I left for work early today, and to my surprise, there was no traffic to slow me up. I was so far ahead of my usual pace that I figured I had plenty of time to stop at a Ross that I usually just drive right past. It's right off the freeway, but I almost never have the time.
I went in, and, for the first time ever, found GI Joe Classified figures on the shelves there for a drastically reduced price. I couldn't believe it. The first one I saw was Stalker. A funny name now, but back in the day a stalker was a hunter, not some dude who harasses a starlet in a creepy way. He was one of the main GI Joe characters in the first mini-series.
That's him coming down wearing the jetpack in the show intro. He was one of my favorites from the early days. He was one of the very first 11 figures that they released in the line back in 1982. His part in the cartoons diminished greatly by the next year, because they had new toys to push, so their characters came to the forefront instead. I still loved him, though.
What that means, is that when his Classified figure came out, I bought it right away to ensure that I actually got it, because I've never seen Classified figures at Ross, and almost never seen them on clearance at all. So, yeah, I paid full price, and already had Stalker, even though I could now get him for dirt cheap. Damn.
However, there was still joy in Mudville. Also on the shelf was a figure named Tomax Paoli. I didn't have that figure. He was one of the Crimson Guard commanders. He and his twin brother Xamot led the Crimson Guard.
They also had this weird thing where they were mirror image twins, and if you punched one in the face, the other one would feel the pain. That was something that Rish Outfield loved, and would rave about how great an idea it was. I was much less of a comic book fan growing up than him, so this idea seemed silly to me. I preferred the realism and grittiness that GI Joe comics usually had...before the dark times, before the Cobra-La.
Because of our differing opinions of that gimmick, Rish had already bought Tomax and Xamot, but I had not. Yet, here was Tomax, and he was very cheap. I had to get it.
I looked on the shelf for the twin. You never know. This Ross had already gone above and beyond with its bounty it offered, but what if they actually had both?
Well, I found a second Stalker...who I already had, and then...hallelujah, could it be? There was Xamot Paoli, tucked back in there waiting for me as well.
I already have a squad of Crimson Guards. I blogged about them a while back.
Now I can expand that group, adding in the commanders with them as well. After all, they were so cheap, I couldn't turn them down.
$5.99! Can you believe it? They want to charge $12 for Fortnite figures at Ross, but somehow the GI Joes go for half of that. I sure can't complain. I had to brag about my find, so I texted pictures to Rish. His response?
I could commiserate, after all, Stalker was on the shelf for that same price, but I'd paid $22.99.
Anyway, I bought me some Crimson Guard commanders to put with my squad.
Now I'd like to see many more of the regular Crimson Guards showing up at Ross, so I can build the squad up even larger. That would be cool.
A few weeks ago, I did a post about finding some interesting Matchbox cars that looked like they belonged in a space port as taxis or something like that.
Well, the other day, I was wandering through the toy aisles, and I saw another couple Matchbox cars that looked like they might belong as well.
I think these little cars are supposed to be those airline cargo transports. One of them has a fake airline's name on the side. Anyway, they looked perfect. I could make up a bunch of tiny little boxes to pile up in the back section of the truck, and maybe pose a figure next to the car...
The figures are so small that they don't have knees, so I couldn't have them sit in the car, but maybe there's some figurine out there that's already in a sitting position that I could put in that spot. Who knows. Anyway, I thought they could be a cool addition. These could definitely use some weathering, though. I'll have to get on that...and maybe build a space station for them to inhabit too, eh?
Star Wars Vintage Collection is a pretty great line. They charge way to much for the figures, considering that they are only 3 3/4 inches tall, but they are quality, at least. They look really good. When it comes down to it, every line is charging way too much for their figures. The six inch lines have doubled their prices in the last year or two as well.
I don't buy a lot of Vintage Collection, because of the price, but here and there I'll find an alien character on the shelves, and I can't help but buy them up. I did that a few weeks ago when I was with Rish Outfield, and I saw this guy:
The other day, I had another moment like that. I went into Target, and they had Nien Nunb. I couldn't help but grab it and buy it for my space station collection, despite the fact that it was too expensive, and I shouldn't be spending that kind of money on an itty bitty figure like that.
