Category: Miscellaneous

This year, I spent the Fourth of July in Telluride, Colorado with my family. It took me a while to get out there due to some ground transportation issues, but fortunately things went my way in the air.

The 4th started with a viewing of the parade. It was… interesting to see how a small town in Colorado celebrates the holiday. Before the parade started, it looked like it would be a traditional affair:

And it did start off with what you might expect.

There was a military presence.

There were bagpipes.

And there was a fire truck,

followed by some old cars,

and then an old fire truck.

But then it got kind of random. And weird.

Actually, as I write this I do remember that one 4th of July in Pittsburgh the band performing before the fireworks performed “Soul Man,” so maybe Telluride isn’t all that different.

It looks like part of the tradition is for there to be a water fight between the crowd and the marchers. The marchers also throw candy at the crowd.

No green theme would be complete the obligatory hippie-themed biodiesel-powered bus. Hint to all of you wonderful tree-huggers out there: You’ve already marketed the whole green thing to yourselves. Now you might want to stop preaching solely to the choir and market eco-friendly practices to “the man” or whatever it is you call people who shave.

One float’s theme was “Party like it’s 2006.”

After a relaxing lunch and afternoon in Mountain Village, we went back into town for dinner at Rustico, one of my favorite restaurants. Both the food and service are excellent. We’ve been going there enough that the staff recognizes us even though we only make it out a few times each year, and I think it’s generally a good signal when a restaurant’s staff remains the same over the years. They were even able to quickly handle a sudden rain shower after seating nearly everyone outside.

After dessert, the rain stopped and we went outside to see the fireworks. It was one of the longest displays I’ve seen, and the full moon and reverberations in the valley made it even more fun to experience.

I’ll end with this gem from SkyMall:

Bad: Getting arrested.
Worse: Getting arrested on an episode of COPS.
Even worse: Having your clip chosen for the theme song sequence shown before every episode.

The next time I have some extra cash, instead of upgrading to a larger TV, I think I’ll just put all the money towards extra remote controls. I can then scatter them throughout my apartment, so I’ll never again have to experience that moment where after getting settled on the couch, I realize that the remote is sitting on the kitchen table.

I went to a midnight screening of Up tonight in 3D. Don’t worry, I won’t post any (major) spoilers; I should probably be getting to bed anyway. A few quick thoughts:

• It’s a good movie, and this was expected. Pixar doesn’t make bad films. It has a good story and Pixar-level humor.
• Yes, there’s a new short before the feature, and it got a lot of laughs.
• I honestly could have done without the 3D. Some fast-motion segments just seemed blurry, and the perspective often felt a bit off. Fortunately there weren’t many gratuitous 3D show-off shots, so it will look fine on any screen. I look forward to seeing it again in full 2D clarity.
• Yep, John Ratzenberger has a part. A quote from Cars: “They’re just using the same actor for every movie! What kind of cut-rate production is this?”
• I need to find a snooty theater around here so I don’t have to listen to stupid comments about how every preview is lame.
• Garrett Popcorn is good. (Thanks, Ai!) And it looks like their webmaster heard that bold text is the secret key to number one rankings for any key phrase.
• Favorite quote from Ai: “Did you tweet?”

I’m not sure if it was the Memorial Day Parade, but this report (which I came across on my Twitter saved search for [Doylestown]), triggered one of my favorite memories. My family was driving through the town one day, and we had some trouble getting to our destination because a bunch of the streets were blocked off for an unknown event. Finally, we were able to turn onto an unblocked street in the right direction, but when we reached the next intersection, just as we stopped at the stop sign, a full-blown marching band came marching by right in front of us, and we had to sit and wait for it to pass. Obviously they had neglected to close all of the applicable intersections (or perhaps the band had made a wrong turn). I thought it was hilarious, because it felt like a scene from a movie. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a scene in some movie where a car chase or other event is interrupted by an unexpected marching band.

Today really felt like summer, reaching 91° in the afternoon. I ate lunch outside on my balcony, and extended my bike ride. I used to eat outside on nice days at home, and as I got close to the bay on my bike, I was reminded of summer bike rides in South Carolina.

I’ve been thinking about two other summer memories this past week, both about small-town eateries:

Frosty’s Dairy Bar
Located in Bristol, New Hampshire, this is a great spot to hit for some ice cream after a day of waterskiing on Newfound Lake.

Dilly’s Corner
Just minutes from my parents’ house in Pennsylvania, I spent many summer nights eating an order of “Chicken & Chips” (chips as in fries) before finishing the meal with some ice cream. There’s a nice write up of the ordering process and a great shot of the menu on HollyEats.com.

I hope to return to these places soon. It’s been a while.

Not only am I now biking on the weekends, I’m tracking my journey using My Tracks. I recently decided to give Android a try for a week, and I’ve been trying out some things that I can’t do on my iPhone, like run background applications. Since whenever I mention that I’ve started riding my bike people ask how far I ride (and I never know the answer), I figured My Tracks could help me out. It turns out that the one-way trip between Google and my apartment is about 3.7 miles. I didn’t go all the way to the building today because of concert traffic, but at least now I have an answer.

I don’t think anybody else has realized it yet, but last night’s episode of The Office is about to happen in our office. I’m pretty excited.

[Sorry for the short post. Twitter is down.]

Last night, I went to a performance by B.J. Novak, a writer for The Office who is perhaps now best known as playing Ryan on the same show.

After his stand-up routine, he started taking questions from the audience, and said he’d be happy to talk about The Office. I couldn’t think of any questions at the time (I was running on no sleep), but when I got back to my apartment, I remembered something that I’ve often wondered. This is what I’ll have to ask B.J. the next time I see him:

The Office is shot as a documentary. Do you think the characters watch it?

If the documentary is a TV series, I’d guess that at least some of them do watch it, and that Michael tunes in for every episode to evaluate how entertaining he is. If it’s a single film, they’ll probably all go to the premiere, and then have an extraordinarily awkward day at work, if they ever see each other again.

Bergy was playing Brain Age and sent me this picture:

The computer’s response was: “Focus on the good looks.”

Inspired by my sister and cousin, I’m a big fan of “your face” jokes. As in, “Do you know what else is a joke? Your face.”