Craxi Reads: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

When I heard that there was a new Harry Potter book coming out, I was excited. I have read all the books several times, seen all the movies, and even at one point in time had random Harry Potter items I picked up while working at K-Mart… I may still have Troll Boogers Glue somewhere. However, when I learned Harry Potter and the Cursed Child was going to be released as a screenplay, I was less excited. I’ve read one play this year and didn’t really want to read another. In the end my love from Harry Potter won out and I pre-ordered it from Amazon. It finally arrived – over a week after it was released. I should have gone to the release party at Barnes and Nobles with Heather.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child takes place 19 years after the last book. Harry has 3 children, 2 of which attend Hogwarts. The book revolves around Albus, the middle child, who suffers from middle child syndrome and feels that Harry doesn’t love him for who he is. Albus befriends Scorpius, the son of Draco Malfoy – Harry’s arch nemesis from his days at Hogwarts. Albus and Scorpius decide to help Amos Diggory by bringing back his son, Cedric who was killed by Voldemort at the Tri-Wizard Tournament. To do this, they have to re-write history starting with the outcome at the Tri-Wizard Tournament. However, every time they try to save Cedric, history is rewritten. With the help from Snape, Dumbledore, and an old blanket the world is righted again. Albus and Harry both learn valuable lessons and the Dark Lord doesn’t rise again.

The book was a quick read… I was halfway done with it just on the plane ride to Boston. I have mixed feelings of the book. I liked the story line but I felt it was missing things and was too short. This may have been because it is a screenplay and you actually need to see what is happening. My other issue is that it just didn’t feel like a Harry Potter book because it was written by J.K. Rowling as well as John Tiffany and Jack Thorne. I think the three writers took away part of the classic Harry Potter feel.

Overall I enjoyed the book. I am glad the story continues but I’d rather have a real book instead of a screenplay. I got my Harry Potter fix until the next book, movie, screenplay, or play comes out. I believe I have a few opportunities coming up.

Partying on the Plaza

The Kimberly-Little Chute Library put on a family event called Party on the Plaza where they would have life-sized board games set up. I thought this sounded like fun. The hubby was working so I had nothing better to do. Danielle agreed and we headed over to the plaza in front of the Little Chute Library.

The event was definitely family friendly. All the board games were appropriate for kids under 10. There were a few craft stations as well. It was geared towards kids but Danielle and I didn’t let that stop us.

We played Jenga. However our stack of bricks was shorter than normal so our tower didn’t get very big. Another family was doing really well with their tower. After using up all our bricks and it not collapsing, we moved on.

After playing Jenga, I challenged Danielle to a game of Battleship. It was constructed out of tarp, dry erase boards, and wooden blocks with holes drilled into them for the pegs. The board was slightly smaller than a normal battleship board but still had 5 ships. I sunk all of Danielle’s ships. Battleship was a great idea.

I really wanted to play ker-plunk. After waiting for people to finish, we put the sticks in the chicken wire and the balls on top. A mom asked if her two kids could play and we were like sure. At first I misunderstood the rules and tried to get as many balls in my bucket until I realized I didn’t want a lot of balls in my bucket.

Sometimes the bucket didn’t catch the balls and they rolled away and we had to chase them or give them to the other game. Once I got the hang of the game, I did pretty good. I don’t remember playing Ker-plunk as a kid. It’s pretty fun. The life size version is way more fun. I’m sure mixed with adult beverages it would be even more fun. I didn’t win but I don’t think I lost either.

There was also:
Pac-Man which looked like a giant game of tag
Human foosball which would be really fun with a group of people
Checkers which I wanted to play but was never open
Chutes and Ladders which was drawn on the ground with chalk
Snail Races which looked really cute
Giant Marble Painting and Balloons

Little Chute High School was there selling hamburgers which smelled and looked really good. Culvers was there dishing up free dishes of custard. Who can pass up free custard?

It was a lot of fun being a kid for about an hour. We got there early which was a good because it started getting too crowded by 6. Hopefully the library does this again next year. I would definitely go again.

#5860. Listen to dueling pianos

When I saw that Danielle was interested in the Dueling Pianos at Shattuck Park on Facebook, I wanted to go. The hubby had middle school football but he would be done around the time it started. The hubby said it sounded cool and we decided to go check it out.

I don’t know what I was expecting, probably 2 piano players going back and forth or something, but this fell short. Maybe they would have been better in a more intimate setting and not a park. They couldn’t get the crowd really into it. No one really sang along.

The songs people requested were out of their vocal range. They murdered Johnny Cash, Journey, even the Chicken Dance. The only decent song was a Spice Girls song. Now that is sad.