So, here he is:
Not only does he cost more, but he's shorter than usual too. Not as short as a jawa or an ugnaught, but pretty short. I wonder if I couldn't swap heads between him and Kuiil, the ugnaught from the first season of The Mandalorian. That might be fun. Not necessary, however. That's the great thing about the Vintage Collection. Most of those figures are good to go straight out of the box. No weathering or other upgrades necessary...although they wouldn't hurt, of course.
I felt like I might be on the edge of a crisis at the end of last week, my ketones had taken a dive, my blood sugar had risen, and I was downshifting my fasting to a less rigorous protocol. Was there any way that such a tactic could help? Or was I going to have to abandon it in the middle of the week and switch back to ADF?
It's episode three of my novella, "Do Over." Joel and Jillian take a big step together as Joel changes his past to a future that he wants to live in. At the end of last episode, Joel caught Jillian snorting heroin, and now he has to deal with that problem...but it's only the beginning of the problems he will have to deal with. Jump in and enjoy the next installment of "Do Over" on The Anklecast.
Afterward, Rish and I review the comments that we received from listeners who said what they would like to have changed in their past if they got the opportunity to zig rather than zag. Then we add a few more examples of our own.
You can listen to the episode on The Anklecast podcast feed, or right click HERE to download it. Or, if that's too much effort to ask, I suppose you could just click the play button below, and listen right here and now. Enjoy!
When I was at Walmart the other day, on the clearance aisle I found this guy.
I can't remember what this guy is called. He's one of those Obi-Wan Kenobi characters called the Inquisitors...I think that's what they were called...the show wasn't very memorable, so I can't remember much about it.
They did retro figures that are made in the style of the 80s Kenner figures, and, as you might expect from garbage figures like that, there was tons leftover. I thought He didn't look terrible, and he was on sale for $4.50. So, I grabbed it. I'll have to try doing some upgrade painting on it, and maybe it'll fit in on Ankletown Station.
I talked about my worries of the dangers of the upcoming Judgement Day that AI will supply to us, and whether I should bother to pour all my efforts into trying to write the books I've imagined all these years of my life if AI will soon be able to write hundreds of great books an hour. Rish listened to the episode (one of the few, but I think he had to because we were recording for the next episode and he needed to hear what happened in the story so he could respond to it. He did his homework). Today, he saw an article related to AI that he thought he ought to share with me. Check it out, then come back and finish the post...
TLDR: The director of a movie about AI thought it would be interesting to see if he could get an AI generated soundtrack in the style of Hans Zimmer to use in the movie. The soundtrack he got back he considered to be a 7 out of 10, but in the end he went with the flesh and blood Hans Zimmer, because he wanted a 10 out of 10 soundtrack.
After hearing that, I thought, 7 out of 10 is pretty good. If it’s already at that level, I bet it won’t be long before we’re flooded with Hans Zimmer-like soundtracks on all the movies that come out…oh, wait, that’s already happened. Every composer is basically an AI trying to make something that sounds like Hans Zimmer, so the singularity happened 15 years ago, I guess.
I wonder if there's a difference between AI and an unskilled hack trying to follow the trends...
Blink 182 put out a new song today, and I think it's pretty great. I've never seen them got so introspective. It sounds like they've learned their lesson, though, and we won't have to see them break up again unless one of them actually dies off for real. Also fun to hear a little bit of vocals from Travis.
So glad to see them back together again. I've been doing my story, "Do Over" on my Anklecast podcast, and it's all about a guy who goes back and changes things for the better. I wonder if these guys would love to go back and change things a little bit so that it didn't require near-death experiences to get them to come together again.
Also, I couldn't stand Matt Skiba's voice. So, getting Tom back in there is such an upgrade.
Episode three of my novella, Do Over, is now available over on Patreon. Joel and Jillian take a big step together as Joel changes his past to a future that he wants to live in. At the end of last episode, Joel caught Jillian snorting heroin, and now he has to deal with that problem...but it's only the beginning of the problems he will have to deal with. Jump in and enjoy the next installment of Do Over on The Anklecast.
Afterward, Rish and I review the comments that we received from listeners who said what they would like to have changed in their past if they got the opportunity to zig rather than zag. Then we add a few more examples of our own. Enjoy!
