Moir Park Revisited, Games People Play and Manoj Bhargava

I got up Saturday morning and drove to Bloomington to take some photos at Moir Park. It's a park a little more than 2 miles from where I grew up and one that I'd only been to one other time that I can recall and that was probably 45 years ago. I was talking with a friend about it on Facebook and it piqued my interest to go back and have another look.

The one memory I have from that visit all those years ago was descending some concrete steps and how they led to a park that was so unlike the world above. The park was and still is a tranquil setting with a creek (Nine Mile Creek) running through it. I'm surprised we'd never gone there as a family for an afternoon picnic when I was a boy.

When we finished our basement 11 years ago we purchased a Simpson's Pinball Party pinball machine with the idea that Rachel and her friends would have a blast with it. It didn't quite turn out that way though because pinball seems to be something that's of little interest to her generation or at least to her group of friends. They used it some but it mostly sat quietly for months at a time. I would go down and fire it up occasionally but I almost always seemed to have things I'd rather do on my days off. I would tell myself again and again that once I was retired, I'd be finally making use of it. And I'm happy to say that I am. I've been hanging out in our basement during the evenings playing pinball, darts and sharpening my bumper pool skills.

I had John from Pinball Plus out to tune it up a few days ago. One of the flippers was sticking and a few small lights had burned out. I thought it was something I could maybe service on my own but after seeing the game opened up, I realized that it wasn't anything I'd want to mess with. John was telling me that it's one of the best games out there but one that's difficult to learn. The game is so deep in terms of strategy. I found a 45-minute video online of a guy playing the game while describing his strategy and making sense of it. I'd need another lifetime to get this good.

The worst of the fall cleanup is behind me and I'm relieved about that! So far my tally of compost bags used this year is up to 48 but I'm not done yet. Last year I used 53 and there are still leaves that haven't fallen. Yes, I actually count how many compost bags I use. Don't you?

The biggest difference in doing the year's yard work was a nifty device I picked up at Home Depot that works to keep the compost bag open while filling it with leaves. It makes much quicker work out of the job and spares the user a bunch of frustration in the way of less collapsed and ripped bags while trying to fill them. Easily worth the $8 I spent for it.

I meant to post this here last week but it slipped my mind. It's a video from the maker of the small bottles of 5 Hour Energy that you've no doubt seen in the checkout aisle wherever you do your shopping. I've always looked at that stuff as the wares of a huckster and not something that would ever interest me but perhaps I shouldn't be so quick to judge. Manoj Bhargava (as I wrote on Facebook) is either the slickest snake oil salesman or one of the most forward-thinking people alive today. Watch the video below to see what I mean.

I've got some pinball to shoot while I contemplate solutions to our world's problems!