Not-So-Random Rules

I listen to my iPod only while jogging and then only if I’m not roadside. I’ve tried it while mowing the lawn but the combination of noise is too much and I don’t like the thought of hastening the onset of deafness by turning up the music. The following are a few selections from my iPod, the setlist of which I’ve only adjusted once. I had the first albums from Weezer and the Cardigans on the pod as well but they didn't make the cut as "Tunes to Hyperventilate To".

Blue Tile Fever
FuManchu, a band no one knows about but I’ve mentioned a couple of times in this blog, has become, by far, my music of choice when it comes to running. I’ve put two CD’s worth into the pod and this typical song is about skateboarding. Although I can only assume this because when you look them up online, Fu Manchu’s lyrics never really make any coherent sense. But while jogging, they sure work for me.

Livewire
When I first checked out online music back in the Napster days, I downloaded a couple of songs, almost all of which were from albums I had owned in high school. This one is the only Motley Crue song I have and it is off their first album which was more of a punkish/pop affair reminiscent of the Ramones than the metal-Aerosmith stuff that followed. I have a fond but hazy memory of a bachelor party (mine?) where I was air-guitaring this song while upside-down in the back of a van.

Angel of Death
This one, although a great song, is doomed to fall off my ipod whenever I get around to updating it. I remember reading somewhere that Slayer was the kind of music one would imagine actually hearing in Hell, the fiery Hieronymus Bosch Hell rampant with VERMICIOUS demons and suffering souls (versus the DMVish Hell with “Drops of Jupiter” and “Mary Moon” endlessly playing over the tinny loudspeakers). But songs about chemical warfare and Josef Mengele are not very inspiring and definitely not what you want to hear when you’re smiling “Good Morning” to a mom with a jogging stroller.

Ignition
“I hear this voice speakin’ inside my head and it says Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!” I know, not exactly Shakespeare from the band Nebula, another band of recent times like Fu Manchu playing 70’s –style rock… but Bob Freakin’ Dylan ain’t going to get me up over this hill!

Blackened
This one’s off Metallica’s last good album. Although the lyrics aren’t exactly uplifting, Metallica songs do not have the frantic pandemonium of the Slayer stuff so I’ll probably keep the three songs I have on the list.

In’n’Out of Grace
This one from Mudhoney leads in with the line from "The Wild Angels”: “We wanna be free! We wanna be free to do what we wanna do. We wanna be free to ride. We wanna be free to ride our machines without being hassled by The Man! ... And we wanna get loaded!”

Rain! Glorious rain!

I love the return of the lushness of the green, green, green of Georgia. I could not stand the dry, withered look that all the trees and undergrowth were taking on with the drought. During it, I let my grass go it on its own but I did occasionally put the hose to my desperate trees. Every cloud has it’s black interior though… today I’ve got to mow the lawn.

Also, I almost missed out a free shirt (joy!) because of the rain. One day last week, the Clean Air Campaign sent out a few kids to my office to give out stuff to people who carpooled, rode the bus, dog-sledded, or used any other form of “alternative” transportation, the standard being the vermicious SOV. To my knowledge, there are only 3 people in my workplace that occasionally do anything like this. Since I’m basically clueless about anything that does not involve me or the people I know well, let’s make that number 7, still not a lot considering the traffic debacle around my office but hey, better than zip.

Anyway, I’ve been having a little trouble with a knee lately so to give it a break from jogging and to help build up supporting muscles other than those involved with the act of running, I try to ride my bike to work once a week. Though it’s been so freakin’ hot lately that I haven’t done it for a month but last week I told myself I’d do it. Hearing about the giveaway day sealed the deal.

But that morning it was pouring. As far as getting wet, I don’t really mind the rain when I’m riding. But as for the increased probability of a wreck and the decreased visibility of the cellphone-gabbin’ Hummerites on the road, I mind! So here I am, by myself in a big minivan, trying to work a tee-shirt from the CAC girl in the parking lot, talking about how I “planned” on riding my bike… and I got one.

Gray Matter

If someone leaves a comment on a post I made a while back, I'll still know about it because it'll show up in my e-mail. Anyway, someone did and when I read it, I noticed my new format made the links invisible... they were white, the background was white... you know the story.

So now we're all a whiter shade of gray.

Lighten up, Francis.

