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 Great Christmas Record Odyssey, Ep. CXLI

Alright music lovers, time for another frightening dive into the nether regions of Holiday musicalness. . .

Album Title:  Songs for All Seasons

Album Artist:  Angelus Choir, Directed by Naomi Stucki

I've reviewed a lot of Christmas albums over the years with choirs, but I don't think I've ever reviewed one this low budget before.

This lil' beauty was picked up from Radio Wasteland a couple years ago (from the Dollar Bin, obviously), and its selection was based solely on the fact that something this ridiculous-looking - and obviously low-budget - would have to be pretty fun to listen to.

It did not disappoint.

I often remark about 'production value' in these Christmas Records posts, how some albums seem to have a lot of money behind them judging by the quality of the mix, the arrangements, vocal levels/clarity, etc. Other times albums appear to be mixed by a brace of crackheads who have broken into a basement in order to steal copper wiring to fund their next fix, only to find a crappy, DIY recording studio on the other side of a beat-up washer and dryer.

There's zero 'production value' to speak of on this album. This album sounds as if someone brought out a cassette recorder, hit 'record', and let a room full of young girls give it the ol' college try for a half an hour or so.

Basically how I recorded all my college band albums back in the early 2000s. Except replace 'teenage girls' with 'drunk guys in their early 20s with delusions of grandeur.'

Anyway, here's what we got: there's a woman behind a church organ, but not one of those giant, brass-piped mamma jammas that shake the stone walls of a cathedral. Nay, this is one of those wood-paneled jobs that every congregation across the United States has (almost always manned by some 90-year-old woman whose sole, remaining purpose in life is to man said instrument.) In fact, this maybe one of those instances where we can 100% judge an album by it's cover, folks - this is exactly what this album sounds like.

They bring in like twenty or so teenage girls, have them crowd around the old crone and her organ (and sometimes she's got it set to 'piano'), and have them sing a selection of church music. Based on the audio, I'd wager that the audio is being picked up from a solitary microphone suspended from the ceiling, right above the organ. The vocals drown out the organ whenever the gals start belting it out, and I'd make a joke here about 'yOu'D tHiNk ThEsE gUyS wOuLd SpRiNg FoR aNoThEr MiCrOpHoNe,' or something, but based on the fact that the rear side of this album sleeve is BLANK (see image at right), I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that money is an issue.

Which makes sense when you realize that this First Congregational Church, located in my old college stomping ground of Kalamazoo, Michigan, is no longer a church and is now some local library or something. If only they would have sold more of these stellar choir albums, maybe they wouldn't have had to close down, who knows.

So can the ladies sing on this album? Uh, I guess - they sound like a high school choir singing, honestly. Probably better than I could sing, but like, who cares? 

I guess I'm struggling with the whole purpose of this album, you know? Who's the target audience, these kids' parents? Folks who attend (well, used to attend) this church? If the First Congregational gang ended up shutting down, was this recording why? Did this fool-hardy project bankrupt them? I can't imagine pressing vinyl was super cheap back in the day, and they clearly didn't have a giant budget to begin with (see: no rear sleeve art, only one microphone, etc.) Was this a wise move, recording this in the first place? Couldn't these kids' parents just listen to them sing in church and call it good? Why waste the money?

Anyway, back to the music, sorry. About 80% of the music on this album doesn't even qualify as Christmas music. It's mostly church music, so the fact they titled this venture 'Songs for All Seasons' is kinda shitty. Yes, technically you're right - you can listen to church music all season long. But who's going to throw this album on in the middle of May with a few Christmas songs on it? I love me some Christmas music, but even I cringe whenever I hear Holiday jams outside of the mid-November to New Years Eve window. 

In summary, this album is a choir of teenage girls singing along with an organ, poorly recorded, with a track list that could hardly be considered a Christmas album at all. The singing isn't terrible, per se, it's just a bunch of teenage girls singing along to church music. . . so, if that's your thing you might actually like this (though that's a bit pedo-ish of you, not gonna lie.) Personally, as I listen to it I find myself not being impressed or entertained at all. If anything, I want to learn more about these girls' identities and what ever happened to them. Did any of them ever go on to record further music? Do they work at the library now? So many questions. . .

