This is Foamhenge, a replica of Stonehenge constructed entirely from styrofoam that is located on Route 11 in Natural Bridge, Virginia. I’ve never been to the original, so I can’t make any sort of comparison, but for me it was a surprisingly eerie place.
Unlike its prototype, there is no mystery as to how Foamhenge was constructed. According to the informational plaque at the bottom of the hill (the heelfoam?):
Foamhenge completed in six weeks using beaded styrofoam blocks weighing up to 420 lbs. Delivered on 4 tractor trailer trips from Winchester, VA 100 miles north. It took 4–5 Mexicans and one crazy man to construct.
October 17, 2006
I usually give a book one hundred pages before I give up on it and put it back on the shelf. But in the case of very long or very short books this rule has its limitations. To account for these cases, I have devised the following formula to determine the point where it is acceptable to give up:
(Where p is the number of pages, and RRP is the recommended retail price.)
For example, if you’ve been trying to read Blood Meridian (352 pp, $14.95) and have been finding it a little tiresome, you’d need to make it to page seventy-four before you could quit it legitimately.
October 15, 2006
I moved to Pennsylvania last weekend. I rented a truck from Budget to cart our stuff up from DC. The truck was to be returned to “Shurgard” at 126 Wilmington Pike. They sent me a nice little Mapquest map to show me where it was. I drove there. There was no Shurgard. I drove a mile down the road. Then back again. And then back up. I rang the number they gave me. The recorded message told me they weren’t answering. I asked a guy. He poiinted over the road and said, “Try Public Storage”. The guy at Public Storage took the truck off me. A friend pointed out that his business wasn’t called “Shurgard”, and wasn’t located at 126 Wilmington Pike. He said, “Yeah, they changed it.”
October 4, 2006
I’ve just watched a report on NBC4 about cramming, a scam in which companies fraudulently or deceptively obtain your credit card information and begin billing you on a regular basis for services which you have not received. The report describes how a DC woman was charged $9.99 a month for 13 months. It also makes some recommendations on what you should do to get your money back. The woman in the story got $10 refunded.
This happened to me last year and I got all my money back, so I thought I might post what I did here in the hope that it might be of some help to others in a similar predicament.
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September 27, 2006
One more flight and I will be home. It will be good to get there, but right now all I am is tired. I’ve been flying since 4 pm today, which wouldn’t be so bad except that there have been two todays today and I started traveling on the today that was yesterday.
But it will be very good to get home.
September 23, 2006