Rocky Mountain holiday

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For Labor Day, I went with Becky & the girls up into the Rocky Mountains. We stopped initially at Lair o’ the Bear Park, where Loyette had a grand old time running around, getting dirty in the mud, and getting soaked in the stream. Then we headed down Route 103 to Echo Lake (where we stopped for a picnic lunch) and Idaho Springs. The views were fantastic, as you can see from my new masthead (taken from this photo). Also:

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And here are a couple of pictures showing the less grandiose, but still beautiful, views at Lair o’ the Bear:

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Our day trip (actually a morning & early afternoon trip; we were back home in time for Loyette’s nap) capped off a busy three-day weekend, which also included a trip to the zoo on Saturday — followed by a whole lot of football watching, and chip-dipping courtesy of Becky’s yummy homemade salsa and guacamole — and a friend’s barbecue on Sunday. Fun times. Hope you all had a great holiday weekend, too!

P.S. Loyacita is eight weeks old today! Time flies.

The Onion imitates the LRT

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This article in The Onion sounds hilariously like something lifted out of my old Living Room Times newspaper, circa eighth grade (1994-95). Here’s a taste of the Onion story:

In an event that everyone at James Madison Junior High is calling really freaking gross, some kid’s head got cracked open Wednesday during third-period gym class. …

Although the extent of the injury has not yet been determined, seventh-grade sources said that it was totally gushing blood and would probably need like 400 stitches.

“It was nuts,” 12-year-old Brian Swanson said. “He fell straight back.”

“There was tons of blood dripping all over the place,” added Swanson, who told reporters that the sound of the kid breaking his head on the floor could seriously be heard all the way to the boys’ bathroom.

For a sampling of LRTs containing stories strikingly similar to the Onion article, see the November 23, 1994* and October 12, 1994 editions, as well as — most similar of all — the September 22, 1994 issue of the “Tabloid Times” (so named because I didn’t want to sully the Living Room Times‘s good name with such sensationalistic reporting — a stance I quickly abandoned when I saw how popular that issue was, hehe). A sample of the “reporting” contained therein:

As a large group of girls approached, there were various cries of “Iww!” and “That’s gross!” They were seeing a bucket which had been used to put under David’s head and collect some of the blood. The bucket, of course, was now full of blood.

“Oh my God,” said Kristyn Fontanella, “Oh my God. I’m about to throw up.”

“What happened?” asked Mr. Passerelli.

“David said something, and then Nino got really mad,” said someone who had been nearby when the incident had happened. …

“And he pushed him!” said someone else.

“And he was bringing him against the lockers,” continued the apparent eyewitness, “and then all I heard was a bang, and then I saw Nino run.”

“Oh, you stinkin’ little idiot, Nino,” said someone else nearby.

“I think David fractured his skull,” said Chris Simcik.

David was fine, by the way. Indeed he was back in school, and was interviewed by The Living Room Times, the very next day.

*The 11/23/94 issue includes an account of a “fight” that was, I learned months later, completely fictional. The boys’ bathroom encounter was invented out of whole cloth by the “witnesses,” who conspired — successfully — to see if they could get the fictional “fight” in my paper by breathlessly telling me about what they’d “seen.” Obviously, my journalistic standards as an eighth-grader were not quite what they are today. Heh.