So, the new iTunes update added "MobileMe" to my Windows control panel at work. This actually interested me, because I've never found an ideal solution to syncing my work and personal calendars, so I enabled it.

The upshot?

On Macintosh: Everything looks okay, sorta. Still have all my subscribed RSS-webcal calendars. All my Mac calendars, including the one I use for automated task scheduling on my Mac (i.e., "iCron"). No Outlook calendar.

On Mobile Me: No RSS-webcal calendars and no way to add them. All my native Mac calendars, including the one I didn't want - the one I used for automated task scheduling on my Mac. No Outlook calendar.

On Outlook: No RSS calendars and no way to add them (this is Outlook 2003. I think the newest versions support webcal.) All my Mac calendars, including the one I didn't want - the one I used for automated task scheduling on my Mac. No Outlook Calendar.

Notice a pattern here? Yes, that's right. "MobileMe" is apparently a new synonym for "F---Me" because it permanently erased my entire work calendar. The Apple discussion forums are full of similar but not quite identical complaints.

This is definitely a new low in a trend that has been going on for the past couple of years. Panther was rock solid. Tiger was feature rich but slow. Leopard vastly improved the speed, but at considerable loss of stability. Each new update has added crashes and bad behavior in basic system functions like Mail. I actually told my boss's boss that I didn't think he should switch his wife to a Mac!

I mean, seriously, what's the point? If ease of use and maintenance isn't a big enough win to cover the pain of conversion, why bother? Why pay the Apple premium?

Chapter 1: The Set Up

My sweetheart, the light of my life, the idol whose pedestal I can only aspire to occasionally dust, boo-booed last week.

You see, every year we go to the Kutztown Festival, a typical (if somewhat larger than usual) county-fair-type affair with domestic animals, Amish-ish crafts, yummy food and the occasional ride. We bought some beautiful end tables there last year.

And, each year, it's held on the last week of June/first week of July.

This year, I thought we had missed it, but SWHTL assured me she had checked the website and the event was being held in late July instead. So, I arranged to... how should I put this... "work from home"... and we bundled our children, and our children's friends, into the minivan and drove the hour or so to Kutztown.

To find an extraordinarily large and empty field.

Lucy had some 'splainin' to do. But we had already driven up there, so, thinking quickly, I redirected our attentions to Crystal Cave which had the obvious advantage of not being another 70 minute drive away, even if it wasn't really all that huge a cave and even if we had been there just last year.

Still, it wasn't exactly a big win for the day: Troll Jr. grumbled about "wasting time underground" (instead of "making time" with his main squeeze, I suppose) and Lamb and her friend were only mildly diverted.

Which led me to grab a great bundle of pamphlets on the way out and to lay them out for the crew. The more popular choices were:

• Hawk Mountain: two votes, from myself and SWHTL, with one negative (Lamb) and one abstention ("It's better than wasting time undergound!"
• Gettysburg: One vote. Me. Seriously, I want to see it sometime. It's supposed to be nice.
• Amusement Park: Two votes. Myself and Lamb. I already knew that, because Troll Jr. and SWHTL don't like rides.
• The Crayola Factory: Two votes. Myself and Lamb. I voted yes mostly because I'd heard about it before and I knew Lamb would have a good time.

Chapter 2: The Set-Up For Failure That's Obvious To Everyone But Me

Lamb has been showing a lot of interest in using computers lately, especially Google Earth. So I told her to research the directions to the Crayola Factory and print them out. Later, when I added the trip to Dorney, I told her to print out those directions.

And her mother told her to save paper by printing the Dorney directions on the back of the Crayola directions.

Did I mention that the directions to Dorney and Crayola are similar, but not identical?

Chapter 3: The Terrible, Awful, No Good, Hey Wait, I'm Actually Having Fun, Not So Bad Day

I was actually within 5 miles of the park, driving strictly by memory, when I glanced down at the paper and noticed that, according to the paper, I'd missed a turn 10 miles earlier. So I back tracked half that distance, and stopped and asked for help at a gas station. Where I was given (what I later realized were) perfectly accurate directions but which were missing a key detail: the route number.

The upshot is that I actually drove entirely past the city of Allentown, Pennsylvania before (a) I understood what had happened and (b) Lamb realized that the directions were wrong-side-up and (c) we found a back road that took us into the city so I could ask for (more easily understood) directions to the park.

40 mile drive => 70 mile drive.