I don't remember who the hell Darby Steel was in that forgettable Lightyear movie, but on Amazon the other day, they had discounted the figure all the way down to $2.80. I've got plans to turn these Lightyear space ranger figures into astromech droids, so I jumped at the chance to get one for almost free.
Now I just have to cut the arms off, remove the legs at the waist, and paint the dome of her space armor silver. Then I attach the legs from these final faction dogs where the arms were, and voilà , astromech droid.
Hopefully, it'll be as easy as I make it sound in that description.
It will be interesting to see how they all look, since each of the space rangers I have are different sizes.
Especially this new guy who is much shorter and fatter than the other two. He can be the Wicket of my astromechs.
I had a great week! An amazing week! I made a lot of progress, and was feeling really great...but then I let my guard down right at the very end, and now I don't know if OMAD is the right plan for next week or not, because my ketones have crashed back down to nothing.
Also, I want to know what you think about whether I should shave my beard. Please comment and let me know.
I've considered getting some jets to mix in with the spaceships on my forthcoming space station. I thought it might be fun to have an earth-based thing mixed in with the spaceships everywhere. So, when I saw these at Five Below the other day, I wasn't sure if they were big enough to fit in scale, but I rolled the dice anyway.
How do they work with the ships that I have?
Here they are with some of the Lightyear ships I got, and they look a little small, but not terribly. I think, depending on how I display them, they can work well. Don't sit them right next to the much bigger ships, but have them on their own landing platform, and they should be all right.
I'll probably paint them all to improve their look as well, and they should be a fun addition. If nothing else, they only cost $5...so $1.25 each. Not a big hit even if I just have to throw them in the garbage.
I saw this thing from the Lightyear movie on Amazon. It's the plasma drill vehicle that they put out.
It's basically some kind of futuristic construction equipment or something. I don't know, really. I have no idea why they would even create such a toy as this. You can really tell with this line of toys that they were expecting this movie to do remarkably well. Rish was predicting that it would be the biggest movie of the year too, so they weren't alone.
It really seems like they're scraping the bottom of the barrel with this toy. Was there even a plasma drill in the movie? I don't remember, because the movie wasn't memorable.
This could be an interesting addition to the space station, though. If nothing else, I could remove this top part from the legs and make it some kind of speeder.
It's a little large, since it's made for 5 inch figures not 4 inch ones. The Halo guys look good on it though. They're the largest figures that I have. When I tried a Star Wars guy on there, it looked pretty silly, but Star Wars guys are the smallest of the bunch.
I tried unscrewing that screw you can see in the picture to remove the top part, but it didn't do anything. It didn't come off. I suspect that I could pry it off once the screw is out, but i didn't want to break it, just in case. I'm not certain that I want to remove it or not.
After a week of unusual activities while out of town on vacation, it was nice to be home this whole week and slip back into my usual routine. I did alternate day fasting the whole week, and stuck to my way of eating like glue, and I think I did pretty well. The scale did some weird things, but I think that was all the scale's fault, not mine...no really!
When I was out looking for toys this weekend, I found a couple of things from Fortnite that I wanted at Ross. First of all, there was Doggo:
Yup, it's a guy with a bulldog head...bulldog? I'm not good with dog breeds, but I think that's what we're looking at there...on a normal human body.
The dog head makes it weird enough, that I could probably just have it walking around as is on Ankletown Station, but I'm more interested in the body. I could easily swap out the head for an alien...like one of those four Mon Calamari guys Rish got for me, for example...and it would be a pretty great looking custom figure.
He comes with a little ice cream bar, but I don't know if you can really tell what it is, so I may not use that much. He also came with this stupid little ice cream truck vehicle.
You can fit him inside of it, and he can drive it.
But unless Ankletown Station is actually set in the world of Pee-Wee's Playhouse, then I don't know how I would incorporate it into things. I may cut the ice cream cone off the side so that a character could be holding it like the ice cream bar, but otherwise, I'll probably just have to chuck it.
Luckily, it wasn't expensive at all. It's kind of weird, because these figures come with these little mini-vehicles like this, yet Ross charges less for them than they do for the single-packed figures that come with nothing at all. This guy was $2.99 and they usually charge $4.99 for Fortnite 4-inch figures otherwise.
This Human Bill guy has an alien head on what looks like a regular old human body. It's a good looking alien face, so I thought I could take the head off and put it on all sorts of bodies to make aliens for the space station.