VERDICT:  3/10 - Seriously? (A gaggle of teenage girls from Kalamazoo poorly record an album that hardly qualifies as a Christmas music, bankrupt their church, then. . . I don't know, probably go on to make further poor decisions later in life.)

- SHELVED -

- Brian

Crusty, Old Sausages

What's up, kids.

Well, it had been over a year - before the pandemic hit a year ago - since the Sausage Pad last unfurled its war banner, and we felt that it was high time that we did so once again.  Zack and I settled on this particular weekend a month or so ago, and, after a day of wrangling teenagers and forcing American History down their throats, I set off for a two-and-a-half hour drive downstate towards my old stomping ground of Kalamazoo.

I gotta say, I'm a big fan of my new route down.  Opposed to the route I usually took from Kalamazoo to Clare back in my college days, my new one is about a half hour shorter, since I'm coming from Saginaw, which is farther to the south.  I can cut across the state diagonally, too, which makes things a lot easier, and half the trip is down empty country roads with lots of scenery.  Pair that with a solid audiobook - I'm re-reading The Lord of the Rings, for, like, the 9,000th time (currently wrapping up The Fellowship of the Ring), and it makes for a pretty painless trek.

Anyway, I rolled in to Zack's driveway around 7pm, and established headquarters for the weekend.  Our itinerary for the weekend was identical to what we had done in 2018 and 2019:  a chill first night, sitting around Zack's for the most part, then, the following morning, we kick off a day of brewery and restaurant hopping throughout our old stomping ground.

Just what the doctor ordered, folks.

Check it out. . .

After a fairly-uneventful night before - that saw Zack and I make a beer run to Meijer, grab some appetizers and drinks at a local Applebees, and then retire to his house to watch some NCAA Basketball for most of the evening - we awoke and put on Ep. V - The Empire Strikes Back (my all-time favorite Star Wars movie, and probably by second favorite movie period.)

Zack doesn't drink coffee, so this is what they have on hand for a morning caffeine boost.  When in Rome, kids.

While we sat around waking up to Star Wars - and waiting for Damon to show up (he said he'd be over by 8:30am, buuuut it's Damon - we knew he'd be running a few hours late), Zack broke out his Bloody Mary supplies.

Say what you will about this piece of shit, but the dude makes one hell of a Bloody Mary.

Breakfast of Champions.

(Zack wanted to rub it in Damon's face that we were starting without him.  Sometimes you gotta spur that dude into action.)

Zack's dogs (I took this pic solely to send to Alayna, who's obsessed with dogs.)

When Damon finally got his ass over to Zack's, we figured we'd take a picture to mark the start of our day's adventuring (this gem was from my setting up process.)

The Sausage Pad's Alpha Team, ca. 2021.

Setting off for Kalamazoo. . . in Zack's stepdaughter's SUV (she left the keys in it while her and her Mom, and Zack's other kids, stayed in a hotel for the weekend. . . they always vacate the premises when we roll in to town.)

What used to be Arcadia Ales, a great Michigan brewery that sadly went under a couple years ago.  We hit that joint up in 2018, but they couldn't compete with other craft juggernauts like Bells, Founders, and Shorts.

Entering downtown Kalamazoo.

Bell's Brewery

Zack wanted a picture of us with his kid's car, if only to teach her a lesson not to leave her keys in an unlocked vehicle.  Needless to say, she was not happy we were joyriding around in her vehicle.

Starting out

We wanted to kick off our day of escapades with a couple beers at Bell's, but due to Covid (ugh), their indoor space was limited, and consequently there was a line wrapped around outside the building by the time we got there (shortly before noon.)  So we decided to skip it for the time being and circle back to it at a later time.

