Candlepin Bowling and Tropical Storm Hanna

This evening I went candlepin bowling with ukelele, jodi, pants_of_doom and nonnihil. Candlepin bowling, in case you were too lazy to click on the wikipedia link, differs from regular ten-pin bowling in that the pins are symmetrically thin on the top and bottom, you use a much smaller ball that does not have holes, you bowl three times per frame (which are referred to as boxes, rather than frames), and the remaining pins are not reset during a given frame. As per the wikipedia entry, the highest recorded score for candlepin bowling is 245, and you just have to respect a game where no one has ever gotten a perfect score. The alley we went to, Sacco's Bowl-Haven, looks like it hasn't changed much since the 1950's. The decor is very vintage, you record all scores manually, and the lanes appear to be completely mechanically run, rather than electronically. To reset the pins you push a button, and the lanes have the most fantastic ball-returns ever. I actually went on youTube to see if there was a video of them. This youTube video was taken at Sacco's, and at the very end of the clip (at about 1:05) you can see one of the balls roll up the ball return. It just makes me happy that there are such well designed mechanical systems out there.

In addition to bowling, tonight tropical storm Hanna is hitting the Boston area. I went to hang out with jodi and pants_of_doom after bowling while they got food, and got completely drenched on my walk back to ukelele's place. On the plus side, it's been terribly humid throughout my visit, and getting drenched in water was kind of a welcome change from getting drenched in sweat. It's been a really good visit, but I'm looking forward to getting back home to the nice, crisp fall weather. Hopefully Hanna doesn't delay my flight out tomorrow.