BenSpark Family Adventures

Photo-A-Day #02785 High School has arrived for Andy. Despite lounging around for most of the Summer and having pretty late nights and sleeping later, Andy was up and ready to go at 5am this morning to shower, get packed and head to their girlfriend's house to walk to school together.  When I talked with Andy after school they were very excited about the day. Andy is already making connections with their teachers. Andy is looking forward to their first rotation in CTE which is Carpentry. Their teacher doesn't call Andy by their name but rather, "My Man!" because Andy is so enthused with the program and answers most questions. I'm excited to see where Andy goes with these programs.

 Photo-A-Day #02784 Lego has made some simple little happy planters as part of their botanical line. Andy has been building a lot of the botanical line of LEGO. They no longer wanted their Minecraft and other LEGO sets but really enjoy building the botanical line. I like these little guys, they are happy and cute.

Photo-A-Day #02783 Today was a day we have been excited for/dreading ever since High School graduation. The start of college for Eva. Move in day. Excited because Eva will do great things. They have been preparing for this forever and will meet every challenge. Dreading it because our kiddo is not going to be home with us each night for dinner. The sewing machine will be silent and we will not have 9pm shower time serenades. James will be depressed all the time and will come sleep in our bed. James takes up a lot of bed space. Andy did not come with us today, they would have been incredibly bored with all the things we had to do. So Andy hung out with friends for the day. They did get up and give Eva a massive hug. But overall we are so thrilled for Eva to start their journey. We (Allison, Eva and myself) got to MassArt about a half hour before our move in time so we parked in the parking lot and waited. When it was time to go we pulled up to the front of Eva's dorm and they had so...

Photo-A-Day #02782 On Eva's last night before move in day we watched the movie Wayne's World. Eva was not a fan. Andy seemed to find it funny but Allison and I were rolling at the time capsule that was Wayne's World. We were pretty low key today. I had to work at the Pretzel Factory 12:30-5:30 and when I came home we had a quick dinner and were off to a marriage prep meeting. I brought along some pretzels for the group and they were very happy. When we came home we started watching Wayne's World. Allison and Eva had already packed up the car so we did not have to do that. I did bring Eva an Oreo milkshake that I made at work. We are doing milkshakes now. And pizzas. What will next week bring, probably frozen custard replacing the ice cream. Every week, something new.

Photo-A-Day #02781 Forty years ago a toy company broke the hearts of a generation of kids when they killed off a beloved character in a major movie just to clear up shelf space for a new cast of characters. The movie was The Transformers: The Movie. In it the leader of the heroic Autobots, Optimus Prime, is killed and as he dies he hands the mantle off to the new generation of Autobots. It was crushing to me and many others. Forty years later and Hasbro has been having an "Apology Tour" for traumatizing us kids. They are re-releasing the movie into theaters in the next two weeks with all new footage. There was a special concert by bands from the cartoons of Transformers, G.I. JOE and Jem and the Holograms at San Diego Comicon.  But before the release of the movie the universe decides to kick us Gen Xers one more time with the death of actor Peter Cullen, the voice of Optimus Prime for the past forty years.  This has been a week of big deaths including Dolly Parton and Tim Cur...

Photo-A-Day #02780 I was at McDonald's before work and I had parked my car and when I came back out there was a white care parked right next to mine and it had a Decepticon sticker on the front and one on the window. I had to laugh because of my Autobot stickers and other items. I sat in the car reading my comics and waited for the driver of the Decepticon car to come back. When he did he looked about my age, wearing a Top Gun t-shirt and I shouted over, "I had to wait to see the Decepticon driver." He looked over and then realized that I had Autobot stickers on my car and laughed. Today at work we got a new kid that comes in twice a week. My boss and his wife signed up for a program where a local high school student who has special needs comes and works in the store to get some experience while they are evaluated to see if they are able to handle working in a real world scenario. Our last kid had zero personality and needed guidance for everything they did. Nice enough k...

Photo-A-Day #02779 As Eva prepares to leave for college on Saturday we are still picking up a few things here and there that they may need for the coming years. I was looking for some chopsticks that I could keep in my work bag and while the ones above were not the ones I found they were the ones that Allison and Eva found. I cancelled my order and got these instead. They have a fork, knife and spoon plus chopsticks. And they were less than my sets of chopsticks alone. I did pick up a cute set of 5 chopsticks that have cat shaped holders to give to Eva to bring to college. that way Eva and their roommates can each have a set to enjoy. I'm also going to give her $100 to specifically get sushi for the suite so they can break in the chopsticks.

Photo-A-Day #02778 Today we took a trip around Rhode Island to see the Trolls that were created by artist Thomas Dambo. There are 5 of them in Rhode Island and we've seen 2 of them before on a previous adventure, but today we decided that as one of the last big family adventures before College and High School we'd take this trip. You can get to each of the trolls pretty easily and see them all in one day. There are 4 stops because two trolls are at one of the stops.  We decided to drive out to the Troll that was furthest from us. That would be Young Boulder. The map we had said to put the actual GPS coordinates into your map program and that saved us from a very long walk to find this guy.  Andy decided that they would be getting as close as possible to each troll for a photo. Not climbing on it or anything, very respectful, just getting close to each one. At each stop Eva took out their sketchbook and did a quick sketch of each troll. Then took a reference photo to finish the...