I figured, though, that I needed to take the sunglasses off if I wanted to do that. It would be weird if every alien guy in the station was all wearing sunglasses. So, this one was my test case. Could I get the sunglasses off? Do they just come off easy or are they integrated into the sculpt and not able to be removed.
I took an Exacto to the glasses, and managed to get them off...mostly.
It will need a little attention to look just right. The frames of the glasses didn't come off completely. I could paint over them, and I suspect you wouldn't notice them much, but as is, they don't look good at all. The eyes got a little messed up removing the glasses too. They were glued on...or whatever, maybe molded on, I don't know...so they will need some paint too.
Maybe I could make the whole figure a different color because of the need to repaint. There could be blue ones but also green ones and red ones and grey ones. They could be like Rodians in Star Wars. Greedo was green, and at first that was the only color you ever got, but eventually, they started expanding them, and now you see them in every color.
This guy is based on the Greys from alien abduction conspiracies anyway, so he might be more appropriate in grey. We'll see what we do. The cool thing is that there were about five of these guys at my local Ross, so I could do a lot of customizing if I wanted. Maybe something like this:
I was supposed to run a six-miler as my weekend run this week. When I got to the three-mile point, the halfway there spot where I turn around and go back, I thought, "I might as well do an extra tenth of a mile so that it will be another 10K." So, I did.
I also tried hard to increase my pace this time around. Compare it to last week.
I brought my pace down by 41 seconds per mile. That's pretty good...not as good as I was hoping. It was better earlier on, and then flagged at the end, slipping down below 16:00 minutes per mile. Which was a bummer. I was very tired there at the end, though.
Runkeeper tried to make me feel like I accomplished something big, though. It always gives me these little badges when I do something that can be classified as impressive...at least if you're not paying too much attention to what it says. For example, I got this:
For someone who has been running a long time, and has done dozens of 10Ks, this might mean something. For me, of course, who has done two, it's not as big of a deal. My fastest 10k! I beat out all the others to be slightly faster. Wahoo!
It was very generous with the badges today, though. So I got this one too:
Yeah, baby! Oh, I guess not as great after all. That just means that I didn't beat out last week's 10K, in which I actually ran 6.33 miles because I was desperately trying to get my pace back under 17:00 per mile to hide my shame at being so slow. Still long though.
I also got this badge:
2nd fastest in the 5-7 mile range. That seems like it could be good, except that I've only done three in the 5-7 mile range. Also, if you look at the info there at the bottom, it says that my pace was 1:46 slower than my fastest five mile run. That was the one I did with my sister when I went out to visit Rish Outfield. We ran five miles, and because I was with her, I went way faster than normal. That's a pace that I'll probably never even come close to. But thanks for reminding me, Runkeeper.
I've been at this thing faithfully for 100 days now. It's a pretty big deal for me, and I felt like I ought to commemorate it with a video where I talk about all the benefits I have seen since May 29th when I started sticking to my word. Wondering if you ought to try carnivore? Maybe listen through and see what kind of benefits I talk about, and see if they're something you might be hoping for. I suspect they might not be the benefits you expect...
Rish had me perform a sketch with him for his show. It was called "Seasonal Disorder."
You can find it on his podcast feed, or you can just go to his blog and download it there. Or there's always the path of least resistance, you could just hit the play button below and listen right here, right now.
I told you in the last two posts that Rish Outfield has been saving up a bunch of toys for me to use on my proposed space station. He's been gathering them at the various toy trades that he attends on a near weekly basis. So, I thought I'd take a picture of the new guys I have and let you see.
Two jawas, two ugnaughts, four mon calamari officers, a K2SO, an imperial probe droid, a lobot, and some kind of special edition droid that I've never seen before, and a vintage collection Klatoonian Raider were the stash he'd gathered for me this time.
The last one there is a Tusken Raider from the Book of Boba Fett show that I found at Target while I was with Rish that I added to the stash myself.
There were also several other things, like spaceships of varying styles, that I can find a use for as well. Some are good as is, others will need a little customizing, but all in all, it was a good day for Ankletown Station. God I gotta get to work on that thing.
I love ewoks. I know most people kind of hate them, because they're just teddy bears dressed as primitive warriors, but I was young enough when I saw Return of the Jedi to love them through and through.
