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Brian's organs all failed, and his doctors and I agreed therewas no point in trying to keep him alive. The man I loved, who actually loved my surly truthful self, was gone. Never coming back. A vegetable on a machine. Time to pull the plug on the respirator. That was what he trusted me to do. To be wise and loving and know when to give up. I wish I could cease to miss him all the time. I've tried rekindling friendship with my husband, but he's hopelessly no fun. He's just a d/s/our old man who, it turns out, can't remember his past without physical manifestations of it.

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I want to talk about the education privilege meme that's been doing the rounds. On the one hand I love old-school memes that encourage lots of cool people on my d-roll to talk about their experiences growing up. But at the same time, I'm kind of frowning at this particular iteration.

( thinky thoughts )

Anyway, hopefully this is an adequate substitute for the meme and you don't need me to tell you in detail how absurdly precocious I was in reading and maths.

Mood::

cynical

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If you live in the BosWash Corridor, especially in NYC-to-Boston, you need to be paying attention to the weather. We have an honest to gosh Nor'easter blizzard predicted for the next 3 days, with heavy wet snow and extremely high winds – the model predicts the damn thing will have an eye – which of course is highly predictive of power outages due to downed lines.

Plug things what need it into electricity while ya got it.

Whiteout conditions expected. The NWS's recommendation for travel is: don't. Followed by recommendations for how to try not to die if you do: "If you must travel, have a winter survival kit with you. If you get stranded, stay with your vehicle."

I would add to that: if you get stranded in your car by snow and need to run the engine for heat, you must also periodically clear the build-up of snow blocking the tailpipe, or the exhaust will back up into the passenger compartment of the car and gas you to death.

As always, for similar reasons do not try to use any form of fire to heat your house if the regular heat goes out, unless you have installed the necessary hardware into the structure of your house, i.e. chimneys, fireplaces, and wood stoves, and they have been sufficiently recently serviced and you know how to operate them safely. The number one killer in blizzards is not the cold, it's the carbon monoxide from people doing dumb shit with hibachis.

NWS says DC to get 2 to 4 inches, NYC/BOS to get 1 to 2 feet. Ryan Hall Y'all reports some models saying up to 5 inches in DC and up to three feet in NYC and BOS.

2026 Feb 21 (5 hrs ago): Ryan Hall Y'all on YT: "The Next 48 Hours Will Be Absolutely WILD...". See particularly from 3:30 re winds.

If somehow you don't already have a preferred regular source of NWS weather alerts – my phone threw up one compliments of Google, and I didn't even know it was authorized to do that – you can see your personal NWS alerts at https://forecast.weather.gov/zipcity.php , just enter your zipcode. Also you should get yourself an app or something.

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“But I had an epiphany. You know what all this sycophancy constantly being told you’re right, that you’re brilliant, that every decision is flawless? That sounds an awful lot like being a billionaire.”

[sic - perhaps the grammatical error is to show the writer is not an AI]

"The Secret Tool AI Uses to Seduce You: Explained," by Taya Graham and Stephen Janis

I use AI to get answers to simple questions and I hate when the bot addresses me personally. I hate it possibly to an irrational degree. (Even when someone else shares with me an AI convo they had, I get mad.) Do you use AI for anything and what do you think of this design choice?

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My Baltimore Street cat, Buster by name, ate raw carrots! There was a lot of other stuff, but somehow, IT GOT LOST! Oh thankx!

Mood:: Tetchy

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I can't trust you wankers to post my entries all, can I?! I write, you lose it all into the nowhere. Thanks a lot! You assholes don't have to care,do you?! You just sit back and let the computers fuck up and it's only a little sort of maybe glitch. Y'all are HATED. And now I shed it. It's on you

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Where is the entry I was just entering?! Assholes!?

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You may ask, ``Austin, isn't mid-February like two or three months too early to talk about Motor City Furry Con, much less attend it?'' And you would ordinarily be right. However, furry conventions are the last part of the United States economy that are actually growing, and MCFC has reached the point where it's nearly as big as Midwest FurFest was around 2012 when we stopped attending. It reached the point where the Eagle Crest Or Whatever hotel complex in Ypsilanti could not really fit it, and they had to go looking for a larger venue.

That search for a larger venue, in southeast Michigan, leads to pretty near exactly one venue, Detroit's Renaissance Center. And so, moving is what they did. The costs could be, besides everything being more expensive, that at least the first year they had to take ``whatever weekend Ren Cen is willing to give you'' rather than ``a weekend we like''. In future years, with good behavior, they might get back to their early-spring weekend.