Photo-A-Day #02777 Eva loves the book, the Outsiders and as such they have gone out of their way to collect various versions of the book and other S.E. Hinton works. Recently Eva found this 40th anniversary edition and it is in really good shape. We were discussing the things that Eva would take with them to college, I'm thinking that this may be one of the books that makes the cut.

Photo-A-Day #02776 Today I went over to Seekonk to Master's Homemade Donuts to pick up a 2 Good 2 Go package bursting with dozens of donuts. I was trying to get over to Triple S BBQ because that is in Seekonk as well but they were so packed I just decided to go to Newport Creamery for lunch before getting the donuts. There I got a BLT and a Cookie Monstah Awful Awful. It was so good. I think I have milkshakes on my mind since that is my bosses latest obsession. I'll probably be making them next week at work. But the trip to Seekonk was for the donuts. There was a kid who came to The Pretzel Factory and he was starting a small Tik Tok channel to review 2 Good 2 Go locations. So, I learned about Masters Homemade Donuts from him. I couldn't find it on the app for a while but finally did. And then I couldn't snag the bag until yesterday. It worked out well since I had last night off from work so I could go get the donuts in the afternoon and then I took them to work. I did ...

Photo-A-Day #02775 Tonight Allison and I went to Foxwoods to attend the GenX Takeover Comedy Tour. Allison got me the tickets for Christmas. This was a fun comedy show of 4 Tik Tok creators who make GenX related content and then started a stand up comedy career. The whole tour was sponsored by AARP, too. Had I known that I would have worn my AARP Fight Club shirt. The four people did a really good job at this. I was skeptical on how their Tik Tok presence would translate to live stand up. They did a good job. We had a fun night.

Photo-A-Day #02774 We're trying to do some things before Eva heads to college including going to our favorite Chinese food place. House of Fortune has been our celebration place for the kids' entire lives. Back before House of Fortune existed there was Fortune House and it was the first restaurant we ever took Eva to. Ever since then we've done all of the big things there, birthdays and graduations. So, we were trying to find a time that would work with my work schedule and Allison's upcoming work schedule. We had time today so we went over and met the new owner who had a menu item special called the rainbow mountain. It was essentially the spicy seafood roll but with crabmeat and roe of various colors on top. It was excellent. Everything still had that great quality that we've enjoyed for 18 years.

 Photo-A-Day #02773 Before I went off to work today Allison and I took Andy over to Target to get some things for the start of the school year. A set of LEGO and a cool looking AM/FM radio that doubles as a Bluetooth speaker was also not on the list but I was excited that Andy thought it was something cool that I had to get them it. Andy was so excited about it that they brought it downstairs to show Miss Colleen.  Today at The Pretzel Factory my boss was making cinnamon sugar rivets which are done in a  baking soda bath instead of a lye bath. He got distracted and started to salt the rivets.  Caught himself and then baked the pan of rivets. I took the unsalted ones and made the cinnamon sugar rivets for the display case and to sell while I also took the salted ones and made them into cinnamon sugar rivets to bring home. I brought a box him and they did not last the night, everyone loved the little hint of salt to these sweet treats. Everyone said that we should add ...

 Photo-A-Day #02772 Each day that I come in for work at The Pretzel Factory there is something new happening. My boss is always trying out new things to see what will sell. Today I was washing some donut pans because he made donuts in them. I personally don't think that he needs a pan and could just twist the dough to a donut shape. His are the two up in the top of the photo. I made the two on the bottom. I used one of his roll shapes and baked it, then put it through the cinnamon sugar we use for rivets and then baked it again so the cinnamon sugar could caramelize a bit. Then I dipped it back into the butter and this time covered it with the cinnamon donut sugar that we had when we were out of our normal cinnamon. They came out great.

 Photo-A-Day #02771 I have a fake whiskey barrel half out front of the house on the stump where the tree used to be. I planted some zinnia seeds but only one took so I went and bought two additional zinnia plants. I think my zinnia from seeds are prettier I like the two tone look of them. Allison and I have been taking daily morning walks and we pass by the flowers daily.  Last night I was converting a number of old VHS tapes and one was my sister's graduation from High School that was filmed by the local (town) TV station. It recorded but then the tape had about 3 hours of this screen after it. I made sure to record all of it because I am finding that our VHS tapes all have some weird things added in strange places. So you never know. I'll remove it when I actually get around to editing all these videos.

Photo-A-Day #02770 Tonight we went over to Capron Park for another food truck night. Tonight Allison and I opted for some cheesesteaks. She got the Angry one with lots of heat to it. I got a blue cheese and bacon one. Both were really good. We also got some Cajun fries with crabmeat on top. that was also really good but everything was super filling and I could not finish the cheesesteak or the fries. No dessert for us either. Andy and Eva both opted for Friskie's Fries and the General Taos version. I was surprised that Andy did not go for something more exotic today. Usually they get a big mishmash of things to make their own meal.