My office is right off a lab and often I’m in and out of there all day. So when someone sees me at my PC or in the restroom with my safety glasses on, I usually get a comment. I’ll answer with a smarmy but pleasant “You can never be too safe!” or “Safety is NO accident!” but what I really want to do is punch the guy in the face and yell “Always wear your safety glasses!” Am I supposed to be so self-conscious that I constantly check myself insuring that my attire is appropriate? I’m busy… I’m going right back into the lab after I shoot off this e-mail or take a quick whiz… why should I bother taking off the stupid things?

And ANOTHER thing!

When someone sneezes, he should get a single “bless you” not more. On Planet Jim, he wouldn’t even get one. Why the heck do we say anything at all? Why do you need to be blessed after a sneeze and why in the world would anyone say “Gesundheit’”? We don’t say “Dankeschoen” and we don’t even get the name of their country right! I wonder what people said during WW2? I’m gonna start saying “liberty” whenever anyone sneezes.

Anyway, this wasn’t my gripe… well, not my main one anyway. I’ll go along with one “bless you” but if I sneeze twice, I don’t want another. Fine, if I past the five or six mark you can throw in the “Are you gonna make it?” or something but I want nothing between one and five, ok?!

Ya got that?!!

The Erins

I swear, with Erin, it always seems like there are two or more kids in the house. Of course, it's a given that when I call home from work and Liam's at school, the house will sound like a playground.

"Does Erin have a few friends over?"

"No. It's just Erin."

But this morning, I walked past Erin who was sleepily standing in the living room and went to the master bedroom at the other end of the main hall. I heard footsteps starting at my end of the hall and continue down towards the living room and I assumed Liam had arisen.

Something made me wonder and I looked in Liam's bedroom where he was fast asleep.

And that's not the first time this has happened. We nicknamed her "Sneaky" as a companion to Liam's "Squeaky" before she was even born. Liam's nickname stuck around for a while but, although Erin's never really caught on, she's always lived up to it.

Smoky Treats

I don’t have a problem with people smoking cigarettes. In fact, I kind of like smoke-filled bars and I’m fervently against the government prohibiting smoking in them. If a bar owner wants to have a smoke-free bar, let him ban it… likely a smart move given the recent animosity towards smoking... and the people that can’t abide a whiff of smoke within a hundred yards can flock to his place (and note I use the androgynous “his” here).

I don’t smoke myself and I think it’s a pretty stupid thing to do… but hey, it’s a personal choice. I tried it once or twice when I was in high school hanging out on the corner with the guys in the Motley Crue concert tees. As I was standing there coughing and feeling stupid and embarrassed, I realized that if I pushed through the initial discomfort and lousy feeling, I would be doing so solely because of peer pressure. I’m not saying I never did anything for the “approval” of others, but smoking cigarettes wasn’t one of them.

Anyway, like I said, I don’t have a problem with smoking. But what I DO have a problem with is the fact that so many smokers seem to think that tossing a cigarette onto the ground isn’t littering. If someone let their dog crap on their lawns or if someone tossed an empty Big Gulp cup in front of them, they’d probably get upset but they seem to see nothing wrong with casually flinging their spent butt out their disgusting, smoke-reeking car onto the side of the street where it rolls slowly across the asphalt until it joins hundreds of its brothers and sisters in the pile against the curb.

Living in the ultra-suburbia that is northeast of Atlanta, I spend plenty of time in traffic and sometimes I find myself in line behind a smoker. And, if they get to the end of their smoke while I’m behind them, invariably they toss it to the street. I’ve probably seen one of them get to the end 40 or 50 times and I think only once did the smoker not throw it out of his car. And when I beep, I don’t even think they know why I’m honking my horn at them. Even WITH my waves and tossing motions.

Gadzooks!

I gotta figure out how to widen this thing.

Once again you've failed me, Starscream.

Kerry and I previewed Transformers and other than a few scenes involving a sinuous female lead and a mention of the term “masturbation”, both of which will slip through his head, there were a few scenes that I thought might possibly disturb Liam: the scene where a sand-burrowing Scorponok stalks a group of soldiers and a ”sad” part where a good-guy Autobot is hog-tied by government agents. All the rest was robot-on-robot violence and, yes, one could argue that any violence is bad but that “one” probably never had a 6-year old boy.

We got him a chapter book based on the movie and had him read it then I read it to him and went through some of the scenes with him. We went through all this because it’s a PG-13 movie and normally we wouldn’t even consider taking him to it but he’s been into Transformers since before I ever saw it mentioned on the Net as even being considered for a movie.

