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Day by Day: Quickies and catch-up
Mon, 10 Jul 2006

We took a few days vacation so time has flown by. Sadly those wondrous vacation days are gone, leaving us only to fire up the power washer and grind off the bug bits from rural highway driving..

Superman Returns: A pretty good film; from the television commercials I feared a melancholoy soppy show but instead it was a good old fashioned hero story .. much like the original Superman movies. The lead actor that no one has heard of did an excellent job - he pulled off an affable likeness to the late Christopher Reeve. Its refreshing to see in these days a simple hero again -- sure, he's got all the powers, but he also has his blinders on; theres good, theres bad, and he knows where the line is. I do think they threw in a bit too much what with Lois and the other guy's relationship .. Superman was never much about plot or drama, because as we all know.. real heroes think with their fists ;)

Observation: Do they have tree farms? While driving north to our various destinations last week, we noticed many very carefully laid out plots of tree-lings; a field of one kind beside a field of another. Not fancy trees for gardens, but Maple and Oak and whatnot. I'm betting these are for selling to home builder companies for plugging into eventual front lawns..

History or fiction: I've often read there is a custom for when riding in a hot air balloon or dirigible - to have champagne upon landing. I had always assumed this was merely to celebrate survival or the enjoyment of having aimlessly drifted in the sky for awhile, but last week someone told us the custom descends from the days when a balloon would land haphazardly in some farmers field .. and in those days, drawing attention from shotgun toting farmers could land you in the hospital. As such, a balloonist (?) would keep simple gifts in the basket (cockpit?) to give out to the local landowner upon landing. Neat.

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