In the meantime, we decided to advance on to our lunch spot, right across the street - Hopcat.

The weather - thank God - was nice enough to allow us to eat outdoors on the patio, next to these 1950's Sci-Fi-ish igloo deals that lots of restaurants use to heat outdoor dining areas in these bizarre pandemic-stricken times of ours.

Enjoying a beer before our food arrived.  This is a Founders Rubeus Nitro - super awesome.

These fries are hands-down the best I've ever eaten, and I make it a point to grab a basket whenever I'm in Kalamazoo.  Damon picked up some corned beef sliders for us as well - a damn fine lunch, if I do say so myself.

Nothing at all healthy about these two.

Leaving Hopcat, off to our next stop. . .

A lot of places were shuttered as we walked around downtown, so we wandered about aimlessly for a bit before saying 'screw it' and heading back to the car.

After making a pit-stop at the Bell's merchandise store (the brewery's line to get in was even longer by this point in time, so we sadly had to skip it all together for this year's outing), we saddled back up and headed off towards the western part of town - deep into the heart of our old college days.

The old fitness center at Western, that I didn't go into nearly as much as I probably should have back in my college days.

On familiar ground.

I suggested that for this year's tour we hit up a bunch of the old nostalgic bars that we used to hit up all the time back in the day, and that we had neglected the last few times we had done something like this.  Our first stop was the legendary Bilbo's.

They moved to a new location back in, like, 2006, but moved over a bunch of the old building's decor.  It was cool being able to gaze upon this familiar, battle-worn sign again, after nearly 20 years.

They don't brew as much of their own beer as they did back in the day - sadly, there was no Wizard Wheat to be had anymore, but we all ordered this Honey Brown of theirs.  Which, regrettably, was f***ing terrible.

The other two were pretty pumped that their was March Madness bullshit on the TVs wherever we went.  Personally, I could've cared less.

Zack's one creepy-ass dude, all right.  These guys ordered more food, but I was still full from my lunch at the last place.

Another relic from the old days, preserved on the walls.

Passing under the footbridge that I utilized to walk from my car to campus the last three years of college.  They've since then installed fencing along the sides, you used to be able to sit right on the edge of the bridge back in the day (which, looking back, wasn't the smartest thing to do.)

The Den - arguably the most recognizable party store affiliated with Western's campus, has since changed locations, but inside they still sell the same old stuff as they used to back in the day.  They no longer have a giant CD section, though.

The Wayside has since closed down, since some guy was stabbed in the parking lot about a decade or so ago.  Whatever, I was never a huge fan of that place anyway.

The pinnacle, for me, of this year's Kalamazoo trip was hitting up Waldo's, my all-time favorite bar from my college days.

The last time I had set foot in this old haunt was on my very last day in Kalamazoo, the very last night before I left for Clare, before leaving for Ghana and the Peace Corps.  My farewell party was so epic that I was kicked out of the bar for being too drunk - a fitting end to my college experience, for sure.

We had to get a picture in front of the old sign.  The last few years of college, we went here EVERY Thursday, because their special was $5 pitchers of mixed drinks - you would get annihilated every, damn time.

Damon gets creepy.

Kalamazoo, WMU, and all the other bars we'd frequented up to this point had changed dramatically over the nearly twenty years or so it's been since college, but it was beyond refreshing upon stepping into Waldo's and finding that it had NOT changed AT ALL.

This was like walking into an immersive time capsule - literally everything was just the same as it had been when I last stepped foot inside the place.  Same carpeting, same tables, same decor (though their were flatscreen TVs on the wall now, instead of the old box jobs.)

Physical graffiti.

They even had the same, old trusted change machine.  Gotta love it.

Indeed.  F*** the Chips.

Behold - The Captain's Table.  This prime-location table (right next to the bar) was incredibly hard to nab on Thursdays, and in order to do so you had to show up at, like, 8pm or so (we generally didn't roll in until 10pm, so this was unheard of.)  You can bet your ass we grabbed it this time around.