So I took him, we shared a big Coke and he got a popcorn of his own (I rarely have more than a handful… I’ve never cared for the stuff), and we watched the slam-bam flick.

Liam loved it. But not the parts that I thought were cool… like Optimus Prime and Bonecrusher falling off an overpass locked in combat or the badass Megatron as a plane-thing not even slowing down as he smashes into Prime. He did like the cool, fast transformations which were done very well but the parts he liked involved the smaller robots, Frenzy who could turn into a boom-box and another one that was a cell phone but became a tiny rabid machine-gunning robot.

To me, overall the few and far between action scenes were pretty damn good but the plot was for idiots. Why is it soooo hard to have a half-way decent plot in these things? Huge lame points were rampant but one inaccuracy that I can’t imagine that no one on the set caught was the explanation that Megatron crashed on earth probably because his guidance systems were thrown off by the planet’s gravitational field.

By Earth’s GRAVITATIONAL field?! “Wow, what a surprise… this planet that I’m flying around has gravity!” And why would this throw him off anyway? “Woah, what a confusing shock… it’s pulling me DOWN!”

Of course they meant the Earth’s MAGNETIC field. There must have been at least twenty people in earshot of this statement for the actual take not to mention the rehearsed ones and no one caught this?! Yeah right. Bay must be a true prick if not a single person spoke up.

Or am I just a freak and no one cares about this stuff?

Now all Liam and I do is make up and talk through slow-motion, John Woo-style action scenes involving speeding cars transforming into leaping, missile-launching robots and raining bullets at each other.

Good times.

Airport Musings

One of my typical rants is that a lot of Americans are basically fat and lazy. But I was flying to Minnesota this week and when I got on the underground train that shuttles between the concourses, I realized that there’s always a lot of people that walk the distance. And me? I always take the train.

Maybe the reason people drive everywhere, have to park right up next to where they are going, and never walk anywhere is because everyone’s in such a rush. And when they have time at the airport, they walk. Meaning that if only things weren’t so hectic all the time, people would walk a lot more. And maybe if we’d all just calm down and relax a little, it would be a happier, fluffier world filled with colorful balloons and pink bunnies.

Noooo… I still think we’re just fat and lazy. And, for some reason, at the airport, people get the sudden idea to walk when they have the time. I don’t see people taking the stairs even when they’re much faster than standing around waiting for the stupid elevator. And people still spend half an hour hunting for the parking spot up front even when they could’ve been inside already if they had parked further away and walked.

Still… it’s a good sign, I guess.

I noticed another welcome change on the plane. Usually, after landing and the attendant comes on and says it’s ok to use cellphones, there’s a sudden chorus of people punching buttons and saying “It’s me… we just landed” as if, God forbid, the multitude on the other end of the line should wait 5 minutes to get the absolutely latest update on the trips progress. This time, on both flights, this annoying eruption didn’t happen. Either people are finally getting over the excitement of instant communication (I hope, I hope I hope!) or Minnesotans are less uptight.

Either that or they haven’t learned to use cellphones.

Don’t mess with Red.

Kerry’s been quite the crimefighter lately. At Bethany Beach, my brother-in-law’s skateboard was stolen from under the house we were staying at. A day or two later Kerry spots some teens messing around on what might be the skateboard of interest and a few hours later, she boldly walks under the house…

Let me break in to explain that “under the house” is not a dank, spidery crawlspace or a basement crammed with baby furniture and exercise equipment. At the beach where we stay, all the houses are up on stilts and there are garages, dressing rooms, showers, etc. all under the houses.

Anyway, Kerry sees these same kids shooting hoops in front of a house and, after they ride off on a motorscooter, she walks up, takes a quick look around, and snags the hot board. Take that, youth gone wild!

And then, in response to a “situation” we’ve had in our neighborhood, namely that the guy next door moved down the street and rented out his place to a halfway house for troubled youth. They’re mostly guys in their 20’s and so far, they haven’t really caused any problems but we’d rather not wait around until one of them or one of their co-horts does. Not to mention the dive our neighborhood may be about to take. So we’re planning on moving out of this neighborhood but still staying in the general area. I’ll miss the lot (big trees, leafy green views everywhere, the survival-of-the-fittest experiment that I call a lawn) but a basement and/or a cul-de-sac would be nice.

