It's been a little while.

A Bus has three stops on its route. A ticket costs 12 cents if you're going to the first stop, 21 cents if you're going to the second stop, and 25 cents if you are headed to the third stop. A man gets on the bus at the starting station, and hands the driver 25 cents. Without communicating with the passenger at all, the Bus Driver hands the passenger a ticket to the 3rd stop. How did he know?

It's been a while... I'm not still in Vermont, in case you were wondering. I got back, and I became rather busy. Then I got sick, and being sick blows. Anyway, I had a rather large collection of pictures that hadn't been posted, so I went through and added them. So here they are.

• Becky's Perfect Game I was over at Sven's place playing Super Monkey Ball for Wii with Sven, Tim, and Becky. We were playing the bowling game, and they discovered a neat little trick that, if pulled off successfully, would mean a strike every time. Well, as this picture verifies, Becky managed to pull it off, and bowled a 300. It... was awesome.


• My Bunny. My back yard was home to a number of bunnies throughout the summer, but there was one in particular that arrived at the same time every day, and I took a liking to him, and began feeding him. Here he is. He's a cutie.


• The Flowers at My House
        
  With the help of my folks, I did some fancy landscaping this past summer. I decided to take a few pictures of some of the flowers that just magically sprung up around the house. I thought they looked nice.


• The Downed Tree. With the big storm came big winds. With Big Winds came tree damage. The giant tree in my front lawn had a rather large limb break off and fall, and rest precariously by my power lines. Eventually the power company came and chop up the limb and left it in my yard.


• New York City Marathon. Randy was running in the New York City Marathon. He, his sister, and Erin were heading out there, and I was invited to join them. I was jazzed, as I'd never been to New York City before. Randy and I took pictures as the 4 of us toured the city.


• Lester's No-Hitter. Peter was going to be out in Boston for a week, and managed to pick up some Red Sox tickets. I decided to drive out to Boston and join him for a game. The solitary drive was long, but relatively entertaining, and when I arrived, I got to take in a rare sight: The home team pitching a no-hitter. It was amazing. After the game and a quick pint, I hopped back in the car, and drove home.


• Yankee Stadium. Encouraged by the success of my Boston trip, I decided I really ought to see Yankee Stadium before the season ended, and the Stadium was closed for good. Fortunately, this time I managed to rope in Sven to join me. He and I made the long drive out, toured the new stadium's construction zone, and took in a rather exciting 13-inning game. Afterwards, we made the long, long trip back home.


• My Trip to Vermont. My folks were staying out in Vermont for a few weeks, so I drove out there to join them for a weekend. It was a long but pleasant drive, and I had a great time with my parents. My dad and I took a tour of covered bridges in the area, we ate some amazing steaks, I got my Mom to watch a number of baseball games (Playoffs!), and I got to take in the amazing colors of Fall in Vermoint.


• My Ankle. On the first play of what ended up being 3 games in one night, I rolled over my ankle while rounding first. I crawled back to first, and stretched it a bit, and called it good. It continued to be sore the rest of that game, and I tried to keep it loose. After the second game, we had an hour off, and I took off my shoe, to reveal a lot of disgusting swelling. I wrapped it up tight, and then we played the third game. By the end of dinner afterwards I was not doing well, and thankfully Kevin volunteered to drive me home. (Thanks!). This is what it looked like two days later. After a week of it not healing, I went to the Doctor, who took some X-rays, and said I had a slight fracture, and gave me a fancy air-cast.


• Vance Softball Rules!. The Softball team won another trophy! The team tied with 2 other teams for 1^st in the regular season, and took 2^nd in the tie-breaker games. In the final tournament, we fought our way to the Championship Game, and took the runner-up trophy. Vance Refrigeration Rules!


• Eastown Thanksgiving 2008. We celebrated Eastown Thanksgiving at my place this year. As far as I can tell, it was a great success. Lots of food, lots of good friends, and a few bottles of wine. I cooked a turkey & potatoes.. and at one point, there were 3 crockpots going at the same time. Everyone helped out with the food and the cleaning and everything, it was great. There was a lot of food.


• Thanksgiving 2008. My family celebrated Thanksgiving at my place this year. I cooked another Turkey (It turned out fantastic!), and once again, we made a LOT of food.

So there you go. You're more or less caught up with what's been going on. Now that the snow is falling and the daylight has shrunk to about 20 minutes a day, I look back on these pictures and think about how much I enjoy my summers, and how excited I am about all that's to come next year. Meanwhile, winter blows.

