Category: Real life adventures

A typical high school

High school

The third Girls und Panzer OVA gave us a panoramic view of the school ship. (To see the full-size image, right-click to open the link in a new window.) In terms of Kansas cities, it looks larger than Haysville but smaller than Emporia.

Update: The more I look at this picture, the spookier it becomes. Where is everybody?

*****

You all had a narrow escape, by the way. I had a few posts in mind for tomorrow which I planned to type up this afternoon. However, my neighbors decided at 1 a.m. this morning that I didn’t need to sleep. (Curiously, when I called on them later they did not come to the door, even though the door was wide open and the teevee was on.) Instead of writing, I spent the afternoon dozing in bed.

Backwards into the past

Collision

I was active for many years in the Society for Creative Anachronism. My interests were music, dance and costuming. However, the emphasis in the local group was on fighting, more fighting, still more fighting, and a bit of politics. I eventually got very thoroughly burnt-out, and I hadn’t been to an event in years until yesterday.

The Kingdom of Calontir (roughly, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska and Iowa, plus Fayetteville, Arkansas, minus westernmost Nebraska) held its winter coronation at a school within trivial bicycle distance of where I live. So I grabbed my camera and spent a couple of hours there yesterday afternoon taking pictures of all the strange people.

Here are a few of the pictures I took. There are many more in the gallery here. (The photo plugin I’m currently using reduces the size of the image to fit the browser window. To see the pictures full-size, right-click to open the link in a new window.)

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Memories online

Home in Bigamy City

I wonder sometimes how accurate are my memories of the places I lived when I was young. It occurred to me that I might be able to find out through Google maps. I quickly located the house in Brigham City, Utah, where my family lived for seven years. Aside from my current residence, that is the longest I’ve lived at any particular address. The house looks very much as I remember it, only smaller. The mountains are smaller, too. The neighborhood has changed, though. The horse barn down the street at the right is gone, as is the row of magnificently thorny honey locusts to the east.

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Fish music

Roger Netherton, a young friend of mine, placed second this year in the old-time fiddle contest at Winfield Friday. He celebrated by heading over to Carp Camp, where he led the assembled eccentrics in a couple of tunes. Here’s the first. It starts off with Roger alone.

[audio:http://tancos.net/audio/Carp1-2012.mp3]

There are more pictures of carp people below the fold.

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Comparatives

Bad: 106°F (41°C).

Worse: Riding your bicycle home from work in 106°F.

Worser: Discovering that the air conditioner has quit working.

Worser still Rotten: Finding that the landlord is not answering the phone.

I am sitting in front of a fan, dripping sweat. I am not happy.

Update: The air conditioner decided to start working again. This is fortunate; the predicted high for tomorrow is 113°.

The morning after

It’s a pleasant day today. The sun even came out for a while. It will probably require a few days for the damages from yesterday to be fully assessed, but my neighborhood looks fine.

Although we get some of the most violent weather in the world here in the plains thanks to North America’s topography, I don’t really worry all that much about tornadoes. During stormy weather, there are constant updates on the radio and radar on my computer monitor, and most homes have basements. Dangerous though they are, tornadoes are much less a threat in Kansas than they are in Bangladesh, where the deadliest twister on record struck not all that long ago.

What I do worry about are gangs with guns. I live in an older neighborhood that borders some very different worlds. Go a few blocks south, and you are surrounded by expensive river-front homes. Go a few blocks east, and you’ll hear norteño. A few weeks ago, the place nearby where a scholarly friend of mine used to live was the scene of a gang shooting.

Impending fun

I might be celebrating the ninth annniversary of my first weblog with the spiders in the basement this evening.

Update:

Here’s how things looked around here at about 9 p.m. Note the violet triangle near the Kansas/Oklahoma border. It signifies a tornado vortex; this is the first time I’ve ever seen one so indicated on the radar. It’s southwest of Wichita and heading northeast. It’s about an hour away, and with luck it should dissipate before it gets close. Here’s an excerpt from the official warning:

Statement as of 9:14 PM CDT on April 14, 2012
… A Tornado Warning remains in effect for southeastern Harper and
southwestern Sumner counties until 930 PM CDT…
At 910 PM CDT… a confirmed large and extremely dangerous tornado was
located 6 miles south of Argonia… and moving northeast at 35 mph.

There are at least two other tornadic storms on the radar image.

Update 2: And now (9:33 p.m.) the sirens sound.

Update 3: On the radio, I’m hearing phrases such as “stovepipe” and “half-mile wide.” I really may be communing with the spiders in my basement shortly.

Update 4:

Update 5: More sirens, lots of rain, lightning and wind. According the the guys on the radio, the the tornado might have lifted. However, the warning has just been extended.

Last update, I hope: The path of this tornado has been eerily similar to that of the 1991 Andover tornado. There will probably be lots of damage to see in the morning, but it did miss downtown Wichita. So far, there has been no mention of fatalities.

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Good grief

I made trip out to Virginia last summer. While there, I experienced my first earthquake since my year in San Francisco decades ago, and my first hurricane since Agnes in 1972. A few minutes ago the house shook for 30 to 45 seconds. It wasn’t as strong as the Virginia quake, where I was near the epicenter, but it was unquestionably an earthquake, the first I ever felt in Kansas. Should I expect a hurricane here in the near future?

Update (Sunday evening): I just felt an aftershock. This one was weaker than Saturday’s and only lasted perhaps ten seconds.