taken humorously.  The idea was to include references stuff that had happened to us in the past year, so there will be inside jokes/references that readers outside of our family and friends won't get.

If you need to bone up on detective novel slang, here is a good start.  I didn't use too much of it, but what I did use could confuse some readers.

The whole letter is maybe four pages. Enjoy.

( Click Here to Read )

This past Saturday I went to the Detroit Science Center for the first time since I was probably in middle school, if not younger. I went to see the Shipwreck exhibit they have going on now. I'll be honest, I was a bit disappointed with it--but then maybe my hopes were just a bit too high (having an over-active imagination, that is not out of the question). The advertising led me to believe that it was going to be very pirate heavy, when in fact pirates made up a small portion of the exhibit and even then it was mostly new stuff and games, not artifacts and such. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed it, but it I left hoping to see a bit more.

The stuff they did have from shipwrecks in the ocean was neat, including a bunch of double-eagle gold coins from a ship that sank in the 1800s. And the exhibits where you got to pilot a little ROV (remote operated vehicle) were fun.

I guess in the back of my mind I went in expecting to see something right out of The Goonies or Pirates of the Caribbean, which was silly of me. But I had fun, and it was a great family outing. Mom enjoyed watching me build a shaky fortress out of these wooden plank things and Dad almost had a heart attack when he saw they had a Mr. Machine toy on display--something he had as a youth back in the '50s (or early '60s).

Everything can be improved with MORE pirates.

My parents have a yearly summer party and I was asked to come up with a teeshirt design for some of us to wear (not to sell). My only direction from mom was to make it 'something other people would wish they had.' Other than that, I had no ideas. My starting point was that this is the fourth such party which we call Sherylpalooza (named after my mom, the first was a surprise birthday party for her). Being the pop culture junkie I am, I quickly thought of spoofing Superman IV: The Quest For Peace and went from there.

The other issue was mom was only springing for one color printing, so it had to be a simple design. I started just by typing Sherylpalooza in Photoshop and looking at my different fonts. I stumbled on one that was similar to the font of old video games and I was quickly inspired. I made the shirt look like the start up screen of an old arcade game.


I'm pretty happy with how this turned out. The purple background was just for my reference but i think mom wants purple shirts. The font and such might be made yellow so it'll stand out a bit more. I like the alien dude i used, it looks like he has his arms up and is ready to party. My version of the title ("the Quest for Peace and Quiet") is a reference to last year's party which got a bit out of hand in regards to some of our live bands (yes, we have live music so the -palooza suffix works). See, I brought a couple hard rockin' bands with me from Lansing and well, they didn't go over too well with most of those in attendance. Because of that, I was stripped of my Stage Director duties for this year (not making that up, Dad takes planning this party very seriously).

Oh well.

The © 1981 DANCO LTD. is of course a reference to game maker Namco (Galaga, Pac-Man, etc) and the numbers below 1UP and 2UP are the years of the party (first was 2005). I may tweak this a bit, some things don't look like they line up that well.

Wow!

I went to the local Goodwill store on a whim, looking for last minute stocking stuffers (I know my previous post re: Christmas may have made me sound a bit down on the whole gift thing, but I take endless joy in finding a 60 cent used book that one of my parents may actually like - it's fun). After picking up both volumes of [CENSORED] for Dad, a copy of [CENSORED] for my sister, and a hilarious copy of [CENSORED] for Mom, I went to look for anything I might enjoy for myself.

I skimmed the tall shelf, and to my shock I spotted a copy of Ian Flemming's James Bond adventure, You Only Live Twice - and I had just watched the movie version yesterday. Weird! The version I found was a 1960s book club edition (hardcover). I kept looking and I found ELEVEN more James Bond books!

So I ended up with (in no particular order):
Diamonds Are Forever
Casino Royale
Doctor No
Octopussy (with Living Daylights and Property of a Lady)
From Russia, With Love
You Only Live Twice (two different editions)
The Spy Who Loved Me
The Man With the Golden Gun (two different editions)
Goldfinger
Thunderball



So yeah, I ended up withs some doubles - but for 50 cents a piece, it is hard to say no (and they had a deal if you bought X amount, you got a price break). Especially if they are actually collectible - the hardcovers are all from the 1960s. I've never read any of the Bond books, but I've wanted to since Casino Royale came out last fall. If I don't like 'em, I'll just try to sell 'em online or donate them to the library's used bookstore. I don't have a problem spending money on used books. I'm going to start reading Casino Royale right away, and sadly put reading Out of Sight on hold (I've seen the movie already anyway, I'm sure Elmore Leonard would understand. I'll get back to it soon enough).

Looks like I only need Live and Let Die, Moonraker, For Your Eyes Only and On Her Majesty's Secret Service to complete the James Bond series.

Today's Frazz comic strip sums up my feelings about most Christmas music. I'll be very happy on December 26th, because I won't have to suffer through countless versions of the same tired old songs until next November (or the way things have been going, I'll be happy if I make it through October).

I really just wish Christmas was more like Thanksgiving. I could rant about commercialism ruining the holiday and people going crazy about buying things they don't need (and don't even get me started on the whole Nintendo Wii thing -- brilliantly summed up here by the comic Dueling Analogs, read the blog post below the comic too), but I'd be beating an army of dead horses.

I'm being hypocritical, I know, because I've been doing what I can to get people to buy copies of The Magic of Eyri for presents - but I gotta do what I gotta do. Hate the game, not the player as the saying goes.

I think now that I'm older (in addition to being single and childless), Christmas just doesn't have the same magic as it did when I was a kid. Before it meant fun stuff, now it just means stress for me and those around me. Don't get me wrong - I'm very happy to see my family and I love that part of the holiday, especially now that I have moved away and my younger sister is married. And that's what I think the holiday should be about: family (and/or friends), not getting a ghastly shirt from your great aunt or trying to remember which season of Full House to buy your niece.

BUT - there is a new tradition that has popped up on my dad's side that I've grown to enjoy and that my mom's side has taken up as well: bringing a random $20 gift and drawing cards to see who gets to pick first (we don't do it where you can steal gifts though, which I think it is a good idea - especially on Dad's side. Trading after everyone is done is allowed though). I like this concept, it takes pressure off you because no one has expectations about what they are getting and there is an added touch of mystery and the always fun "AWWW Man - why didn't I pick that box?"

Merry Christmas y'all.