After a delicious breakfast in Bangor, we headed down on Route 1A towards Acadia National Park. Route 1A gave way to Route 3 in Ellsworth, and we got to the entrance of Acadia around 1:00. Post-Visitor Center, the first few pullouts were beautiful vistas of the shore, the ocean, and distant islands, but they were marred by the trees that got in the way. We eventually kept going after getting close to a few fearless seagulls, likely fearless because they equated humanity with free food distribu
We got on the road a few minutes after 11:00. Our hotel breakfast - at least for my parents - consisted of sliced sausages called "pork ham." This is, of course, repetitive, so we thought that it was probably something we could chalk up to some local custom. A brief Google search tells me that it isn't. My faith in the overall intelligence level in human society took another hit. Before noon, we found ourselves in New London, home of the US Coast Guard Academy. It's a lot different in look and
We got on the road at 10:30 bound for Harrisburg. We wanted to avoid going through the gnarly traffic of New York City - we consider that a trip unto itself, to be done at an undetermined later date - so we decided to go up all the way to Scranton before cutting through upstate New York to Connecticut. At 11:30, we entered the parking lot for the Harrisburg Senators, the Washington Nationals' double-A affiliate. The Senators' stadium is located on an island in the Susquehanna River, accessible
After a protracted breakfast, we began the day at 11:30 and headed away from Winchester on Route 7. We rolled through rolling countryside and a half hour later found ourselves in West Virginia, on one of its little nubs. Our destination: Harpers Ferry, made famous by John Brown's 1859 abolitionist raid on its US Armory. After Brown's raid, Harpers Ferry continued to be an important stronghold during the Civil War, sitting at the confluence of two states at the war's beginning and three by war's
My dad and I started brushing up on our French, for semi-obvious reasons. Never before have I suppressed the urge to say "hon hon hon baguette eiffel tower" so much.
This was perhaps the most uneventful day one of any trip. We didn't know if we'd even get on the road today, as we had to wait for a package to show up through FedEx before we could leave. FedEx said that the package would arrive at 8:00 PM, so we spent the morning and early afternoon leisurely packing, thinking that we'd have to delay our plans by one day. The FedEx guy showed up a little after 3:00. We sprung into action, immediately panicking. My mom was in the shower, so my dad and I did e
Well folks, it's that time of year again - Sumiki's annual whirlwind tour around North America, and the third year in succession in our evil plot to turn a continent into a backyard. After over 16,600 miles in over 60 days in the first two Great American Road Trips, not to mention the sanely paced road trips of my younger and more vulnerable years, I have been in 42 states and exactly half of Canada's wonderful provinces. Looking at a map and checking off the places I've been in leaves a consp
My grandmother has been in and out of the ER for the past few weeks. She only lives about an hour away so at least one of us has been visiting and spending nights to help her recover from a series of problems exacerbated by incompetent physician’s assistants. She’s getting better, but slowly. The high school baseball season is ending soon. We had a fun awards night featuring a video where I spoke in the voice of Morgan Freeman featuring little kids going after a foul ball. We finished 20-3, an
Specifically, with regards to the gender imbalance in modern media: I'd like to see a story where, during the writing process, the characters are completely fleshed out and developed. Genders would be assigned at random at the end by computer generation, so as to avoid any unwanted author-based prejudices. Obviously this example refers to a book, but the same process could go for anything. (I was going to say more, but I think this pretty much speaks for itself.)
BZPower is the only place on the Internet where I feel as if I can truly state what I feel without fear of someone seeing half a sentence and assuming something terrible about what I'm trying to communicate. I take a middle-of-the-road approach and try to see the good in people, and I feel as if BZPower is the only site that won't blow up in my face when it comes to moderate viewpoints. - - - - - Well, the latest firestorm of drama hit BZP earlier - this time on representation in media. It'
Alright, so I'm going to have to finish up being sick, play baseball thrice a week until May, prepare for the end-of-season awards day/roast for the team (I'm in charge of making dumb videos for the roast portion), and finish up my course work for this semester. I was going to compete in a piano competition in Charlotte but that fell through - even though I passed the regional with flying colors, the state tournament conflicts with a home game for us against the toughest team we're due to face
I have been a member of BZPower for nearly seven and a half years. Every time speculation on new spinnies arises, I am there on the front lines campaigning for to become an official spinny. Today, my fellow members, I am proud to say that I have succeeded in this illustrious endeavor. I came to this web site with a mission, and now that mission is complete. Spin on, my friends. Spin on.
The past week or so has been absolutely mad. I won't try to list all the crazy things that have transpired so I'll just kind of condense it: Our washing machine began to go bad and broke, so we got a new one, only for the delivery to be delayed because of store-side incompetency, ice, etc. Our mailbox decided to bite the dust around the same time, although getting a new one was relatively simple. The high school baseball season was slated to start last week, but our first game was sleeted ou
SUMIKI'S PAST 24 HOURS: A DRAMATIC LOG Midnight: Reading in bed. Allergies begin. Reading ceases. 1:00 AM: Allergies still continue. 2:00 AM: Finally asleep. 3:30 AM: Wake up to a huge flash of lightning and massive crash of thunder. Walls shake and windows are vigorously rattling. 3:45 AM: Unable to return to sleep. Get up to close blinds and check the weather online. Mom comes up, awakened as well by the bomb-like sound of the storm. 4:00 AM: Back in bed, but unable to sleep. Light
SOMEONE SPECIAL IN YOUR LIFE? YOU CAN GET THEM: TREE CARCASSES TATTOOED WITH MASS-PRODUCED ROMANTIC MESSAGES A SERIES OF CAREFULLY ARRANGED PLANT REPRODUCTIVE ORGANS CAREFULLY ARRANGED BITS OF FLAVORED DOG POISON, PREFERABLY ONE WITH A MAP A ROCK
The snow here has been strange. The first layer - a good five inches - was a dry snow of the kind I'd never seen before. Around 8:00 on Wednesday the snow turned to sleet, which ceased at around 2:00 Thursday morning. This sleet froze over the soft snow and provided the base for the second layer of snow, which lasted until around 4:00 on Thursday afternoon. Strangely enough, this snow was the wet, thick, packable kind of the kind that I'm used to. Perfect sledding conditions. A few runs down
After my opinions on Mozart and much of the Classical era, I got to thinking about modern classical music, which in this sense means any music written after 1900. I have ... mixed feelings, shall we say. Time for another music history lesson. By the turn of the century, late Romanticism was beginning to die out. Gustav Mahler was writing symphonies of epic proportions, Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy were defining a musical style dubbed "Impressionism" - though Debussy hated the term - and
