Three Quests

Hello Internet.

This weekend was one of those weekends that saw all members of this family scattered to the Four Winds. Friday saw all schools in the area - including mine and the girls' - being cancelled due to insanely cold weather (-20 with wind chill, far too cold for kids to be waiting at bus stops and walking to school.) That afternoon, Kris ventured north to somewhere outside of Gaylord to a friend's family member's cabin on a lake (somewhere) for a low-key Mom Weekend (they've hit up this place before, a few years ago, for one of their not-nearly-as-cool-as-Brocation weekends.) She only took like three pics (she's horrible with pictures), but it more or less had seven or eight wives sitting around in pajamas, doing nails, listening to 90s music, and drinking wine for an entire weekend.

Sounds boring to me, but whatever - happy wife, happy life.

Meanwhile, Abby accompanied her best friend, Ella, and her mom, Courtney, up to Northern Michigan University up in the U.P.'s Marquette (where Courtney and her husband went to college.) Courtney had been wanting to take Ella up there for a hockey game this winter, and decided that this was the weekend to do so. . . regardless of the fact all her friends were away on that Mom weekend, and there was a giant snow storm forecasted to barrel down on the region (which you'll see in the following pics.) They invited Abby along because, as I've said before on multiple occasions, our kids are basically siblings at this point.

That left Alayna and I to hold down the fort here in Midland. She ended up having to work most of the weekend, which was good for her 'cause she's been wanting to recoup some hours after a dry spell over the Holidays which depleted her spending account. Yours Truly, therefore, more or less had the run of the house all weekend, which was f***ing AWESOME. I didn't have any errands or work crap to take care of, so my schedule was wide open to undertake the one, single obligation I had for the next three days. . .

Dungeons and Dragons.

WMU, 2002. Left to Right: Russell, Yours Truly, Adam, Mikey and Zack.

I never got the appeal of this back in the day, I always thought it sounded like nerd crap for dorks (and it still kinda is.) I had some friends get into it back in high school, and I tried it out once back in the late '90s, but it really wasn't for me. Thirty years passed and I didn't think twice about every playing it again, until one day, about a week ago, when an old college buddy (and former roommate/band member) of mine, Zack, texted me and asked if I'd be willing to join him and two other of our friends from Western Michigan University - Russell and Mikey - in a DnD campaign. I asked how he planned on accomplishing this, seeing how I'm in Midland, Russell is in Grand Rapids, and the other two are in the greater Detroit area, and he said they were going to do it all via Zoom and a few different online apps.

So I said 'screw it,' and signed up.

I'll get into the super-nerdy details regarding all of this later when the pics come up, but HOLY SHIT was it ever fun. Had I known how much f***ing fun this was I would have done it years ago, nerdy or not. I'm too old to care about stuff like that anymore.

Anyway, here's some pics and video detailing how the Hough Family spend their three-day weekend, scattered across the snowy state of Michigan.

Behold. . 

Abby and the female Johnsons hit up a Starbucks on their way north Friday afternoon, because no feminine undertaking would be complete without it.

With Kris and Abby already on the road to their respective weekend destinations, Alayna and Samson joined me in the Study to listen to some vinyl and drink some coffee in the Study.

A couple hours later, Abby prepares to cross the frozen straits of Mackinac (hard pass for me, this looks terrifying.)

Castle Rock (I haven't been there since like 2022, I think - that Brocation we did Mackinac Island.)

As Courtney drove further into the Upper Peninsula, the roads got dicier and dicier. Multiple 'highways' (if you can even call them that up there) were closed off and impassable, so she had to take a bunch of alternate ways up in order to reach Marquette. The amount of snowfall up there is absolutely insane; the pics you see here are not hills or rock formations, but drifts of snow.

Carving a path through the wilds of the north.

I used Google Gemini to add an Imperial AT-AT to this random pic Abby took from the window as they continued their drive north. I think it makes it cooler.

That evening, the three of them went out to the Berry Events Center for their scheduled hockey game. . .

(These two often add text to their social media posts like this - must be a Snapchat thing or something.)

Not sure what's going on in these videos, I just took them off Abby's Google Photos. . .

Walking back to the car, a block or two away, after the game, the weather had fallen far below zero (with the wind chill), and Abby spotted a bunch of locals clearly unprepared for the weather. Boys will be boys.

This is, like, the one pic Kris took all weekend (aside from two pics of her friends doing stuff that, to me, wasn't noteworthy at all, but I guess you had to be there in order to understand why the pic was being taken.)

After leaving NMU, Courtney and the girls continued driving west in order to get to her dad's house, where they'd be spending the next day and night. Abby was bundled up for warmth, chilled to the bone after having to walk a couple blocks out in the U.P. cold. She later told us that was the coldest she's ever been in her entire life.

