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So a couple weeks ago I broke the fireplace. Here's how.

The significant problem with our fireplace insert has been that the fan underneath, which switches on when the heat is high enough, squeals. It's not very loud but it is at a pitch that drives bunnyhugger nuts, so, we were looking at ways to do something about that. There's not much to do about that. But in showing that we could in theory do something about it, I showed how you can slide the fan out from underneath the insert and back in. Except we couldn't get it back in exactly.

The trouble is the fan doesn't quite just slide into the slot. There's little metal shelves on the insert and on the fan that need to fold together, and you need to lift the insert off the floor a little bit to be able to fit them together. And while I could lift the insert, I couldn't simultaneously slide the fan in. And bunnyhugger could slide the fan in ... almost. It didn't quite get all the way back to snap in place firmly.

So I called the fireplace guys to ask them to come out and put it in for me, and in the meanwhile hey, it's still a fireplace, right? Only when we tried starting a fire the fan never, ever came on. So I added that to the pile of things to ask about. And then a couple days later we were starting a fire and the smoke was pouring out the insert, on the side, into the room and making a terrible polluted mess of things.

Fireplace guys came Thursday morning, after calling to ask what exactly the problem was again? But the happy news is there wasn't much wrong at all. Some experimentation concluded that the problem was vapor lock, the column of bitterly cold air in the fireplace being so much that the smoke was pouring out the insert's air intake instead. Heating the air up with the hair dryer for about ten minutes was plenty to overcome that, though. And the fan came on without any trouble when the thermocouple controlling it was put up to a heat source. They were also able to slide the fan in easily.

The downside is they didn't have time to see how the fan sounded when it was going, because that requires the fireplace being up to full heat and ready to go. When it was, we had an awful racket, like a washing machine off balance. I suspect it's something that could be fixed by pulling it out and pushing it in again a little different, but if we could pull it out and push it in again without their help this whole matter wouldn't have started. So, they're to come out on this coming Thursday. I'll be building a fire ahead of their arrival.

Next day on our summer trip --- June 30th --- started in the outskirts of Kennywood and gave me time to photograph our motel. Here:

View outside our front door, of the main office and something or other going on in the corner. Like you see, classic motel design here.

And there's our front and only outside door.

Peering down --- everything around Pittsburgh is on a hill --- at the road sign.

The front office is behind this wonderful tilted window. And they have the setup for nights to spend grilling, which is nice. And say, what about those stairs concealed behind the grill?

That leads down a couple narrow steps to the promised hot tub, not photographed because there was a closed door in the way.

There seem to be a lot of ripped-out electric sockets around here. Not sure what that means.

Trivia: Shortly before the 1936 Winter Olympics in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, International Olympic Committee President Count Henri Baillet-Latour personally demanded that Adolph Hitler remove anti-Jewish signs around the city be removed because during the Olympics the host city becomes ``sacred Olympic territory'' of which he, the IOC president, was master. Hitler complied. Source: Encyclopedia of the Modern Olympic Movement, Editors John E Findling, Kimberly D Pelle.

Currently Reading: Joke Farming: How to Write Comedy and Other Nonsense, Elliott Kalan. Kind of suspect Kalan has literally read everything anyone has written about what makes humor works.

On my humor blog last week I kept trying to get around to reviewing my readership figures for January, and breaking news-like things kept getting in the way. Here's the rundown:

• MiSTed: FX Down To Mobius, Part 2: A Moral Argument, Part 1
• This Is Like the Time I Saw on Usenet That John Candy Was Dead
• Statistics Saturday: Februaries on the Calendar, Ranked
• Robert Benchley: The Dangers of Bass-Singing
• _Rex Morgan_ and _Gil Thorp_ look weird because of surgery and probably marriage
• What’s Going On In Gasoline Alley? Since when does Gasoline Alley have EV chargers? November 2025 – January 2026
• Now the Time Has Come, There Are Things to Realize
• MiSTed: FX Down To Mobius, Part 3: A Moral Argument, Part 2

But that's nothing compared to pictures of Kennywood, starting with our less-often-visited Kiddieland time:

Kenny's Karousel, which I guess has to count as the oldest carousel running at Kennywood by about three years.

There's something appealing in the extremely basic carvings of cat and dog on the chariot here.

And there's the maker's plate, in case you had any doubts that was a W F Mangels ride there. Somehow.

Turtle Chase, the kiddie turtle ride, which I learn from Wikipedia apparently adults are allowed to ride? We didn't know. I'm not clear if that's ``allowed to ride with their kids''.

And here's a waterfall nearby, in the afternoon sun so it looks like a complex ice sculpture instead.

And then here's a silhouette of Steel Curtain in the afternoon sun.