Great Balls of Fire

Johnny Cash

Overall I wasn’t impressed by the music. I was ready to leave after 10 minutes but we stayed about 45 minutes. They tried to mix comedy with the music and it just wasn’t working.

Chicken Fried by the Zac Brown Band

There were vendors selling food. Broken Tree was selling pizza. I’ve been trying to get the hubby to try this place. Now that he actually has seen the pizza, he wants to try it. I wonder when that will happen.
It was a nice night to stand around and listen to music. I wish I remembered to grab my chair so I could sit. Shattuck Park is a great place for a concert. Maybe I will check out more of Future Neenah’s concerts in the Park next summer.

1538. Go to the Louisville Slugger Museum and Factory in Louisville

When planning the trip home from Cincinnati, on a whim I decide to see how far it was to Louisville and how far home it would be from Louisville… I wanted to see the bat factory. Visiting the bat factory really would not add too much additional time onto the trip and was doable.

One night before we leave Massachusetts, the hubby was talking to his grandma about where we were going next and she was like are you going to Churchill Downs? It never crossed my mind to visit Churchill Downs but since we were struggling with finding her something from our trip, I figured she would love something from there.

Before going to the Bat Factory, we made a detour and stopped at Churchill Downs. We didn’t pay to go on the museum but checked out the gift shop. The hubby says they wrecked Churchill Downs because only a small portion of the original buildings still remain. Like everything else, it has been modernized. We couldn’t get into Churchill Downs because it was off season but at least we saw it.

The Louisville Slugger Bat Factory and Museum is located downtown Louisville. Street parking was free on Sundays but we couldn’t find a close place to park and parked in the ramp that took us right into the museum. It was $14/person to tour the bat factory and museum.

While we waited for our tour, we perused the museum. The hubby put on special gloves to actual touch and swing bats from Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth, and other Hall of Famers. He was more interested in looking at them than swinging them. I would have liked to swing the bats but decided against it.

Also in the museum are other really old bats… like the one Babe Ruth notched every time he hit a home run or Hank Aaron’s bat he broke the home run record with. There were bats in drawers and bats in cases. You might miss something cool if you don’t open all the drawers.

When it for our tour, we were informed we couldn’t take pictures inside which is understandable since it’s a working factory. At least I didn’t have to wear a hard hat or closed toed shoes. Our tour guide was fantastic. He explained how the bats used to be made as well as showed us how to make a bat manually. Then we watched how they do it on machines now. I learned that the Major League Bats are made different and to specification of the player where minor league bats are 1 size fits all. We even got to take the “nubs” of a bat if we wanted. We now have several nubs of mini bats sitting on our bookcase.

After the tour we finished checking out the museum, hit up the gift shop for some postcards, and the hubby took a few practice swings. He should stick to calling the game and not playing since he missed every pitch. I would have tried but the bat he picked would have been too heavy for me.

The hubby says the Bat Factory was his favorite part of the trip. This definitely a must see if you are ever in Louisville.

AP 2016 American Mini Golf Tour

The hubby and I like to play mini golf because it something we both can do. With his schedule, he hardly ever get to play during the summer any more. Living in Wisconsin this is like the only time you can play mini golf. Somewhere along the lines, I get the brilliant idea to try to play mini golf in as many states as possible.

Last year we golfed in Ohio and New York. This year I really didn’t expect to golf as I didn’t really find any mini golf places on our route. That changed when I was looking for something to do the first night at the World Series since games were moved earlier in the day. I found a place in Massachusetts then the hubby asks what about West Virginia and Kentucky. Thanks to my TripAdvisor app, I was able to find places in West Virginia and Kentucky.

Fenway Golf
Driving from the Armory to play mini golf, the GPS had us go through not so nice areas of Springfield. I was about to scratch the whole playing golf idea but the neighborhood got better.

Fenway Golf was a bit pricy to play mini golf -- $9/person for 18 holes. The course was very scenic including a fake waterfall on one of the last holes. I thought the course was easy to play. There weren’t too many challenges. I ended up beating the hubby 51-54.

Wheeling Park Mini Golf
The hubby was excited to find out we were going through the very tip of West Virginia on the way to Ohio. He is obsessed with West Virginia ever since the West Virginia basketball team beat Kansas at home and they fired a musket in the gym while playing “Country Roads.” Of course it was only fitting to play mini golf in West Virginia.

Wheeling Park Mini Golf was as it's name suggested in Wheeling Park. At first we didn’t see it when we drove through the park as it wasn’t signed very good. The course was a decent course for being weathered. It wasn’t anything special but it was cheaper than the one in Springfield. There were pine needles from all the trees on the course but it really didn’t affect the game.

The course had its challenging holes. Other holes were a pretty straight shot that the hubby thought he should have had several holes in ones.