But I undress…

A guy in our neighborhood made some calls to some county officials but was pretty much ignored. Another neibor tried the same thing but to no avail.



Then...



Enter Mad Dog.



An e-mail here and a call or two there and Kerry gets results! Apparently, the private enterprise running the place has been breaking several codes running a halfway home here and now there’s a U-Haul truck in the driveway.

Adios, meth-heads!

Like my men...

There’s a great line from Pulp Fiction where Tarantino’s character asks the Wolf how he takes his coffee and he responds, “Lotsa cream, lotsa sugar”. I could blog for pages about how cool that is but I’m not… I’m going to blog about coffee.

When it’s the way the Wolf and I like it, coffee’s a beautiful caramel color, warm and soothing. When it’s how I had it today, with skim milk because we ran out of half-and-half, it’s a dingy gray-brown color… like a dead rat.

At work, I take it horribly… with that scary powdered creamer that was concocted in a chemical plant in New Jersey and extra sugar to drown out the disgusting taste. And yes, I only drink coffee at work as a last resort.

But I do love my coffee. I sometimes think of it before I go to sleep. On the weekends, getting the coffeemaker going is the first thing I start on in the morning. The best coffee I ever had was in Puerto Rico. And usually when I talk about the “best” something I’ve had, I include the setting and everything else about it all wrapped up together. Anyway, this was at a fancy hotel southeast of San Juan (I was there for work) and came with one of my favorite breakfasts… a plain bagel with plain cream cheese… and fruit… and this place had a TON of fruit. Cantelope, mangoes, kiwi, papaya, and a lot of others that I have no idea what they were.

“Is that a breadfruit?”

I do like Starbuck’s coffee when I get it when I travel but, to me, it’s only slightly better than the stuff we buy in giant cans and make at home. And no way is it good enough to justify buying a cup of every day on your way to work.

That’s for chumps.

I Heart Dendrites!

Ok… I’m going to come off sounding like an idiot here because I don’t know the details of what I’m talking about.

But here goes.

In most of the equipment I work with, the sensors (RTD’s - heat sensors that tell the controller the temperature of something, photocells – proximity sensors that sense when the product, ie., a box, is passing a certain point on a conveyor, limit switches – simple mechanical open/close switches that would tell the controller a safety door was open or a button was being pushed) each typically communicate with the controller through it’s own pair of wires that go from the sensor to an input/output board in the controller. You can end up with a lot of wires.

Now there are systems that use control networks and “smart sensors” that not only send the information for which it exists (“115 ohms meaning 350 degrees F”, “I sense a box!”, or “button pushed”) but also a packet of info identifying the sensor. This way, you can run all this information through a single cable instead of hundreds of wire pairs.

My question is… in which way does the human body work? The first (dumb open/close switches) or the second (smart sensors)?

I suspect the second because, in terms of touch, I doubt each and every square millimeter of flesh (or whatever the resolution is on your sense of touch) sends a signal all the way to the brain on it’s very own string of nerve cells. Possibly it has it’s own path to the spinal column then a “smart” signal goes to the brain but I doubt this. I bet it’s smart from the get go. Please once again note that I have no idea what I’m talking about here!

Or take the eye... please.

If you break up everything you can see into pixels the size of whatever resolution your eye can detect, is each rod and cone firing its signal for each pixel along its own string of nerve cells to the brain? That’s a helluva lot of nerve cells.

D’oh! I just looked up something about nerve cells. Apparently some nerve cells in humans can have “axons” (kind of like a loooong hair) that stretch all the way from the spinal cord to the toes. That would imply that the combination method I mentioned above is in effect but now I’m wondering if I’m dead wrong and each pixel of touch (and heat) is going through it’s own unique path all the way to the brain.

The body is freakin’ amazing, ain’t it?

Chew Toy

Like I've stated, I really only go to The Onion so that I can get to the A.V. Club link but it is still a hilarious site. This is one of those that you only need to read the title to laugh. Although it's descriptions of domestic uses for adult toys are pretty funny, too!

Potato-Potato-Potato

Right now I'm munchin' on salt potatoes... a yummy dish my wife grew up with. Another thing about Upstate NY... they have have the best apples I'ver ever tasted.

Screw Oasis

Has there ever been a song where the lyric "do you know what I mean" did not refer to "gettin' your freak on", ya know what I mean?