Ran across this redemption game with the prizes these plush kangaroos, whose signs --- Don't Touch My Joey, Get In My Belly!, and TKO --- are pretty much all three kinds of kangaroo furry too.

Historic marker for the Golden Nugget which was back this year to having square ice cream. The year before they had a weird problem with cone availability somehow.

An expansion to Kiddieland was briefly Thomas The Tank Engine-themed, and now it's become Kennywood Junction, a Kennywood-themed area. Andrew S McSwigan, huh, now where have I seen that name before? Oh yeah, right here! Yes, Kennywood when it opened was at the end of the Monongahela Street Railway.

Some of the Kennywood Junction buildings that look like yeah, you can kinda see where this would have made sense as a new Thomas the Tank Engine area.

And here's Thunderbolt again. This is the mural put up and replacing the decades-old mural and, you know, I don't hate it. Do like how packed with cryptic park lore-y stuff it is.

And here's a slightly better view with different colors. I too agree it's weird George Washington isn't in the picture (as he was in the old one).

Trivia: The International Olympic Committee's original conception was that the presidency and headquarters would change with each Olympiad. This did not happen; in 1901 Pierre de Coubertin was re-elected for a ten year term, and six years after that re-elected for another ten year term. Source: Encyclopedia of the Modern Olympic Movement, Editors John E Findling, Kimberly D Pelle.

Currently Reading: Joke Farming: How to Write Comedy and Other Nonsense, Elliott Kalan.

Our elder mouse Crystal turned two years old today! Notionally, at least. We don't know when she was actually born, but it's the anniversary of taking her home and we were told she was a year old then. So, she's made it a healthy lifetime for a house mouse, and we can hope she has a nice stretch of bonus time.

When I left pictures off we were walking the long way to get to The Phantom's Revenge. And how did that turn out?

Finally, we get to The Phantom's Revenge station. Note the Phantom whose heart you walk through to actually get on the train.

From this spot you get a great view of the Turtle, a decent view of Thunderbolt, and in the distance, a view of Steel Curtain.

Here it's all Phantom's Revent and Thunderbolt, though.

We had some great light for pictures that day. Here's the back end of the roller coaster station.

And looking out from the exit queue on the Black Widow, a Giant Discovery pendulum ride that I've been on, without bunnyhugger.

Huh, wonder what ride this sign is for.

Now over near the kiddieland is still the Snack-A-Saurus snack stand proudly using the Jurassic Park typeface. There is a fossil dig attraction nearby so this doesn't come completely from nowhere.

I think they just didn't have the correct sign to explain why the ... Dizzy Dynamo(?) ... ride wasn't open and put up the ``weather is bad'' excuse and were bluffing.

Crazy Trolley's another kiddie ride we watched several cycles for. It swings a lot like a Moby Dick ride, though smaller. We also noted the Kennywood Arrows there are the older style, fitting the trolley styling of the ride and the picture behind of old-timey folks at the park.

And Leo the Lion's a paper-eater trash bin.

The park explains the history of the Kiddieland, along with the mildly surprising news that this is at least the second Kiddieland.

The kiddie Ferris wheel, which they got in 1924 and so goes back to a previous Kiddieland arrangement.

Trivia: In 1966, to meet the processing requirements of Medicare, the Massachusetts Blue Cross/Blue Shield --- which claimed to have the first fully computerized Medicare in the nation --- had to begin renting time on a second IBM 7070 computer, with employees driving a car packed with decks of cards to Southbridge every evening to run overnight and drive back to Boston in the morning. Source: A History of Modern Computing, Paul E Ceruzzi. They had bought a 7070 in 1961.

Currently Reading: Joke Farming: How to Write Comedy and Other Nonsense, Elliott Kalan.

I never gave you closure on our Christmas tree this year, did I? I mean the lone real one that we got this season, and that because of various presses of events, particularly the state pinball championship, we weren't able to get un-decorated and set out for pickup within the normal range of tree pickups? Well, we were finally able to set the time to take all the ornaments off and feel confident we'd got everything, and to take it to the last tree-collection area we could find in the area.

There's something weird going on where every year we find the place that collected trees after the week of Twelfth Night is no longer collecting them. This year we had to go way out to Holt, one of those imaginary communities on the outskirts of Lansing. Technically they were only accepting from Holt residents, but the dropoff point was a small lot with a sign on the road into the recycling center. Wasn't anyone doing ID checks.

Shame of it is our tree was in great shape, despite having been cut down over a month before. It was even showing buds of new growth, emerging from the trimmed cone shape that the tree farm had imposed on it, with faint green leaves (tree wasn't getting enough light) pushing through. We had to thank the tree before tossing it onto the pile, because it was a really good one, keeping its needles until we actually dragged it out of the water and gave it a good hard shake. And, as mentioned, growing way past any sensible time.

