It will probably take me several days to go through all my Winfield pictures and recordings. Until then, here’s a minor project for you: identify this object:
Category: Real life adventures
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°.
Obstacle course
I get around town primarily by bicycle. Since the city planners have made it nearly impossible to travel any distance greater than a half-mile in Wichita without using arterial roads, I often ride on sidewalks. This can present difficulties. Here’s what I encounter when I go the the grocery story:
Badly-placed banners.
Quieter than a mouse …
… but I’d rather deal with mice.
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.
Almost there
Spring doesn’t officially start in Kansas until the first tornado warning, but it’s getting close.
Bittersweet day
This weekend I got a months-long domestic mess straightened out, and my place is finally, once again, my place. I can listen to ear-melting music without headphones and watch Divergence Eve without people looking over my shoulder. It’s good to be alone.
However, today is the second anniversary of my sister’s death. I miss her.
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.
Winfield notes
When the international market for anime collapses, Japan can export fingerpickers. Akihiro Tanaka took second place in the International Fingerstyle Championship at the Walnut Valley Festival two years ago, first place last year, and was a featured performer this year. Meanwhile, Tomoake Kawabata placed second in this year’s contest Thursday.
The real thing
There and back
I made a little trip to northern Virginia last week. The ground trembled and the winds howled, and I am finally back home tonight.
It was mostly family business, which I won’t be writing about, but Robbo might be interested in this street sign near where I stayed.
A little cosplay, and miscellaneous notes
A few pictures from Anime Festival Wichita this evening:
Continue reading “A little cosplay, and miscellaneous notes”
Miscellaneous notes
The server that hosts my websites, while never exactly snappy, has become downright sluggish lately. By a curious coincidence, I just got an email from the hosting service asking if my website has been “running slow” and announcing “a more powerful hosting solution for your website!” I think this is my cue to look for another host. Any recommendations?
*****
Grr. It looks like I may need to take another look at Gosick. I may also need to watch the rest of Dog Days.
One reason I haven’t been keeping up with current series is that I’ve been more inclined to read books than watch anime recently. ((Another is that it’s too damn hot to do anything; at 7 p.m., it was 101°F outside, and I need to direct the breeze from the air conditioner directly onto the computer to keep it from overheating.)) (This gets frustrating. My eyes get tired after a while, and it takes a half-hour before I can focus on anything again. ((Supposedly, staring at a computer monitor for hours on end is bad for your eyes, but I haven’t ever noticed any problems. (Of course, I’m already very nearsighted and astigmatic.) Reading words on dead tree is another matter.)) ) I suppose I should watch Ano Hi Mita Hana with the Sesquipedelian Name — I saw the first episode and was not hooked, but I gather it’s worth slogging through — but I don’t know when I’ll get to it. Right now, I’m more interested in Florence King and Tim Powers.
So why have I watched more than a dozen episodes of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic? Ack.
*****
In case anyone reading this is in the area: I plan to spend some time the weekend of July 8-10 at Anime Festival Wichita. You can find me there behind a camera.
No escape from unreality
(This post has nothing to do with Madoka.) I extricated myself from the Society for Creative Anachronism years ago, and I have no desire whatsoever to relive the past. So I felt a chill while bicycling through a park this afternoon when I saw a group of people with swords ((Boffers, actually.)) and shields whacking each other. It turned out that they were not SCA but a LARP organization called “Stormwrath.” They were friendly and let me take pictures. The morbidly curious can see the rest of the photos here.
95°
A week ago, it was -17°F in Wichita, colder than Fairbanks. Today, it was 78°. The range is not quite as extreme as some locations in Oklahoma, but it’s worth noting.