Homegoing

It's that time of year again. Homecoming, a university holiday, was yesterday, so I had no classes (or work, since I work at the university). I took advantage of the opportunity to have some fun. As I said last weekend,

I'm going to Howl-O-Scream at Busch Gardens with Andrea and friends on Thursday night. I haven't been there since I was too short or wimpy to ride the brand-new Montu, and I've never been to a Halloween-type event at a theme park (omg omg omg so awesome how could you not ahve ever been).

So we set off on Thursday afternoon. Once we got to Tampa, we had dinner at Friday's, where Andrea's friend Billy met up with us. Next, we headed to Busch Gardens. It was dark by the time we got there.

For Howl-O-Scream, the rides that aren't rollercoasters turn into haunted houses and the rides that are rollercoasters turn into rollercoasters at night. The haunted houses have different themes like haunted prison, haunted sorority house, haunted house, etc. I didn't think they were too scary, but some people in line behind me begged to differ. A lot. But as long as you realize that people are going to be jumping out at you and screaming at every turn, you can prepare yourself for it. (Actually, they seemed to single out the people who looked like they would be scared the most; most of them didn't jump out at me.)

Also, rollercoasters. I finally did ride Montu (and Kumba as well). The rollercoaster enthusiasts of us also wanted to go on SheiKra, but it would have taken an hour and a half to wait in the line, so we decided to go to some more haunted houses instead. Maybe next time. Rollercoasters are awesome at night.

The lines seemed to get longer and longer as the night went on; Andrea said it was much more crowded than it was when she went last year. At 00:30 (yeah), the park started closing, so we headed out. After parting ways with Billy, we headed to Andrea's house in Lakeland, where we spent the night.

The next morning, we enjoyed some doughnuts (courtesy of Andrea's parents) before setting off for Gainesville. The traffic in G-ville was terrible, probably due to the homecoming pep rally, Gator Growl, which was that night. I didn't go, as usual, but at least they got a comedian I had heard of. Today's football game is designated as the homecoming game, which doesn't really mean anything (I think) except that we're really supposed to win.

Anyway, I had a good time with Andrea and pals, and I'd be glad to go on some kind of trip like that again.

Here's a funny letter (supposedly) from John F. Kennedy. (Via J-Walk Blog)

The BBC has an interesting article on Samuel Johnson's influential dictionary of the English language.