One last selfie of these two weirdos at the end of the night.

The next morning, Courtney and the girls and got up to once again hit the road for a small day excursion up to Houghton/Hancock, halfway up the Keewanaw Peninsula.

Backseat homies.

Meanwhile, back in Midland, Yours Truly had some coffee on the couch while Samson kept watch over the front yard. Ever vigilant.

Later that morning, I hopped on Discord with (clockwise from top left) Russel, Zack and Mikey for the launch of our DnD campaign. All three of these guys - especially Mikey - are well-versed in how this game works, so I was just kinda along for the ride. Russell's setup was badass: we used this in-app rolling bot on Discord for dice rolling (which is how one determines successes and failures in the game - whether you can pick a lock, strike an opponent, decipher ancient texts, etc.), we used another website for maps and character placement, and yet another website for character information in order to keep track of our stats and inventory. Required me to use two different computers, but once all set up it was perfect.

Russell generated AI images of our characters for use on the online maps during gameplay (so we could keep track of where the characters were in relation to everything going on in the game.) My dude is a Rogue, with a Thief specialty, so he's lightly armored and relies on dexterity and stealth; good at picking locks, sneaking around, springing traps, infiltrating, that sorta thing. Can't use magic at all, but make up for it with swordsmanship and shitty one-liners.

Z-Baby's character is a Fighter, so all brawn and zero magic. . . basically Zack in college.

Mikey's character is a Warlock with a noble background, so he's our resident spellcaster - whipping fireballs around all the time.

Russell's the Dungeon Master, so he's the one driving the story, playing the enemies, setting up the maps and organizing everything. He's got like four monitors running during gameplay, using various AI platforms for dialogue and story descriptors - it's pretty impressive. He also is playing a character as well, a half-orc Paladin, which is like a Knight with healing abilities (which comes in handy when the rest of us take crossbow bolts to the shoulder, which happened to my guy in the opening part of our campaign.)

A screenshot of the map screen, which started out with all of us locked up in the bowels of a dungeon. Russell applies a 'fog of war' to the map - see the circles above - that black out parts of the map we haven't gotten to yet, opposed to having everything revealed right from the get go. Makes it more realistic in gameplay, and all of us being able to move characters about the map is super helpful when playing online. We played for about four hours when, due to the frigid temperatures Michigan is experiencing this weekend, the pipes in Russell's washing machine burst and he had water leaking all over his floor. So we scheduled to continue the game the following weekend, and will hopefully be playing on weekends for the foreseeable future. Like I said, this game is beyond nerdy, but incredibly fun. . . and being in my mid-40s now, I'm too old to give a shit about being labeled a nerd for playing it.

Back up in the U.P., Abby and the female Johnsons were driving up the Keewanah Peninsula towards Houghton/Hancock. This is Abby showing off her gas station snacks, which doesn't look ideal for one's stomach, but whatever.

Nap time.

Not sure what all they ended up doing in Houghton while they were there, but they got a couple pics posted in front of the bridge that spans the river dividing the two towns.

I can't imagine driving on those roads in the winter time, when we went up there a few years ago during the summer Kris' van could barely make it up the steep inclines on bone-dry roads. You couldn't pay me enough to live up there during the winter.

Eating dinner. . . somewhere. Ella looks thrilled.

That evening Sophie came over to spend the night with Alayna, and after dropping her off Morgan hung out for a few drinks with me and we listened to some Rat Pack on vinyl while having a couple drinks. Erik, Mitch and Collier were out bar-hopping at dive bars around Pinconning, but the two of us didn't feel quite up to that (we sent this pic to the three of them after getting one of them sitting at some towny bar.)

That evening, Courtney took Abby and Ella to some arcade somewhere, I assume Houghton 'cause there's not a lot to her hometown, which is about the size of Farwell.

She was probably able to buy a pencil topper or silly putty or some shit with all these tickets, arcades are total scams.

Kris and I are seeing Rise Against at the Soaring Eagle Casino on March 14th, the same day we're headed to the Clare Irish Festival (which we'll have to cut short in order to head to Mt. Pleasant.) Tickets were like $92, which I'd have no problem paying for some bands, but not Rise Against (a punk band that I really like, but wouldn't pay that much to see.) Fortunately, Morgan's boss gets a few complimentary tickets to every concert at the Soaring Eagle, and gives them to his employees for free on a first-come basis, so we were able to get them free of charge. Can't complain with a free punk concert.

While chatting on the Sausage Pad text thread later that night, after Morgan had left, someone mentioned our old, inflatable mascot, Suckie Fish, which we acquired from Damon's mom's house at one point (forget how and when.) We would take it with us on all of our group adventures throughout college - Key West, road trips, etc. and they wrongly assumed it was long gone. I sent them this pic of Suckie Fish to assure them otherwise (I hold on to everything, I'm the lore master in every group I'm a part of.)