Fitness Water?

The whole bottled water insanity kills me. Ten or fifteen years ago if you had suggested bottling plain water and selling it for the price of a Coke you’d have been laughed at. Back then there were the big jugs in some offices, there was Perrier which was fizzy crap for elitists, and there were gallon jugs of distilled water that you bought for your iron. Cups of water from the fountain were free.

But then suddenly the nation’s water supplies were inundated with radioactive nanobots, nerve gas, and the AIDS virus. Or so one would think. The ad agencies created a “need”… one that didn’t exist before… and America drank it in.

Yes, I’ll take a bottle from the bins at the end of races. Yes, I’ve bought a few bottles for plane flights… usually on the company dime. And I may have bought one or two on my own when all I wanted was a water. Oh, and when I was in Mexico and China I bought lot’s of them… and put’em all down on the expense report. But usually, I drink tap water which as far as I can tell, tastes fine in all the places in which I’ve lived. And I don’t use one of those filter attachments. I’ve heard of people installing these for their entire home supply… including showers.

But hey, if you want to spend your money on bottled water, fine. Go ahead. But, goddamn it, remember which bottle is yours!

It’s the waste that really kills me. I’ve seen families whose homes are littered with half-empty bottles of water. And typically they end up taking up space in the trash and then, of course, the landfills… each bottle with 8-10 ounces of high-priced water trapped in it’s now-squished volume. Water that could be in a houseplant, or in the leaves of a tree, or in one of the dried up rivers and drained lakes surrounding some sprawling metrop.

Personally, I love walking into my kitchen after a run or mowing the lawn and taking a long draught straight from the faucet… or better yet, from the hose.

It ain’t so bad...
and I haven’t died yet.

Tanned. Rested. And ready.

We’re back from Bethany Beach, Jewel of Delmarva. Did the extended beach week thing. This time we stayed at a house about a mile off the beach but we really only slept there. Every morning we’d head over to the aunt’s place on the beach (4 or 5 times Liam rode his bike while I jogged alongside or rode my bike). Then we’d schlep umbrellas, chairs, shovels, and beach toys up to our spot and there we’d sit all day. I never used to like the beach because there was really nothing to do but with the kids now in my life, nothing to do is not so bad!

Actually, I hardly ever just sit and read. Most of the time I’m building sandcastles, collecting shells and rocks for Erin's various projects, or horsing around in the waves. One day, we kayaked on an inlet and since I need to find an upper body workout I can stick with, I may checkout the feasibility of doing this on the Chatahoochee.

One night, we dined on blue crabs smothered in Old Bay. Threw down an old tablecloth on a picnic table under the house (it’s on stilts). Added a bunch of cobs of corn and three rolls of paper towels. Tasty stuff but a lot of work...though I love these kinds of social meals where a lot of beer is drunk but I can only think of a few. Crabs are one. Wings are another. The only other one I know of is Hot Pot which I had in China where there is this big, boiling pot in the middle of the table full of yummy hot sinus-clearing spices. You put all kinds of things – veggies, live shrimp on skewers, raw beef, whatever – into this cauldron and let’em cook a bit then eat. Delish!

Anyone know of any others?

The fruit I eat is over ripe.

Well, a lot of things are going on right now… the epic four month war with the poison ivy in the backyard is gradually coming to a close, I’ve fallen in love again with Superfuzz Bigmuff and King of the Road, and the joint next door has become a halfway house… privately-run and probably no big deal but most likely, we’re gonna shuffle along to another neighborhood, hopefully to a place with a basement so toys won’t be constantly underfoot.

Alas, I can’t go into detail about any of these earth-shattering events because we’re packin’ up and hitting the road tomorrow for a week in Bethany Beach, about a half-hour south of Funland!

Silly Forth

Wednesday I did the Peachtree. I did want I wanted to do… beat my last year’s time… but it was close. A lot closer than I thought it would be since I trained more and it was cooler but, hey, I guess that’s what turning 40 means.

One problem was I started out a little too fast. The first 3 miles I averaged 7:30 per mile. Then the hill killed me and, at 5 miles, I ended up 30 seconds behind where I needed to be to beat my last time and had to kill myself to get 48:03 which was 5 seconds better than last year.

After the friends we were meeting all showed up, we went to Susie’s where I showered up then we went to a cookout at her parents’ house. Good ribs and an awesome backyard!

