Category: Real life adventures

Coming attraction

Red weather

It looks like tomorrow will be a good day for catching tigers.

Update:

One county away

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.

Here we go again

Shakin' Shakin' Shakes

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.

Something about a dragon?

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.

Dragon's Loyalty Award

These are the rules:

1. Display the award on your blog.
2. Announce your win with a post and denounce thank 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.))

Miscellaneous notes

• While I applaud most efforts to annoy prissy leftists, I’m not all that concerned about the “Sad Puppies.” I’ve never regarded the Hugo award as anything but a popularity contest, no more significant than the Nobel Peace Prize. ((It doesn’t help that they’re named for a lousy writer.)) ((The Nebula awards, which are chosen by writers, are more meaningful, but only slightly: in 1971, Gene Wolfe and R.A. Lafferty, the best writer and the most original writer of our time, both lost to Noah Ward.)) It’s hardly worth all the histrionics.

• A useful term: “gong farmer.” (Via Professor Mondo.)

• Yesterday was the twelfth anniversary of the launch of my first weblog. It was not my first website, though; I’ve had a web presence of some sort since the final years of the last century.

Seasonal entertainment

Little hook

I’ve been alternately watching new anime and the radar this evening. A moment ago I noticed a cute little hook in the radar echo. Sure enough, there’s a tornado warning couple of counties west-southwest of here, and the storms are heading east-northeast. I may be visiting the spiders in the basement later tonight. It is now officially springtime in Kansas.

Update (8:34 p.m.): There go the sirens.