I have stories and memories from, literally, every square foot of this establishment.  I've sat at every table, hung out in every corner, and was beyond thrilled that the place was left exactly as I remembered it.

Kimmel jumped down these stairs our senior year and broke his arm, for example, and I had to help him limp out of the establishment once security ordered him out.

I took a dart to the side of the head once, thrown by a drunk girl, in this section of the bar.  Good times.

Zack drops off some beers and Jagermeister shots to the Captain's Table. . .

Heading down the old familiar stairwell to the lower level, where the bathrooms are located.

Still the same, disgusting floors.  The old perceptible change in the entire place was on this lower level, where they have since painted the walls and freshened them up a bit.  A welcome change, though - it used to look super shady down here, with stained paneled walls and flickering lights.  You'd have expect people to be sitting along the floor, shooting up heroin.

They kept the old, paneled walls, but added a fresh coat of paint and some cool quotations.

So Mote It Be.

The old condom dispenser in the men's room is still there, but it looks like they don't keep it well-stocked anymore.

An outdoor patio area has since been added, which was kinda cool - wish they would've had that when we were here.

Finishing up our beers, planning our next move.

Booya

Designated parking out back, behind the bar (which I never used back in the day - you didn't want your car anywhere remotely near that bar back in the day, lest someone crash into it or puke/piss on it, etc.)

Crossing the street, leaving Waldo's back to our car, I caught a glimpse of the old campus security building, where you had to go and pay your parking tickets, and where I got fingerprinted for the Peace Corps.

You can see WMU's stadium in the background here.

We decided to head back to Zack's later in the evening in order to use the facilities, recharge our batteries, and chill for a bit before heading out later that night.  While we sat around and had a couple drinks, I showed Zack how to stream my newly-edited and uploaded videos via a shared Google Photos album.  The guys got a kick out of this, so we watched a couple installments from our ongoing Sausage Pad video saga (this chapter centered around our year at Jefferson St, and you can spot Kimmel on the TV during our first annual Keg Race.)

After awhile, Zack decided to pull a prank on his wife.  She, like every other wife out there, is obsessed with redecorating their home in every, conceivable Pintrest-y way possible (copious amounts of signs, family pictures, etc.)  She had two multi-image frames hanging on their living room wall that don't have family pictures in them yet, so Zack thought it'd be best to print off some pictures of the Sausage Pad and stick 'em in there.  If only to see how long it would take before she discovered them.  So, we ventured out to Meijer, right around the corner from his house, to print a few off that I grabbed from my Google Photo library, and to grab some more beer.  Here Zack shows off his golf swing while contemplating buying a hat to use while golfing (he didn't end up getting it, though.)

Gotta grab the Oberon, folks.

Mission Accomplished.

Our objective complete, we set off for the car, once again.

Zack and Damon were both gunning for steak for dinner, so we hit up a couple different restaurants down Westnedge Ave, but due to Covid (yes, again), the wait times on account of limited seating was over an hour at every place we stopped at.

So we finally settled on sushi (my suggestion) at this joint that we stumbled across.

Waiting for our food.

Ultimately, this proved to be the wrong choice, folks.  After drinking all day, fried shrimp and sushi was a stupid, stupid move.

Zack would end up getting pretty sick, and we had to return to his place after dinner.

We closed out the evening watching more of our hey-day videos, including the one documenting our road trip down the East Coast (Niagara Falls, shown here.)

The finished product.  From Left to Right: DeMay, Smitty and Zack at Cotter's Wedding (Dec. 2005), Yours Truly, Zack and Damon at my dad's house (Christmas 2009), and the one from me and Damon from earlier today.)

From Left to Right: Zack and I, from my wedding (Oct. 2006), me, Smitty, Zack and Damon at Clingman's Dome in Gatlinburg, TN (June 2014), and Zack and Damon at Niagara Falls (June 2002.)  We'll see how long it takes Zack's wife to notice. . .

- Brian