We stayed there for a while and Kerry decided she wanted to see the fireworks at Centennial Park. I was practically falling asleep and hated that idea but we ended up at her brother’s place near Emory to hang out until it was time to go to downtown.

Mike, my brother-in-law, just graduated from Emory and he lives right next to the college so the street was one of those social areas where everybody knows each other and kind of walks back and forth between houses… especially on a party day like the 4th.

Anyway, I was looking for a Coke to wake up but the only thing in the fridge was beer so I had to “suffer” with that. Liam was playing with one of their dozen or so game consoles and Kerry and Erin were out on the lawn watching some “kids” fool around on skateboards. Some friends of Mike’s came by and somehow I ended up at a house across the street playing beer-pong.

Kerry says she played it a few times in college but I’ve never heard of it. They had a large flat table setup on a typical college beer can-strewn and ripped-up screened-in porch. Basically, you arrange 10 plastic cups of beer at both ends of the table then each team of two takes turns tossing a ping-pong ball aiming for one of the cups.

And, of course, you drink.

Carl and I ended up winning two or three games handily but Kate and her roommate just barely won the last game before I bowed out. I have to admit it was a lot of fun reliving my drinking game days but that ship has long since sailed in more ways than one.

We headed down to the madness that is the 4th of July fireworks show at Centennial Park, parked under in overpass in an area that looked like the suitcase of money/kidnap victim trade-off scene in a mob movie, and soon found ourselves sitting on the grass amongst a sea of families all snacking and awaiting the show.

At one point, Liam and I were in one of the long lines for the too few port-a-lets and a woman joined a guy in front of us complaining that some folks were getting crazy or causing trouble or something… she wasn’t making complete sense. She left and soon people started coughing all around me… it wasn’t bugging me but most were saying it was mace.

Liam really had to go so I talked a guy just about to go in to let him cut in and while I stood outside a loud bang went off and, over in the area from which it happened, I saw crowds of people running in all directions. People were saying it was a gun shot and were leaving the line area so I hurried Liam out of the john and headed back to Kerry and Mike. I guess it could have been a firecracker being the 4th and all but all the bits and pieces of conversation I heard were saying it was a shot and one person specified it was not a firecracker.

Since we were not that near where the problem was and things had seemed to calm down plus we were in a huge crowd and the fireworks were just about to start, we decided to stay. They were cool and all like always. And, just like the last time we were at Centennial for the 4th, there were a few stray fireworks blasting down into the crowd area so there was even more of that sort of unwanted excitement. Then, the long slow walk back to the car was like a tour through Buckhead 3am on a Sunday mornin’.

My head hit the pillow hard when we finally made it home after midnight. Going to work the next morning was not my idea of a freakin' holiday, ya know what I’m sayin’?!

With MINTY, every day is a dizzy delight!

In their choice of toy passions, my kids are very retro. Although neither Kerry nor I were into these, Liam's into the Transformers which started in 1984 and Erin is into the My Little Pony dolls which started in 82.

For a while with Liam’s Transformers, since all the characters have names and stories, plus I figured someday he might think it was cool to know which ones he had, I tried to keep up with the toys… and actually I still am but I know I’ll have to give it up soon.

Anyway, to keep things even and because I have an OCD side of my head that needs to come out every once in a while, I’m keeping up with the ponies… much more so than Erin herself.

I think her first was Minty who she got around 2 years ago… she used to play in the pool with it. She came up with another somehow… Glitter Glide, I think. Back then, these were just two of hundreds of little girl toys she had.

Then in May, when we were at Disney, we stopped by a toy story where they had a whole massive My Little Pony dress-up thing. She ended up with two more ponies… Cinnamon Breeze and Merriweather. Plus she got a bunch of clothes for them.

So now she has four ponies, not to mention Tra-La-La, a little pony that came with Meriweather’s balloon set. And instead of making up stories about Buzz Lightyear infiltrating Zurg’s asteroid fortress and Bilbo tricking Gollum under the Misty Mountains, I’m telling how Minty and Glitter Glide ended up sipping cocoa at the ski chalet when who dropped by?

Why Cinnamon Breeze, that’s who!

Things are never dull when Cinnamon Breeze is around! This lively pony is always full of exciting new ideas for having fun. She has so many ideas, in fact, that they come and go like the breeze—better catch the latest one before it's gone!