Lamb and I got to the park late enough that we ended up stuffed in the overflow-to-the-overflow parking lot, had to walk 15 minutes to get to the gate, spent 30 minutes at the gate buying tickets and were both generally in an extremely bad mood when we got through the door. The place was packed, and Lamb was insisting we go to the water park first, so we lost another 30-40 minutes finding a locker and getting changed.

But...

When we finally, finally, got into the inner-tube ride I made her laugh by making a big show of how cold the water was. (I think the line was "Daddy, you're crying like a little girl.") And once we were actually in the tubes, getting splashed by the waterfalls and bouncing off the other guests, things got a lot better. And after I nearly drowned in the wave pool because I was more worried about Lamb than about maintaining my own air-to-water ratio, I realized that the frustrations of the ride up were pretty much gone.

And once Lamb realized that, yes, she was now tall enough to get on all the grown up rides, we had a grand old time running from coaster to coaster. We stayed at the park till closing, and that was good, too.

Chapter 4: They Use Wax For What?!?

The Crayola Factory trip was also a near disaster, but in this case it was entirely because of my temper - Lamb had jammed alkaline batteries in the battery charger that I had bought for her Wiimotes, and the resulting mess had destroyed the charger and had come close to dripping acid in the cable box. The fact that she had nearly fried the cable box and (as I told her) risked causing a fire made me mad, but the fact that she had also apparently "lost" all the NiMH batteries that were supposed to be in the charger is probably what really put me over the top.

The fact that I found all this mess as we were trying to pack up and leave for the Crayola Factory... well, that was just icing on the proverbial cake.

Yeah, I know.

So, anyway, we pick up Lamb's friend, and we follow the correct directions and we make it to Easton, Pennsylvania in pretty good order.

Which turns out to be a pretty nice town.

And the "factory" turns out to be a supermarket-sized space full of things to draw and color with, and on.

And they had a really good time - even though we never did get to see the "how crayons are made" show because we were too busy using the crayons.

And then we discovered that the "rest" of what we thought was the Crayola Factory was actually the "National Canal Museum".

And I was terribly, terribly, afraid. No factory tour? No more arts and crafts? Plastic boats in a model of a canal?

They loved it!

I found them on the top floor playing with a water table. (I haven't seen one of those since my one-and-only civil engineering class in the early 80's.) All I can say is that I never realized the Army Corps of Engineers re-routes rivers because it's fun - I thought it was for flood control or something like that - but watching the girls, I learned that it was entirely because you get to create vicious eddies that make tugboats capsize.

All and all, a much better day than I, perhaps, deserved.

Epilogue: Bike Logs and Food Logs

I've kept an exercise diary since I first started trying to lose weight, 13 years ago. It's very useful, both for reminding yourself that you've been slacking and for reminding yourself of the progress you've made. Since "run tracker" has decided to post his runs here on the site, I thought I'd share my bike log with y'all too, for your amusement and/or edification:

Season Total    294.7           
Date    Distance    Comment    Avg Speed    Distance to Date
1-Jun-08    30    Various rides with Lamb        30.00
1-Jul-08    21.9    Commute (round trip)        51.90
3-Jul-08    11.8    Commute        63.70
3-Jul-08    11.4    Commute        75.10
5-Jul-08    5.7    Ride with Lamb        80.80
8-Jul-08    13.3    Commute (broken spoke)        94.10
10-Jul-08    13.3    Commute (flat)        107.40
15-Jul-08    16.7    Commute        124.10
15-Jul-08    11.1    Commute (another flat)        135.20
17-Jul-08    15.5    Commute    13.2    150.70
17-Jul-08    11.2    Commute        161.90
19-Jul-08    7    Ride with Lamb        168.90
25-Jul-08    21.1    Commute    13.4    190.00
28-Jul-08    19    Commute    13.2    209.00
28-Jul-08    13.2    Commute    14.2    222.20
31-Jul-08    37.6    Commute + Ride to Plymouth Meeting    13.4    259.80
31-Jul-08    13.5    Commute    12    273.30
2-Aug-08    4.5    Ride with Lamb        277.80
7-Aug-08    16.9    Commute + Street Ride    14.1    294.70

Not too shabby. I've been toying with the idea of doing a century next year, if I can keep up the pace and do a lot more 50-mile days like I did on 31-July.

Similarly, I've begun keeping a food diary, because I was suspicious that I wasn't remembering how much I was eating.

Well, I was right. And if you think I'm posting the damn thing here, you're very much mistaken. Let's just say that a typical entry might read "10 PM, Cheese, Egg, Pickle, Bourbon" and leave it at that.