Throwing Little Thought Pebbles at
Your Windshield July 24, 2001  

Fun at the Amusement Park

The DumpTruck driver packed up the minivan recently and headed down to Pennsylvania to meet up with a group of friends at Sesame Place. Yes, it's everything you dreamed of and more, as are my friends. But enough about them.

We arrived a day early, and didn't want to spend a bloody fortune on an extra day at the park (something like $35 a person, and Mr. DumpTruck driver was between jobs at the time (don't worry, he's toiling away again).) So the concierge suggested a little place called the Carousel Village that had a carousel and a train ride and a few other rides for little kids. And it was about a 30 minute drive so off we went.

Now here is a bit of business advice that I am going to give freely. You should file it away. Here it is: If you have an attraction with several amusement park rides, hire more than one person to work there.

Ya. It was great. One girl manning (counting on my fingers) six rides, not counting the train that "Dave" ran on the hour. Two of the rides were "closed" so that meant she only had four to work. That would have been okay, because really, this was a small off-the-beaten-path place that wasn't pulling in huge crowds. But as the kindly young lady told the pile of parents who had been dragged there by toddlers "I'm with a group right now and you're going to have to wait until I'm finished" meaning that NONE of our kids could go on ANY rides until the group had gone on all the rides. Trust me, mothers of toddlers have fangs worse than any wolverine. We were NOT happy.

You, Your Library Card, And You

I have no idea where my library card is. I'm pretty sure I know where it WAS, but it wasn't there when I looked. So does that mean my card is lost? Are they going to turn me away? Will I have to go and pretend I'm someone else just to get a new one?

I sometimes forget that the local library isn't like Blockbuster. I had a book that was about a week late (it took me a while to get my butt over to the library...you know they have a real parking problem and sometimes it's just too much work to try to find a place to stash the car. Anyway, I was expecting Blockbuster level fines. Maybe my picture on a Wanted Poster behind the Reference Librarian. But no, the fine was just some change, so I gave them a dollar and told them it was a donation. I mean really, maybe I should have given them ten or twenty dollars. Hmm. Might be time to join the Friends of the Library group again.

Fan Letter for a Fan Letter

WI just finished reading a way cool book, The Broke Diaries, by Angela Nissel. GREAT read, I highly recommend it. Well, she's got a web site and I went there to tell her how much I appreciated her book. Then SHE wrote me back to say that she like the Dump! I mean, how cool is THAT? So while I'm hobnobbing with famous authors, feel free to bask in my glow.

Rest Area Jewelry

A guy I know (who asked to remain nameless while we were eating dinner the other night) was actually surprised that the watch he bought at a rest area in New Jersey wasn't fully functional. This Quemex, not to me confused with, oh, Timex,

They actually have a website, and I found THESE lovely watches on their site. I mean, if I had known these were available I would have told him not to get the waterproof digital one.

The List

Things I generally wouldn't buy at a rest area

• Jewelry
• Designer Clothes
• JELL-O®
• laptop computers

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