Recently, Hasbro has finally started making 6-inch scale ewoks in their Star Wars Black Series line. Not many, but a few. So far, we've gotten Teebo, Wicket, and now Paploo.
I've been scouring all the local stores in hopes of finding a Paploo, but I never did. However, my man Rish Outfield, who scours at least ten times as many stores as I do, has found several.
Since I was in town to visit him recently, he held one of them for me. So, I now have one of each of the ewoks that have been released so far. I love it. I put them on the shelf with my Endor version of Han and Leia, and here they are:
It's funny how little those figures are. They still cost the same though. Funny that. If they make an extra large figure, they always charge more to make up for the extra cost of all the plastic, but when they make smaller figures like jawas, ugnaughts, or ewoks, they never cost less. Hmmm....
I finished out my vacation this week. How did I do? Did I crash and burn? It certainly wouldn't be the first time if I did. But how can you make it through a vacation without falling off the wagon? What did I do to avoid destruction of all I've worked toward these past fourteen weeks? Watch and see...
Rish is kind of like my dealer. As is always the case when I go to visit him, he has a bunch of toys for me to take back home. This time, he helped me acquire a couple of things I really wanted in my collection.
To start with, today's post, the Crimson Guard. I have three Cobra BATS that I happened upon one day while out looking for toys. Not only was finding them a surprise. They rang up for half price after that. So, I built a little mini-army for very cheap.
I made a video about the toy hunt that landed me those BATS back in the day. You can watch it here if you want.
And here's how they look on my shelf:
So, why did I waste your time with that story? Well, I really wanted to do the same with the Crimson Guard figures that they put out this year. I made sure to pre-order one of them from the online toy store, just to make sure that I actually got one, because the Crimson Guards were my favorite. I would have been so sad not to get any at all.
It seemed as though that was the only one I was ever going to get, because I never saw them in stores at all. If I had, I probably would have bought any of them, full-price or not. However, I never had to. Surprisingly, back at the start of August, I was walking down the clearance aisle, and I found this one:
I don't know where that thing had been hiding. I had been in that same Walmart the week before, and they didn't have this guy on the shelf. I definitely would have paid the full price for it, but now I didn't have to.
I brought him home and put him with my other guy.
Sorry, the picture is out of focus, but it's too late to redo it, because there's a third and final one on the shelf now.
As I said, my dealer, Rish Outfield tracked down one of the newly released, but never seen in stores anywhere, "vintage" Crimson Guard. He gave it to me while I was out there, and I brought it back in my carry-on. Now the squad is complete.
I don't know if you can tell, but the vintage one is in the middle. He has a silver face plate instead of black like the other two. Not sure why, because actual vintage Crimson Guards don't have that difference. But who cares. I figure he looks like he's the commander because of his slight differences. I sure do like having the mini-army again, though.
I wonder if there's any other figures that I'd like to make an army out of...none come to mind.
I guess it's time to trade my toys out for their Halloween related counterparts, but I really don't want to. The thought of it just makes me tired. Maybe I need to sell off all those toys if this is the way I feel year in and year out...
A few months back, I got a second flagpole for my front yard. I wanted to be able to display a second flag along with my American flag. I wasn't sure the right way to do it, though, so I petitioned the folks on Facebook.
Everyone insisted that the American flag being on its own right was most important, but I couldn't switch it because the two poles were different sizes, and the American flag would only work on the skinny pole. So, I had to leave it like it was, and be out of code.
However, the universe was unhappy with that arrangement. I had to get a new flagpole. The mount that I got a while back broke on me. It was made of plastic, and was pretty unimpressive, so it's not too surprising that it broke, and it was actually the second time that it broke on me. It came with two mounts, and the first one broke within days. The second lasted a few months, but now it's gone too.
After dealing with the crappy mounts, I figured there's no way I'd deal with that again. So, I bought the same metal mount and large pole that my other flag was on. It came from Amazon today, and I quickly mounted it on the tree.
The good thing is, now that they are both on the same pole, I can switch the flags from one side to the other. This is what it looks like now:
You can tell that it's been a few months of drought since the last picture was taken, but now the flags are in the proper order. In line with flag code! It's probably stupid, and has bored all of y'all to death, but it makes me happy.
