Trivia that matter
The little inverted purple triangle signifies a “tornado vortex signature.” With luck, it will dissipate before it reaches Wichita, but I was hoping for a nice quiet evening tonight.
Update: There was a lot of wind and rain, but nothing beyond that in Wichita. Although the radar indicated three different tornado vortices during the evening, only one touched down, and that was in a rural area well west of here.
… yet I still don’t understand how it is organized.
What have all the loud noises been that I’ve been hearing this stormy afternoon?
• Thunder?
• Illegal fireworks?
• Transformer-fried squirrels?
• Gunfire?
• High explosives?
• All of the above?
Probably the last.
This is getting old. (If Wichita isn’t quite in the red zone, it’s close enough that it doesn’t matter.)
I suppose I should be grateful that my neighbors aren’t mowing their lawns this Sunday morning, but banging a hammer on a resonant roof is no improvement.
… again.
Whoopee.
It looks like tomorrow will be a good day for catching tigers.
Update:
Spring has sprung. We should hear the sirens any time now.
Update II: The tornadic storm fizzled out by the time it reached my neighborhood, and all we got was an hour or so of hail, none of it larger than half-dollar diameter.1 While this was undoubtedly a great disappointment to tornado aficionados, I have better things to do with the rest of the month than find a new place to live.
The greatest danger was inside the house. The only time I listen to traditional broadcast radio is during violent weather, when one of the local country stations intensively covers the meteorological events. They occasionally interrupt the descriptions of hail and flooding for commercials and public service announcements, the latter of which are mostly courtesy of the “Ad Council.” The mean sanctimony of these PSAs is sufficient to choke 2.65 SJWs and incalculably many people of normal sensibilities. They create a powerful temptation to punch the stereo speakers, which would hurt my hand.
How can you tell that it’s early Sunday morning in Wichita?
The people next door are mowing and edging their lawn.
While I might have felt earthquakes at a greater frequency during the year I lived in San Francisco, during the past few years I have experienced a larger number here in Kansas than in all the years I lived in the allegedly more seismically-active west, most recently earlier this hour.
Even when the neighbors are quiet, the earth itself can be rather inconsiderate.
Here’s a little game to play in the middle of the night when you’d rather sleep: spot the tornado. The sirens are howling right now, but I can’t find any evidence of interesting weather in the radar image. Can you?
See if you can guess how I spent Sunday evening. A hint:
There was a reverse trap involved.
Josh has seen fit to present me with another award. This time it’s the “Dragon’s Loyalty Award.” Gee, thank you, Josh. It’s a great honor, etc., etc., etc. Someday I may forgive you.
These are the rules:
1. Display the award on your blog.
2. Announce your win with a post anddenouncethank the blogger who awarded you.
3. Present 15 deserving bloggers with the award.
4. Link your awardees in the post and let them know of their being awarded.
5. Write seven interesting things about yourself.
These “awards” are a bit too much like chain letters, and I’m not going to pick 15 more suckers. Anyone listed in my blogroll is worthy of an award. If this exercise looks like fun, feel free to participate.
I’m running out of fascinating trivia about myself. ((The most interesting facts about me are none of your business.)) Let’s see, what haven’t I mentioned before?
1. I had piano lessons as a kid, but they didn’t take. When I was around 20, I got tired of being musically illiterate, so I bought an old upright and found a teacher. Later I took a couple of semesters of music theory at the university. I would have taken more, but the theory classes were scheduled for the convenience of freshman music majors, not non-major upperclassmen with jobs and complicated schedules.
2. When I was a kid, I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up. I still don’t.
3. I deliberately mis-matched my socks during my college years. Similarly, I often wore parti-colored hose when I was active in the SCA.
4. I prefer the fragrance of dianthus to that of roses.
5. I do know how to drive, but I generally don’t.
6. When I was 7, 8, 9, 10 years old, I wandered all over Brigham City, Utah, sometimes with friends, more often alone. Sometimes my friends and I rambled around the lower slopes of the mountain east of town, or we rode our bikes to campgrounds in the canyon to the southeast. I’d pack a lunch and spend entire days at the town park by myself. When I was 11, I explored much of San Francisco north of Golden Gate Park on my bike. I could ride to Baker Beach from home in five minutes, and I’d usually have the sands all to myself. Present-day opponents of free-range parenting would have been aghast.
7. I’ve had fun with depression throughout my life. I rarely mention it because, well, it’s depressing, and others have faced worse and written better about their experiences. I figure it cheated me of about ten years of my youth. Little blue pills have made life a bit easier for me and those who must deal with me. ((This is not a request for advice or inspirational messages. I most likely will never allude to the subject again.))
I’d planned to work on music this evening, but it’s hard to concentrate when sirens keep going off nearby.
Update: It looks like the main event is scheduled for Saturday.
Update II: I suppose I should be grateful that there weren’t any tigers loose in the area.
The Dealers’ Hall at Figments and Filaments 2015
Here are a couple of panoramas from the weekend. Above is the dealer’s hall at the Figments and Filaments site; below is the booth of one of the vendors. (If you need fancy trim for a sewing project, Calontir Trim is the place to go.) These are best seen in full-screen.
A couple of specimens I found in the hall at Figments & Filaments this evening.