Abby's social media is filled with videos like this one (as is all her friends' - their generation is weird.)

Later that night, back at Courtney's dad's house, sitting around playing some kinda game.

Yet another video for TikTok, interrupted by Ella's grandpa's dog. Thus concludes another weekend for the Houghs - we'll see you guys next time.

- Brian 

The Tin in Mackinaw, Pt. I

Halloween 1998

They say the Tenth Anniversary has something to do with 'tin.'

I don't why that is.  Maybe 'cause 'tin' sorta resembles 'ten.'  Whoever came up with this really didn't feel like putting too much creativity in it, did they.


Anyway, Kris and I have now been married for ten years, which is kinda weird to think about.  Before that we had about four years of dating under our belts, going all the way back to 1998, so more or less we've had to deal with one another's bullshit for nearly half our lives.

Our hotel in Mackinaw City

For the last eight of these years, we've had to live in varying degrees of servitude towards miniature humans, and have had to put up with their neverending bullshit.  Taking this into consideration, we decided to treat ourselves to a kid-free weekend away from our offspring to mark the special occasion, and rented a nice hotel room in Mackinaw City.  Dropping the kids off at Mom's, we left Thursday after work (our official anniversary date, October 7th, fell on a Friday this year, so we both took that day off of work), and made the three-hour drive north towards the old colonial city.

Check it out. . .

Our hotel room.  We got a king-size suite with a lake view and a hot tub (not cheap, but it's an anniversary so we splurged.)  We didn't get up there until nearly 9pm, so we more or less just unpacked our stuff in the room, took a five minute walk down the street, came back to the hotel, and enjoyed the hot tub.

What was cool about this setup was that we could turn the TV to the hot tub and watch from the bubbling awesomeness.  I wish I had this setup in our house in Midland.

These chairs didn't get a lot of use, nor did the couch (kinda hard to compete with the king-size bed and the hot tub.) 

The upstairs dining room, where we'd be having our continental breakfast the following morning.  I had to use the microwave up there to pop some popcorn for us, and when I went in there, the entire room was more or less dark except for a single light over a single table, around which four, super-old ladies were quietly sitting and doing. . . NOTHING.  Seriously, nothing.  Just sitting there and not talking.  In a large, dark room at 10pm.  I walked in, they turned and looked at me without saying a word and stared after me until I walked around the corner to the microwave.  It was the longest popping of a bag of a popcorn in my entire life, and I'm pretty sure those old ladies were ghosts.

The next morning, admiring the view from our hotel room porch (we were ground level.)

(I love taking pictures of people taking pictures of people.)

The day's first shuttle to Mackinaw Island

Later on in the morning, following our complimentary breakfast, we came back out on the porch for a coffee

Kris makes a friend

On our way out of the hotel, heading into town for some souvenir shopping downtown.  This is the front entrance to the hotel - I really like these bookcases - it'd be cool to have something like this in our next house (obviously lower to the ground.)

Another shot of the hotel entryway

These dudes working this crane were really rocking out - blasting hard rock at a ridiculous volume, especially for 9am.  Considering how close they were to patrons' room windows, I'd be surprised if they didn't have the cops called on them by lunchtime.

The Hamilton

I love me some History. . .

Boats

Souvenir shops.  Kind of a big thing around these parts, by the looks of things.

Mackinaw Crossings

This guy's mullet was exquisite.

This little Dutch kid snags himself a Leviathan.

Old people selfie.

Who placed these artillery pieces?  I can't imagine these serve a rational part in the town's defenses. . .

Another marina we wouldn't be frequenting:  we opted to stay on the mainland for this trip.

Downtown shopping district.  See that Keyhole Bar & Grill off to the right, there?  That's where we'd end up having Lunch for the day. . . and Dinner.

A pretty morbid sign, listing all the people who died constructing the Mackinac Bridge.

We walked around for a couple hours, ducking in and out of shops, but we didn't really see much that caught our fancy.

. . . except this.  These posters were in the window of nearly every store and restaurant in Mackinaw City, advertising Fort Fright: a Halloween-themed haunted attraction at Fort Michilimackinac (that we promptly decided on checking out later on in the evening.)  I wanted one of these posters really bad, for multiple reasons:  1.) The print job itself was awesome, from a design perspective, 2.) It features a colonial soldier (and drummer), 3.) It had our anniversary date (Oct. 7th) printed right on the poster, and 4.) It was a standard frame size, so it'd be easy to hang up.  Alas, while it was easy enough to find these posters hung up all over town, it was next to impossible to find anyone with extras, so I took it upon myself to devote the rest of our vacation hunting down this elusive poster. . .

