snowynight

I made it to Hershey in spite of construction and the fact that half of Hershey is 'road closed' I went to the Hershey Story Museum. Now, I admit it, this is a biased museum of course but probably easily fact checked. If it's all true, Milton Hershey was a good millionaire. He gave like 60 Million dollars to an orphanage, started schools for his workers children, gave them decent wages (mostly), made a community for them including golf courses (and one for the kids) theaters etc. It was a nice museum.

I hit Wendy's for lunch for the first time in like 15 years. You all can guess why. I wanted the Meal of Misfortune. It was a surprising number of chicken nuggets like 8 of them (I don't like nuggets) but there was no cartilage in them and it was tolerable with the dips (a spicy blackish/dark purple one and one obviously raspberry base) and my sundae needed more goo but it was good.

From there I went to the Hershey Gardens, a tiny bit pricey for a small garden (but I know how much it is to take care of a place like this) They had a butterfly collection, you the know the type. Lots a blue morphos floating around but there were ones I've never seen before like a dead leaf butterfly (which looked just like a dead leaf) and had some other insects and reptiles, including the bird poop frog (well named) and a white tree frog who had SUCH a face.

There were all kinds of beautiful roses which would have looked even better about 6 weeks ago. Also would have been nicer if it wasn't 1001 degrees out there. Pretty sure the sun is cooler. I loved that there is a Milton Hershey rose (bred for him in the 20s or 30s) and later they renamed one Catherine Hershey. Milton's was nearly extinct but it's back and they were selling it and if I had a place for it....

From there I saw there was 2 hours before everything closed so I went to the car museum. I wanted to break a bunch of collection cabinets and steal me scads of hood ornaments (I love them so) they had american, french and british. There was a deluxe edition steudabaker one that was a full devil with tail and a pitchfork (from the 20s-30s) and pierce arrow had one with a naked mercury on it (well he had his fig leaf) from 1926.

It was three floors of cars and motorcycles. Oddly enough there weren't many trucks. The ground floor was a lot of dirt bikes (not my thing) and big cars/buses. The first floor had the most cars, lots of station wagons for some reason and a really nice Tucker collection (fantastic cars, ahead of their time, he was run out of the business by the big boys in Detroit) Top floor were more motorcycles (one from the 40s called the whizzer....) and all my hood ornaments. (now I see me doing a human Arackniss and Angel story just to work in those hood ornaments and sending them to Hershey Park.

On the way from here to the hotel, my GPS takes one last gasp at killing me. I should have been in the left lane but nope it says go right....RIGHT into hershey park (hey it was only 35$ but I'm not sure if that's park entrance or just the parking) I tell the guy what happened because it's a one way. I couldn't turn around. He laughed and waved me in and said just keep going. It'll circle back out for you.

Dinner was a huge disappointment and a bit scary. I wanted to go to the chocolate avenue grill (nope, totally packed) so I hit another biggie around here Troeg's Brewery. I ended up with a 20$ sandwich and fries and the world's most overpriced beer. I didn't realize the prices were on the sign across the big bar space. So when I was choosing between the Jovial dupple ale and the freaky peach sour ale I could have gotten two of the Jovial. Didn't see that and paid 14$ for ONE freaking sour ale which was stored in a bourbon barrel so all I could really taste was bourbon. It was good but it wasn't worth the price of a six pack.

The scary part wasn't the price (that was the disappointment). When I went to pay for it, I realized my gym wallet wasn't in my purse. I know I had it at the hotel when I dumped the purse out looking for the insulin but it is GONE now. While I have money/credit in my main wallet, the gym wallet has my id and my main credit card. It wasn't outside the restaurant or in the Bronco. Fantastic. I have no idea where my driver's license is. I just drank a large sour ale that is 9% alcohol in a strange town in a car that isn't mine. Whee. Made it back to the hotel. Still can't find my wallet. I was getting ready to go tear up the Bronco and/or ask the front desk to see if it was turned in but then I saw that the bed spread had a cuff on it. Did the wallet slide under there? Thankfully yes. Geez.

