What a crazy week. All kinds of stuff that needed doing right away -- none of it on my schedule. Never fails: whenever we're trying to get out the door to go away for a few days, everything seems to hit the fan. But, we made it to Natick. We left after rush hour, so traffic wasn't heavy -- just seemed like a lot of stupid drivers tonight. It rained, so a lot of people got stupid. Especially drivers from New York.
But we made it. It's been a while since we've been here, so it's good to see everyone.
Our trip to Michigan a couple of weeks ago for my parents' golden wedding anniversary celebration was exhausting, but wonderful. I don't think I ever worked so hard on something, but it was definitely worth it.
On the way there, we stayed at the Holiday Inn Youngstown Metroplex -- and what a shithole that place is. But I complained both at the desk when we checked out and then again via Priority Club, which we're members of, and got $60 knocked off the bill (it should've been more --but at least it was something). And I wasn't even nasty, even when the desk clerk started arguing with me, just firm. On the way back, we stayed at a Holiday Inn Express in Brookeville, PA, and it was great. It's interesting how much the hotels in the same chain (or subchain, whatever) vary. The two top ones we've stayed at were the HI in Elyria, OH and the HI Express in Brookeville, PA.
Am babbling because I'm so tired. I hope I remember to take pictures at Thanksgiving dinner this year. It's also my birthday.
A side note. Stanley is fit to be tied because my sister blocked most of the channels on the tv in our room -- and we didn't know about it before she went to bed so she could unblock them for us. Apparently, my nephew flunked a math test and was pretty cavalier about it, so no more telly or TiVO for a while for him. Ah well. I brought a couple of books, anyway.
10x10 / 100 Words and Pictures that Define the Time / by Jonathan J. Harris is different. Not sure yet if it's meaningful or just an interesting toy.
Another of Harris' projects is Wordcount and the related Querycount (guess what the most requested word is. Big surprise, eh?)
Harris did some more interesting work, but the typography on some of his sites is so hostile (microtext) it's impossible to read. Too bad -- looks like it might be interesting.
Though Jay Allen is again updating the MT-Blacklist, my quick and dirty list compilation has more entries. Feel free to use it, but use it at your own risk -- it may be too inclusive for some (though it ONLY contains urls from comment spam and from Jay's Master Blacklist). Based on comment spam received by this blog and westportnow.com and the master list. Download file. It has about 3150 entries