I golfed poorly and the hubby beat my 43-53. I am blaming it on the club. I like golfing with a black head club (less clunky)… I had a blue one. The hubby tried to help me out and teach me how to putt (again). I aim better with the smaller head.

If we’re ever in Wheeling again, we would definitely play this course again

World of Golf
Since we had time to kill between leaving Florence, KY and when the Slugger Museum opened in Lousiville, the hubby wanted to play mini golf. I found a mini golf course not too far from the hotel that opened at 7 AM on weekends. That was perfect. The hubby and I were tied 1 match a piece and with not much time left in summer, we had to crown the 2106 mini golf champion.

World of Golf was a very nice course. It reminded me of Badger Sports Park with the themed holes. There was a couple horse racing holes and a baseball themed hole.

I don’t think anyone else was playing at 9 in the morning and if there were they let us skipped them. The hubby ended up with 2 holes-in-one. Despite having a 8 stroke lead after the first 9 holes, I only lost by 5.

Once again I’m blaming the club. I really should bring my own club then I wouldn’t have these problems.
Even though the hubby is the 2016 mini golf champion, we had fun playing. We added three new states to the list of states we played mini golf in. I am glad I won at 1 round. I am sure we will play again somewhere next year, where I don’t know but hopefully it is somewhere new.

Stadium Tour 2016 -- Great American Ballpark

When the hubby got his letter saying he was going to Massachusetts for the World Series, I had to plan the trip home. He comes home after his basketball game and asked what the plan was. I told him he had a choice “Cleveland or Cincinnati”. He was puzzled. I clarified… Indians or Reds both are in town on the Saturday after the World Series. He picked Cincinnati since we probably have a better chance of getting back to Cleveland in the future.

I really like that the Reds use Ticketmaster and not MLB tickets for their tickets. We could pick out our exact seats and not have them be computer generated. We could see what was available and not available by looking at the seating chart. We ended up sitting on the 4th deck (View Level) directly behind home plate. We were the last row which was extra nice. There still was another tier above us. From what I could tell there really wasn’t a bad seat in the stadium. We also purchased an all you can eat voucher for $20.

The hubby’s only concern was parking since the stadium was downtown Cincinnati and really didn’t have a parking lot. Heather advised me that there was parking all around the stadium in surface lots. We paid $8 to park about ½ mile away. The parking attendant was very helpful and pointed us in the right direction. He told us to walk towards the lights.

Great American Ballpark tries to recreate Yawkey Street with their Kroger Fan Zone. It has the same atmosphere with a concert stage, games, and various restaurants. I probably would have checked it out more but the hubby isn’t into that kind of thing. I would have loved to wander the area and check it out.

With the All You Can Eat Voucher, you are limited to 1 concession stand on the Terrance View Level (where we were sitting) and had to redeem your voucher for a wristband. You got 5 coupons for hot dogs, a cup for unlimited soda, and all the chips, popcorn, and peanuts you could eat. So it really wasn’t All You Can Eat but for the 2 of us, 5 hot dogs and chips was plenty. We bought an extra soda just so we didn’t have to share. For us it was a good deal and nice we could order the voucher with our tickets. I wish more stadiums would have this.

They even had an entire bar devoted to craft beer

The Reds were tied with the Brewers for last place and the Dodgers were in 1st or 2nd in the West. I figured this would have been an easy win for the Dodgers. However, when the Dodgers pitched a nobody, the Reds took advantage. There were several home runs for the Reds. The Reds pitcher had a no hitter going into the 7th when he finally gave up a hit. We had great seats and had a great view of the ballpark. The hubby loved the seats even if we higher up.

Another home run by the Reds

There was a good chance of rain during the game and it rained on our way to Cincinnati. We watched as the grounds crew removed the sand bags from the tarp in the 4th inning. Then in the fifth, they removed the tarp cover. In between innings, the head groundskeeper and the umpires would meet to discuss the weather and look at the radar. We had a brief shower in the 5th inning or so… long enough for the hubby to put a t-shirt on his head and me to put the hood up on my sweatshirt. In the 7th, the hubby had to go to the bathroom.

As we were getting up we felt rain drops and decided to head for cover. While the hubby was in the bathroom, the storm arrived and a lightning/rain delay stopped the game. We made our way down to the main concourse and waited out the rain. I was thankful that the Reds pitcher gave up his no-hitter otherwise we would have had to wait for the game to resume in order to see the rest of the game at the stadium in case he pitched a no-hitter instead of waiting for the rain to let up enough to walk back to the car.

It's raining so hard you can see it in the picture

Overall it was a great night at the ballpark. The hubby said he’d see another game at Great American Ballpark. It’s easy to get to, we had great seats, and the All You Can Eat Voucher was worth it. Maybe next time it won’t rain.