I did alternate day fasting the whole week through, and made some good progress, but a sort of cloud was on the horizon, because by the end of the week, I was leaving on a road trip. Could I keep it together while on the road? How does one do that? What are the options?
I've been doing a couch to marathon program for the last few months, running every other day at increasing lengths to one day in January arrive at the ability to run a marathon. A month and a half ago, I made it to the 5K, which was the first big milestone of the process.
Well, today I hit the second milestone, the 10K.
I was horrifyingly slow, and it took an awful lot out of me, but I did it, and I can be proud of that. I suppose, over the next few months, I can increase my speed, because this won't be the last time that I run a 10K. No, pretty much every Saturday from here on out my run length will exceed a 10K. So, I'll be getting used to it.
Joel is back for more of his adventures in the past. He establishes himself and gets used to how things are now, but not everything is hunky dory. There were problems in the past, and they begin to rear their ugly heads at him. What will he do? How will he change things for the better? Keep listening to "Do Over" to find out!
This time, I do the episode solo. I talk about the struggles of writing and pose the question of whether it's worth it considering the trajectory of the world, particularly the new addition of AI to the mix. I really want to know what you think, so comment on it, my friends.
You can find the episode on your podcast feed (because I'm sure you are subscribed, right?) or you can right click HERE to download the episode. Or you can just click the play button down below to listen right here and now.
This past week, I had to drive with my daughter across the country to get her back to college. She had to get her car back, so she couldn't just fly. Instead it was a two day drive, and we weren't about to let her make that drive all by herself. The last thing we wanted was for her to be pushing herself to finish the drive and falling asleep on the road.
So, I drove that two day drive with her, and then flew back a few days later. Along the way, we had a quick stop off at Wilson Arch, which is just south of Moab.
That was pretty cool, because it was right off the side of the road. It was just sitting there like one of those roadside attractions...you know, the world's largest Dutch clog or the world's largest ball of yarn...except this was an arch worthy of being in Arches National Park, and it was just a three minute hike up a hill to get right on it where you could touch it!
My daughter is going to college in the same city that one Rish Outfield lives in as well, so while I was there waiting for my flight home, I had a few days to spend hanging out with him.
It's been a little while since I've seen Rish in person, so it was pretty cool. The first day, we went to a place called Antelope Island.
This is a spot that is right on the Great Salt Lake. It's supposed to be an island, although the lake has been lowering its levels so much recently that it's become more of a peninsula. Record snowfall this past winter raised the lake level about five feet, so it's filled in a lot of those shallow spots, but it needs a lot more record precipitation to get it high enough that it's a complete island again.
We go there a little late, so I made Rish drive straight to the visitor center. I collect patches for places like this (national parks, state parks, etc) and I wanted to get one before they shut down and I was too late to buy one. This is what I picked.
It was pretty much my only choice. It's just a state park, after all, it doesn't have the notoriety of a national park to merit several patches to choose from.
The first thing that we did was drive down toward the lake. There was a little hike there we could take that would put us in a good spot to take pictures like this:
I've never been to the Great Salt Lake before, and I've heard a lot of talk that it is disappearing, so maybe this picture will be even more meaningful that just to mark my one time there.
While up on that overlook, we decided to walk down to the lake. I wanted to put my finger in the water to say that I had. I've heard that if you swim in it, it's so salty that you will float without even trying, but I wasn't prepared to swim...and when we got close enough, the smell made any thought of testing that floating thing out leave my head forever.
See in that picture above where the sand is darker right on the edge of the lake? You probably assume that it's because it's a little bit wet from the waves that lap up on the shore. Well, let me disabuse you of that theory. Turns out, when you get to the actual shoreline, this is what you find.
Gross, right? Absolutely gross. Those are flies, millions upon millions of flies. The dark spot on the edge of the water was not wet sand, it was millions of flies. Rish loved the way that they flew away like ripples in the water, and had a grand old time waving at them and watching them go.
How can so many flies just sit there happy and unmolested? We saw several lizards in the short hike we took. How are those things not massively fat from gorging on fly after fly? They wouldn't even have to be good hunters. There are so many the lizards could be like the nasty elites in The Hunger Games that would eat until they were stuffed then take something that would make them vomit so they could eat some more.
