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Laconia

Wednesday, August 4th, 2021

Yesterday we drove to Laconia, New Hampshire. We chose this place due to the mega-arcade Funspot, one of my favourite locations (and one I’ve shown on this blog several times before).

Yesterday we only ate there, as well as played a few games and ticket machines. The plan was to return today and spend much more time enjoying the games.

But first, this morning, we went on the mail cruise once again! The weather was wonderful and we sat out on the deck and enjoyed the breeze and the views as the boat made the mail deliveries. I may have even sent a few postcards from one of America’s only floating post offices…

Then we went back to Funspot to spend the afternoon playing games and ticket machines. It’s been a few years since we last visited and it was nice to see the place had updated with quite a few new games (the focus is still on the classic era, up to the mid 80s). I played dozens including many I’ve never seen or even heard of before, and it was a real treat seeing (and playing!) original cabinets of some very rare arcade games. The art on some of the machines was fantastic, such as this example of the bezel art on Lady Bug:

I could just go on and on about Funspot, and truly wished it was closer to where we lived so I could visit whenever I wished.

I love seeing and playing all the games, and just being surrounded by the lights and sounds. The nostalgia is sky-high at Funspot, and I wish you could all visit.

Oh and the ticket machines? We invested about $30 in them and won just over 2000 tickets. This was enough to get an LED light strip with an MSRP of about $25, which isn’t bad at all given most the machines themselves are fun to play! I’d say it was a big success 🙂

Tomorrow we head home, which means this is the last post from this trip. We’ve had a great time and these posts have only partially described what we saw and done. There’s more on postcards, of which I sent over 100! Most of you will receive several, some will receive too many. Please look forward to them 🙂

Posted in Miscellaneous, Trip | Comments Closed

Portland

Sunday, August 1st, 2021

To break up the drive north, we spent a night in Portland. On the way we stopped at New Hampshire’s beach resort Hampton Beach, which was way better than we expected.

We spent a few hours there in the boardwalk shops and arcades before continuing on to our Portland hotel. The rest of the day was shopping (including in a great comic shop) and lazing around like sloths.

The next morning we visited two lighthouses. The first was the over-200-year-old Portland Head Light, which was breathtaking!

The area around the park is now parkland, and has a lovely cliff walk that provides great views of the lighthouse (which is still functioning) from several angles.

It was a beautiful morning and the sound of the waves on the rocks was occasionally broken by a bell from a buoy or the engine noise of a fishing boat going out for the day. Standing on the cliff and looking out over the water was mesmerizing.

Next we drove a few miles north to a second (active) lighthouse built at the end of a jetty like the one I crossed in Provincetown.

Once again KLS waited on the shore (these rocks weren’t trivial to negotiate) and I sprinted out for a close look.

It was bigger than expected and seemed to be occupied! It was also well fortified with trapdoors limited access and preventing trespassing – probably a good thing since it’s built right next to a university campus!

While quite different, both of these lighthouses were great to see especially up close! If you’re ever traveling and have a chance to visit a lighthouse, I recommend it!

The other thing we did today was visited a fort in the Maine capital of Augusta. We took an excellent guided tour that covered the history of the fort as well as what life in those days (>200 years ago) was like. It was definitely worth the stop. Unfortunately I didn’t take a single photo so the one above I borrowed from the internet 🙂

Oh yes we’re in Maine, which is famous for moose. We’ve seen signs warning of them, but haven’t seen any yet. The closest we’ve got was this life-sized statue at a rest stop:

Imagine running into one of them in the wild!!

Posted in Miscellaneous, Trip | Comments Closed

Let’s Trade Cards (Part 4)!

Friday, July 23rd, 2021

My bottomless stash of weird trading card packs has no end! Time for some more…

Anastasia (1998) was one of those animated films everyone saw and immediately forgot about. These cards are equally forgettable, and since they were always a staple in the discount sections of card shops (remember them?) I imagine they were massively overproduced and none too successful. The only chase of note were lenticular cards showing a scene from the film, but they were rarer than one per box.

Kristin actually bought me a box of Maverick (1994) cards for Christmas so I have a full set of them! I’ve never seen the film, and based on the images on the cards never want to. It’s another by-the-numbers boring movie card set, and the only chase cards (‘tekchrome’) are so similar to the normal cards they’re almost indistinguishable!

Country Classics cards (1992) are another curious relic from the days of ‘sounds like a great idea’ opportunism! Who bought these? I’m no expert on the topic but it seems to me that in ’92 many of these dudes were long in the tooth, so were these cards aimed at senior-citizen card collectors? Obviously they’re of no interest to me, but I can’t deny I wanted to pull the super rare (only two existed!) redemption cards that back in the day could be mailed in for a 24-carat solid gold card!