I am in Vermont. It is pretty here. You miss me terribly.

So.. my cousin, Sven, and I headed out to Indiana the other weekend to go golfing with our friends from out that way, and I forgot my golf clubs at home because I'm retarded. While driving out there, we ran into the awesome flooding going on in Indiana and Illinois, and as a result, they shut down the highway, leaving us parked/crawling on it a short ways past the Indiana/Michigan border for about an hour or so. All this to say we had some time on our hands, and Sven is [thankfully] the sort who puts up with [perhaps enjoys?] my fairly inane observations and questions. (inane --> Fascinating and Awesome) So I brought up something I had been thinking about a bit earlier, when trying to sleep, and I've decided to mention it here as well, because I don't feel like working.

We had been talking about TV shows, and I mentioned that TV Themes/openings seem to have changed as TV Shows themselves have changed. In 80's and 90's (and I'd imagine before that as well) you had two main types of "standard" TV show : The Family Sitcom/Drama, and the special Situation/Gimmick Comedy/Drama. To go with these 2 main types, you had 2 main types of opening theme.. what I'd call "The Explanation" theme, and "The Introduction" theme.

The Standard Family sitcom was a show that required no explanation, as it took place in a setting we were already familiar with: A family's home, School, etc. As such, the theme just had to introduce you to the main players, and usually gave you a quick setup for what kind of character they were. Examples: The Cosby Show, 90210, Family Ties, Growing Pains, Friends, The Simpsons... You get the idea. I think the best example of this is a more recent show: Freaks & Geeks. After watching that opening theme, you get a great idea for what each character is like, and the theme song gives a great idea about the overarching theme.

The Explanation theme was required whenever the show had some gimmick or special circumstances that need to be explained for the show to make sense, or if the setting is just foreign enough to require explanation. That can either mean the theme song explains the premise, or the opening theme visuals show you exactly what's going on. Now, if the theme song explains the show, you can go two routes with that: Either you just have someone say the point at the very beginning, or you have a song that describes it. Examples of just explaining it: Dragnet, Law & Order, Star Trek & The Next Generation, Quantum Leap, My Two Dads, The A-Team, Sliders, Knight Rider, etc. Examples of singing the explanation: The Brady Bunch, Dukes of Hazard, Green Acres, Gilligan's Island, Beverly Hillbillies, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Then you have the shows where the visuals explain it, that this can be something like MASH, where you are just shown the main people doing their doctor things, so by the end you know that they are working at a army hospital during a war (you're given no clue if this episode is one of the funny ones or the sad ones). Or it can be more direct, like Who's the Boss, where (until the later seasons, I think) you are given a full run-through of Tony showing up, getting hired, then we see all the characters, and then you see that Tony is the house keeper, and that he has the hots for Angela. Story explained. Other examples of this type: Mork & Mindy (Thanks Alan!), Perfect Strangers, Just the 10 of Us (the early seasons), Mr. Belvedere, X-Files, etc..

Okay.. so that's what themes were like... and for the most part, shows (not counting Soap Operas) were of a sort where you could just watch a single episode and follow along no problem. There was continuity, but it wasn't vital to your understanding of the show. I think that's changed. A lot of the shows now, if you didn't watch from the beginning, you'll have no idea what's going on, and no introduction is going to help. (Think : Alias, Lost, Prison Break, Arrested Development, The West Wing, Ed..) Some of them will have a "previously on X" spot, but that's clearly meant for people who've been watching since the beginning, as you'd be even more lost trying to follow what they're explaining in those clips than the show itself. I think that, coupled with the fact that shows are even shorter now, in order to squeeze in a few more commercials, means we just don't have time or need for long opening themes explaining the show. Either they skip the opening theme altogether (e.g. Lost, Seinfeld), or you shrink it way down, and just throw the actors/actresses name out there, and call it good. You still get some shows that can pull off the "introducing the key players" thing (e.g. The Office, 30 Rock), but man, they zip through those characters really fast. A few notable exceptions: The various Law and Orders still on and My Name is Earl.

So what was the point of all that? There wasn't really a point... but I managed to delay working for like, 2 hours.

I give to you the newest trivia:

I need to go to the store to buy some ingredients to cook with, so I starting writing them all down:

• Butter
• Eggs
• Cumin
• Baking Soda
• Lemon Juice
• Cashews (unsalted)
• Oranges
• Vinegar
• Milk
• Cinnamon
• Vegetable Shortening

Now your question: What was I making?