Eventually, we headed back toward the car. On the way, we saw this thing:
It's a spiral that somebody created out of rocks...probably to honor the Spiral Jetty, which is somewhere near Antelope Island, but is much bigger and more impressive than just some rocks. Not that this wasn't impressive. Imagine how long it must have taken to put all these rocks here like this.
Once we were done here, we moved on to the thing that Antelope Island is most known for. You might think it's the herds of antelope, but that's where you'd be mistaken. Antelope Island is the place to go if you want to see bison. I don't know if there are even any antelopes on the island, but there are thousands of buffalo, and we were going in search of them.
We saw our first bunch not far down the road.
Can you see them? There are five in the shot. They are the dark spots out there on the prairie. We were warned by the rangers to stay well clear of them, and there were signs posted everywhere too.
Fifty feet wasn't far enough. They recommended at least 150 feet. So we didn't approach any closer than this.
Yeah, it's not very close, but we didn't know what we'd see, so we had to take what we could get. Look at how well Rish pointed out the buffalo in the background. His finger is almost right on top of the thing.
After this, we got back in the car and drove a while longer. We saw another small group of bison, but this time we didn't stop, because they were similarly far away.
Then we got to the ranch, and all of a sudden it looked like this:
Not only were there tons of them, but they were right next to us. Right off the road, super close.
It was really neat. We were surrounded by them, and I saw about four times the amount of buffalo that we saw years ago when my family went to Yellowstone National Park. Yellowstone is supposed to be famous for that kind of stuff, but they didn't deliver a quarter as much as this place did.
It was pretty neat, and we hung around that spot for at least a half hour before we finally hit the road to head back to the mainland. Oh, by the way, in case you were wondering, we took all this pictures from the safety of our car. We never did approach the bison. We're not stupid like the people I've seen in videos getting launched into the air by sweeping bison horns.
On the way off the island, we did stop at the marina for a moment, where we were greeted by millions more of those disgusting flies. We found a spot where I could stick my finger in the water without traipsing through the flies, so now I can say I've been in the water of the lake...or at least touched the water.
After Antelope Island, Rish and I got up to our old tricks. We went to a GameStop and a Target looking for toys, and then ate at a Carl's Jr. Don't worry, I didn't eat the bun. I just had plain burger patties, so I didn't ruin my diet.
They were really good burgers. Much better than the dry things I get from McDonald's usually.
The next day, Rish and I got together earlier in the morning, and drove out to my old town out in the west desert. We looked at the two houses that I used to live in, and I was surprised at the rundown nature of the yard. Look at this lawn:
Look at how high those weeds have grown. When we lived there, it was a beautiful patch of open grass that you could play a game of football or soccer on if you wanted to.
All the fruit trees in the backyard are super overgrown as well. I suspect they don't get much fruit from them, and whatever they do get grows too high for them to get to because they let the trees get so huge.
It's such a shame. We spent so much time and money making that backyard into something so beautiful, and these folks wasted it all simply with laziness. Mow your lawn, man. Jeez!
We went to a few more stores in search of toys, and hung out at Wendy's like we used to in the old days...not the same Wendy's, but they're pretty much all the same, so it might as well have been.
Then we drove out to a park and recorded a few sketches that Rish wrote for us to perform. They were both pretty funny. I think you'll enjoy them when they show up on his show. After that, I had to get over to my daughter's new apartment to help her move all her stuff in, because today was the day they were giving them their keys and letting them take possession of their new homes.
The last day I was there, Rish and I went out to see a movie. The new movie for the week was Gran Turismo, and Rish said it looked pretty good.
I was willing to give it a shot, and I'm glad I did. It was a great show. I recommend it. You'll likely enjoy it too.
After that, I made Rish take me to the local In-N-Out Burgers.
I got me a few Flying Dutchmen...that's this:
We hung out, eating on the outdoor tables, because it was an absolutely beautiful night. It was the kind of weather that I haven't felt in Houston for about six months. I could have stayed there forever, but eventually it was time to go home and go to bed, and that was it. I had to fly back home the next day, and I suppose I won't see Rish for another long while.
Sometimes I wish life wasn't so full of curves, and I still lived out there near Rish. It would be so fun to be able to hang out, watch movies, write together, and podcast like we used to do in the old days. But who knows, maybe those days will come again. I guess you never know.
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