Loeffert.net

This is very late in coming for not apparent reason.

Some time was spent on the East Coast a few weeks ago. Most of my mom’s side of the family was there, and it was great to see everyone again. I don’t know how long it’s been since I’d last seen some of them.

We all spent a good deal of time on the rocky beach. It made sand castle building more difficult, but a few buckets and digging tools were able to create a masterpiece complete with canons and bridges. The ocean was cold, the waves were as good as they could be, and the weather was perfect. Laura and I spent the remainder of the trip recovering from a sunburn acquired on the first full day of vacation.

Atlantic City was visited by Laura and I. We visited the Ripley’s Believe It Or Not!, and we both left believing or not believing certain things. I believe most of the mini castle was made out of plastic instead of hand crafted out of wood. After Ripley’s, we visited the Hard Rock Cafe, lost our money at Caesar’s, and headed home.

The city of Hershey still smells like chocolate, and still has an excellent theme park. Featuring a ride where you learn how Hershey makes its world famous candy, and ten roller coasters trying to get that candy back out of you. We spent the afternoon trying to go on every coaster they had, and nearly did. The last two were wooden coasters that gave us both a good jostle. I had started the park visit with a headache, and that wooden contraption didn’t help it at all. Laura and I made it on nine of them before finding a funnel cake and taking off.

Gettysburg was next. This city will never change; in fact, they are trying to revert to 1863. The city is currently moving the visitors’ center because where it is currently located would have been a field. An excellent tour gave us the background, but I would have liked to spend more time on the battlefields. It really is a crazy feeling to stand where a Union soldier stood for Pickett’s Charge, or atop Little Round Top looking down on Devil’s Den. To me, there aren’t that many places in the States where you get the same feeling of history.

The remainder of the vacation was in Pittsburgh, where we saw the Loeffert side of the family. It was good to see everyone from Texas, as it’s been at least 15 years since I’ve seen my cousins. A lot of shopping was done in Pittsburgh, and Chick-fil-A was finally visited. I had been looking forward to Chick-fil-A since the planning stages of this trip, and it didn’t disappoint.

The return to the daily grind feels much better after spending some time relaxing.

My wonderful wife pinched pennies so that I could get an inexpensive laptop for my birthday. It does so much more than I need it to, but reducing cost any more got me a used refurbished 800 MHz from a random guy on Amazon. Funny how that works.

Review section:

Taproot’s Blue Sky Research: Taproot in top form. More details you ask? Well, if you’ve heard previous Taproot songs, they have a sometimes insane mix of singing and screaming. In the middle of a melody, the singer will suddenly scream a syllabol, then go back to singing as though nothing had happened. The newest installment from Taproot continues this trend, though they have harnessed it so it sounds correct. Or, perhaps I have come to expect a scream here and there and it doesn’t faze me anymore. After more than a dozen times through the entire CD, I haven’t found anything unworthy of my ears.

Alien Ant Farm’s Up in the Attic: A quality disk. Every song demands I sing along, though She’s Only Evil torments me with its lyrics.

“Beyond the basement
There lives a girl there
She’s got a face and a lot of hair”

How serious am I to take this song? I’ve always pegged AAF as a playful fun group, and I always smirk at that lyric, but should I be? I think they were channeling Incubus’s Wish You Were Here with the lyrics, “This house is sweet / Oh, it’s bittersweet”

Tye Zamora (the crazy bassist and main reason AAF stayed in my mind long enough for me to purchase ANThology) left the band a few months ago.