This is a good contender for the worst card set I’ve ever seen. In the great trash can of repulsive designs, far below the wacky packages and garbage pail kids, you’ll find this dross. Troll Force (1992) cards showcase horribly drawn ‘trolls’ (which don’t resemble any troll I’ve seen) with ‘comedy’ names doing ‘wacky’ things. They’re disturbingly amateur and utterly unappealing in every way. If you ever come into possession of a pack of these, just burn it.

Based on these Saved By The Bell: The College Years cards (1994) this TV series only had a few characters and they were all girls. It’s a stupid-boring set that reprints pseudo-glamour shots of the actresses with nothing of note on the back. In short, it doesn’t really have anything to do with the show (and I suspect it was made before the show screened). Another trash set hardly worth the cardboard.

There’s a box of beanie babies in our attic and I’ve already decided to do a blog post on them soon so stay tuned for that. These Beanie Baby cards (1988) on the other hand… are a total scam! They’re completely unofficial, and feature bad photos of the toys with meaningless statistics on the back. Beanie Babies were very much on the way out when these cards came out but I’m sure the screaming hordes of collectors bought these cards anyway. I reckon they’ve all ended up in landfills alongside the stuffed toys.

Yes there’s even more packs left to open, including one or two ‘good’ ones! I’ll get to them eventually…

Posted in Collecting, Miscellaneous, Otaku, Time, Trading Cards | Comments Closed

Safari!

Sunday, July 18th, 2021

Yesterday we visited a local animal park. We’d been twice before but due to covid they were a bit different this year. Specifically: they’d turned themselves into a drive-through safari!

After paying it was a short drive from the entrance to the first gate, beyond which we saw this:

Yes those are camels, and amongst them were also ostriches. In seconds we were mobbed!

We had little cups of food and the animals knew it. They were absolutely fearless when it came to getting the food of us, and didn’t hesitate to stick their heads right into the car.

Yes that’s a gigantic camel helping itself to food from the caddy between us in the car!

The animal flocked around us (and every car) so much that we couldn’t move until the attendants scared them away just long enough for us to drive forward a bit. Of course the cloud of camels and ostriches simply moved to the next car in line 🙂

A bit further along were some zebra! I hastily closed the window because of all the animals in the safari this was the one with warning signs. Apparently zebra can bite!

Next we drove into a forested section full of fallow deer, sika deer, albino deer, llamas and a certain evil bird (see below). This part overloaded with cuteness, mostly because of all the pretty deer and their big dewy eyes.

Of course had no food left since the ostriches and camels had taken it all!

The evil birds were these guys:

I have an ancestral fear of these (as do all Australians) so we closed the windows when they got near. This guy was tapping on the window with his razor-sharp beak as he stared at me with murderous intent. I gibbered as we drove on…

The last section had rhea, oxen, and a few other unusual cow like things. Alas we had no food for we surely would have fed the elegant rhea! They came right up to the car and looked at us with their lovely gray and blue eyes.

It took us a little under an hour to drive through and it was much better than we expected! They did a great job of converting their zoo, and the density of animals was hilarious. A great time was had by all 🙂

Posted in Animals, Miscellaneous, Nature, Pets | 1 Comment »

Ramen 8: World of Chook!

Saturday, July 10th, 2021

Time for more chicken ramen!

Lucky Me Chicken (300 Calories, 14 g fat, 1410 mg sodium)

This is a weirdly tasting product, vaguely like ‘Chinese food’ but not at all like (artificial) chicken. The more I ate the greasier it tasted, and about halfway through it had become so repulsive I couldn’t finish it. But I suspect this was more me than the product, and it may be a taste enjoyed by some? An unsure 4/10.

Mama (260 Calories, 11 g fat, 1420 mg sodium)

Another imported product, this time for the Thai market. Once again this tasted nothing like the ‘chicken’ taste I’m used to, and instead was reminiscent of burned toast. The broth was weirdly dark and oily, and the noodles gelatinous. One of the worst I’ve tasted in the dozens I’ve eaten so far. An easy 0/10.

Tradition Chicken Style Noodle Bowl (340 Calories, 15 g fat, 1430 mg sodium)

The last two products by this manufacturer were bad, but I wondered if one of them had a defect since it didn’t contain any flavor. So when I opened this larger-sized version of the same thing I was optimistic since it had not one but two flavor packets – and a tiny fork!

Alas, once prepared it smelled just as bad as the brick version that I also reviewed last time. It’s a truly awful smell – like a dark old house – and difficult to ignore. The noodles had the consistency of electrical wiring and the taste was like dirty water. After three products by this manufacturer, I wonder who their audience is?

I’d give this maybe 1/10, but this score is tempered by the fact that KLS ate it! I therefore asked for her comments, and she said: “Bland and inoffensive, 4/10!”

Posted in Blog, Food, Miscellaneous | Comments Closed

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