The tub here is weird. High. Deep. Narrow, like it's hard to have your feet side by side. And boy do I miss my handicapped room from the Wyndham with it's high toilet. This one is about 2 inches off the ground. Thank god I can pull up on the vanity.

And I am wake enough to do music monday (but probably NOT to answer anyone's responses yet) I Feel free to share with us. We're doing the alphabet and we're up to T. I'm only sharing the last 5 years but you can share whatever T song you'd like.

( Teeing up )

I had my writerly ways nearly done, the browser crashed and for a second time the blog did NOT save a draft. I'll do that another day.

And my title isn't a lie. It is spooky. I went down to microwave something and the whole lobby/halls were empty. Just a few hours ago it had been bustling with all the steampunkers. Now it was like we were never there.

This morning went really well if you can ignore the low energy/half the people already mentally checking out. I went to a make your own tea blend thing. I've always wanted to do this with Adagio (still do) I wouldn't have called this a workshop really. It's like here's the tea, here's the mix-ins, go for it. I'll let you take 1 ounce for the 10$ you paid.... I mixed up whiskey black tea with some lapsang sou chong, added in cacao shells, ginger and cinnamon with a sprinkle of elderflower and called it Husk. I haven't tried it yet.

The next panel was by my friend Leanna on Poe and mesmerism. I very much enjoyed that. I thought I had an hour for lunch but no. The Victorians and the supernatural in literature was next. 15 minutes into it, no one showed and I thought well maybe since all the other talks were at the half hour not the top of the hour maybe the speaker was mistaken (wondering if it was Leanna since this is her forte). Someone went to find staff and next thing we know (it was a packed room) Leanna swoops in. No, this wasn't her panel. That person bugged out without telling anyone (how to get uninvited next year) and like I said it's Leanna's thing. She did well.

I said goodbye after that because the final panels had no interest for me. I headed out to Evergreen Cemetery to find Jennie Wade's grave (the one civilian death in Gettysburg) That was easy. There were other cool graves. and some fun names, can't remember them all but there was Solomon Toot, someone named Zephaniah and a mausoleum bearing the name Ball-Dickson (yes I became 12). Also found one mausoleum entirely in Italian.

From there I rolled down the street (past the hotel I usually stay in with my brother and SiL because it's in walking distance to all the interesting stuff. This con hotel is about 3 miles out) and stop at Mr. G's home made ice cream and texted my chocolate peanut butter to my brother to taunt him ( he loves it) God made the chocolate drip on my shirt in retailation.

Then I went to the battlefield to get pics of some of the monuments. After that it was dinner and I went to GarryOwen's Irish Pub. It was metered parking only (but I found plenty) and it's old fashioned meters, only takes quarters. I forgot about that. Then I remembered in some states handicapped tags can park for free. I google it. In PA I can do that for one hour so up goes my tag and in I go for the crab imperial 'poutine' (fries, cheese and the crab imperial in the place of the gravy) Tasty but SMALL for the price (ended up stopping at Sheetz for a hot dog to round out the meal, really goes together). I also had an Earl Grey Sour, gin, lemon juice and earl grey simple syrup. I think it needed a strong earl grey taste (I need to try making this syrup)

I was going to go ghost hunting but I'm exhausted and there was a writers' meet up on Discord tonight. I did that instead and got a little writing done before Discord fucked up and that was that.

Here's what I would have mentioned on the writerly ways: Always be on the watch for story fodder (Well Gettysburg is good for that) As I pulled into the Sheetz there was a man on the corner holding a nearly full sized cross and he had a microphone/transmitter with him. He started haranging people. As I was pumping gas, he was screaming at two women in a car at the redlight. JEZEBEL! You're whore like your mother. JEZEBEL JEZEBEL. You need to find God. Better hope you don't die tonight or you'll be in hell you diseased JEZEBEL.

Holy shit.




On to Hershey tomorrow.

And sometime this week I WILL catch up with comments (if there is any blog post you think I need to see, send it to me)