Yorn desh born, der ritt de gitt der gue

Two different alehouses we didn't go into. . .

After walking around shops for awhile, Kris wanted to walk to the water - a few blocks away - to check out the Bridge.  This park - in honor of everyone's favorite Gary - had a decent view of the Mighty Mac.

The Mackinac Bridge

Marking ten divorce-less years in front of an architectural structure that's killed twenty-three people.

Mackinac Island's two most-famous structures: the Grand Hotel (left) and Fort Mackinac (right)

Another shuttle to the island

Some guy.

Some chick.

Struttin' down the ol' Historic Mackinaw Trail

Also known as The Nerd Store

(I'm voting Third Party this year.  Just sayin')

Daaaaa Bears

Kris and I were crazy enough to venture into this shit-show of a store.  After awhile, all these souvenir stores started to look the same; the only reason this one stood out was because it was so much bigger than the other stores (even if it was selling the exact same crap as all of the other places.)

Long story short, we didn't buy anything throughout the entire day up to this point.

We had a couple really good chicken wraps at the Keyhole Bar & Grill for Lunch.  Kris had done a shitload of research and discovered this local joint had the best food in town (it was pretty good.)

The local beer up here was pretty good, too.  Forgot what this one was called, but it was a decent generic-tasting Amber Ale.  Not bad, but nothing out of the ordinary.

Some candy and popcorn shop that Kris wanted to venture into.  She was in there about a half an hour, trying to decide what type of popcorn to bring back for the girls.

After trying several different samples, she ended up leaving the store without buying anything (much to the chagrin of the young clerk who was 'serving' her - she was definitely a bitch.)

The legendary Slush Puppie - I haven't seen this dude since 1989.  He used to hang out in my primary school cafeteria, and I used to sneak quarters into school so I could buy one at lunch throughout third and fourth grade.

What.  The F***.  Is this.

After taking a short break back at the hotel room, Kris and I decided to check out the town's historic lighthouse, and get some better pictures of the Mackinac Bridge (and, most importantly, to try and track down one of those ever-elusive Fort Fright posters for me - I was obsessed with my prize by this point, but Kris had my back.)

The author, in his natural environment

I bet money this shit's haunted.

Kris and Mac.

It hadn't rained all day, but the weather was definitely gloomy.

Wish you were here. . .??

Telephoto lens time

. . . and 40mm lens time

That park has my name written ALL over it.

I seriously can't take this chick anywhere. . .

On our way back to the hotel room, we ducked into this place to grab a cup of coffee (our lunch - and my beer from lunch - was making us pretty groggy, and we wanted to have our energy up for the Fort Fright attraction at the fort later.)  Upon checking out, I saw that the store had a second Fort Fright poster - the one I had been questing after - underneath their cash register.  I commented on it, and Kris chimed in about how we had been spending the entire day trying to hunt a copy down, and - lo and behold - the old woman working the register LET ME HAVE THE POSTER.  Quest COMPLETE.

Taking another break back at the hotel, watching a threatening cloud front sweep across Lake Michigan (or Huron. . . not sure which lake this is.)  We had spent the sound majority of the day walking around on sidewalks, so we were dead on our feet.  We ended up taking multiple breaks back at the hotel throughout the day.

We still had time to kill before dinner, which we were going to grab on our way to the Fort, so Kris suggested checking out this little strip of shops right across the street from our hotel.

I was all about buying a growler of beer from Mackinac Island Brewhouse, but once I found out they were based in frickin' Mount Pleasant, I decided to pass (why the hell would you name it after a place that's not a place where you're basing your company?  Was there a brewery named Mount Pleasant Brewing Co. already in existance, perhaps based in Lansing or something?)  Anyway, I passed on the beer aspect of things, but Kris wanted to try some of the local wines from the Mackinac Island Winery. . .

They had this deal where you could get five samples of wine and a FREE wine glass from the Winery for $5, which more or less equated to 1 1/2 glasses of wine and a free glass for $5.  Not a bad way to spend half an hour, if you ask me.

Following our stint at Winery, we drove back over to the Keyhole Bar & Grill for some dinner around 5:30pm.  We were short on time, seeing how the Fort Fright attraction was starting at 6:30pm, and there was a 45 minute wait to get a table at this place (it was like that everywhere, unfortunately.)  Miraculously, we were able to cut down on this wait time by sitting at the bar, our food came super quick, we ate like a couple of hobos eating a pie off a window sill in the 1930s, and our check came immediately. . . so we were in and out in about 45 minutes, which, I think, set some kind of a record for us at a nicer sit-down joint.

(to be continued. . .)

- Brian