Fortunately for upstairs we set up an artificial tree so we didn't have to worry about that, this time.

Let me take you back now to Kennywood, where we'd already seen the incredible thing of Kenny Kangaroo out and about. What could be grander than that?

Kennywood's big Grand Carousel, too big to fit in its old building. There's not much special about this moment except I like that I got the moment of someone getting on, which is more activity than most of my shots of carousels.

And here's the control panel, bell, and a warning for people looking over at the control panel and bell.

We were waiting in line for the Kangaroo when what did we see but --- that's right! Kenny Kangaroo!

Back to where he'd been greeting folks before, except it was even more brutally hot. We don't know how he wasn't passing out, especially when Kenny was doing hops to draw attention.

bunnyhugger has a new friend!

We did mention we'd met briefly at KennyCon the previous year, but he didn't say anything about remembering us.

Trivia: An 1804 model by George Cayley shows the first airplane design like that which would be successful, with foreward wings and aft tail; by 1809 he envisioned the use of propellers rather than the flapping of wings. Source: Mastering the Sky: A History of Aviation from Ancient Times to the Present, James P Harrison.

Currently Reading: Archaeology, November/December 2025. Editor Jarrett A Lobell.

It's been cold this winter, which you could say about most anywhere in North America this winter. It's got us thinking about how the first weekend in freaking October we went to the beach and had a perfectly pleasant day. But to my point, it's been mostly hanging out between 0 and 10 Fahrenheit and if that weren't pleasant enough, we've been getting a fresh snow, a dusting to a half-inch, most every day. Usually right after I've gone out and brushed the snow off the sidewalk and as much of the driveway as still clears anymore.

So what has mildly annoyed me has been that the city never got around to plowing our street. We're a tertiary road, meaning they only get around to plowing us once every three major storms or so, and you understand them not going crazy over every little quarter-inch snow refresh. But you'd think they'd eventually have a light enough day on the main roads they can get the neighborhood streets, right?

bunnyhugger tells me no, and why not. Turns out Lansing, like a lot of northern cities, has a shortage of rock salt this winter. (Never mind that the standard formulation doesn't do a lot of good when it's this cold this long; it'd still do a little good if we could get it on a sunny day.) Apparently the southern states bought up all the rock salt this year for some reason? Like, I get MAGA states wanting to screw the sane people but that's a lot of money to put on the line for a prank that only pays off if it's a really snowy season. There's some dots here I'm not quite connecting but there's probably a confusing article about it on web site that calls their articles ``thinkpieces''.

Anyway this apparently connects to the conscious choice not to plow the side streets. There's a layer of ice down there, underneath the ever-refreshing snow, and annoying and slow as it is to drive on slush it's safer than driving on ice. Remove the slush and you remove the thing that makes people naturally drive slower, so in the absence of a clean street, this is the next-best thing. It's clever and I should admire the clever but I'm also really tired of it being this bitterly cold for this long.

Back to Kennywood. With very short lines for Exterminator we went back around a couple times and once I even photographed what was in the queue.

This may look like nothing, but that's why I photographed it: there used to be a bunch of old, 60s(?)-era industrial machinery here, part of the theming of the waiting area for the Exterminator (which has a premise that mutant rats have taken over the underside of the city or whatever). It looked likely to have been donated from Westinghouse or someone and I can't think any good reason to take it out, especially to replace it with nothing. It's not like it had to do anything besides be there.

But they did leave a couple pieces! Whatever those industrial equipments are, plus a new TV screen replacing the old tube TV that carried a local news anchor's reports about the mysterious things at the Kennywood Power Company.

See this guy? This guy's the ride operator. Do not disturb this guy. Okay? Why do you want to disturb the ride operator anyway? What's this guy doing that you want to disturb them?

Noticed that the Carousel Burger building now had a National Historic District sign on it, explaining a little something of its history. The building used to house the carousel but it's getting on a century since it last did.

Also a memorial tablet we don't remember ever noticing before, even though it apparently dates to 1928. McSwigan was one of the people that Pittsburgh Railways leased Kennywood to in 1907 when they got out of the amusement-park-operating business. McSwigan died in 1923.

bunnyhugger noticing that good-looking carousel over there and saying ``Hey there, horsies!''

Trivia: 46 BCE, when Julius Caesar reformed the calendar, ended up with 445 days: a Mercedonius of 23 days (a common intercalated month put near the end of February) and two extra months of 67 days total inserted between November and December. Source: Mapping Time: The Calendar and its History, EG Richards.

Currently Reading: Michigan History, November/December 2025. Editor Amy Wagenaar.