But this year it would have to be Valentine's Day weekend, which I think went into one of the things that made me angry on Saturday. Also, incidentally, the weekend of bunnyhugger's parents' birthdays, which meant we had to miss, particularly, her mother having a milestone birthday. We hope to make up for that this weekend.

The good side of the move is abundant more space, and space to expand, since the Ren Cen has about seventy floors and since General Motors moved out over eight hours before the con they need stuff to fill the place. There were actually significant other groups at the hotel this same weekend, so there's space for furries to crowd people out. Been ages since MCFC faced that option.

But for now? One of the very irritating constraints is that the hotel was only willing to give the con one floor for event space, which squeezed their panel space down to the point that almost no small events could happen. bunnyhugger's Rabbits-and-Rodents and my Raccoons-and-Family gettogether panels were rejected, rejected!, which is hard to fathom. Well, the Raccoons was probably easy given they did make space for a Trash Animals meetup and there'd be considerable overlap. But there wasn't anything close to Rabbits-and-Rodents on the shrunken event schedule.

Which brings out insult to injury: a couple weeks before the convention, the hotel agreed to give them two floors for event space, so there was suddenly room for way more panels, well after all the panelists had been told no. I don't know how they went looking for people to fill things out but however they did it, they didn't get to us. And the convention would be short of panel events we wanted to get to. As the hat disaster unfolded, that was probably for the best since Saturday we were not in a mood for anything, but a con with too much space feels flimsy.

And despite this space, the convention would not have a fursuit parade, the first time MCFC has missed one. But the convention-specific space on the third and fourth floors didn't have space, they judged, for one. The first floor had plenty of space, but it's also a part of the Ren Cen that prohibits full-face coverings. Even if that could be waived, there's no getting all the suiters down to the first floor except by overloaded elevators and dangerously narrow escalators. Also we never figured how to take escalators from the third floor down to the first (the second floor is a partial floor leading to the Detroit People Mover).

Over time we started to get a handle on where everything was and even got comfortable with the two floors of the event space where the con happened. This could be a comfortable new home for the convention, as long as it isn't hat weather.

So sometime next year, most like, the Renaissance Center is going to be closing for major renovations. Rumors are for things as dramatic as tearing down two of its five towers and chopping a bunch of hotel space out --- the center is an all-hotel-room tower --- for condos instead. Depending on the timing it may be that MCFC will be kicked out of the Ren Cen for 2027, possibly 2028. The old home in Ypsilanti, which they could return to if they shrink the con, is also slated to be demolished for some kind of foundation problems. So the convention might end up anywhere or nowhere, for all that.

Let's take time for more focus on the carousel at Six Flags America, which I imagine is going wherever good fiberglass goes when it expires.

Giraffes aren't unheard-of on carousels but they also really stand out when they are there.

Looking to the inner rows you get eccentric choices like a purple horse or a green tiger.

And now to some control-panel shots. These are, I assume, standardized recordings of loading and unloading announcements and announcements for the case of a weather delay or the ride being shut for other reasons.

And here's the gadgets to count rides and, probably, passengers. I assume this is since the operator came on since it was past 2 pm at this point and there's no way it only rode three times that late in the day.

The main control panel. See? It was like 2:40 pm.

And here's the whole control center together.

Trivia: As teams withdrew from the 1932 Lake Placid Winter Olympics, Sweden and other nations proposed postponing the Games until economic conditions improved, as they could not finance their athletes. Canada, France, and Sweden complained that the Americans were not providing a high enough exchange rate to let them fund full teams. Source: Encyclopedia of the Modern Olympic Movement, Editors John E Findling, Kimberly D Pelle. Herbert Hoover did exempt foreign participants from the usual passport and visa fees, so don't say he did nothing to alleviate the Depression, okay?

Currently Reading: The Red Planet: A Natural History of Mars, Simon Morden.

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So, Motor City Furry Con '026. It is not one we were happy during, and so far as one can tell only a week out, it's not likely to be one that ages into a beloved experience. Sorry to give you a downer report.

The most important thing first. Somewhere, most likely in checking in, bunnyhugger lost her hat. The white one with earflaps and pink trim that she could tie under her chin to ride roller coasters while wearing. The one her mother made for her. The one she'd lost before, but been able to find thanks to the heroic work of friends watching out for her.

Sometime during our getting out of the car in the parking garage, getting into the hotel --- the Renaissance Center in Detroit --- and getting to our room --- on the 53rd floor, the highest off the ground we've been together outside of an airplane --- the hat disappeared, most likely falling out of her coat pocket. We discovered this Friday evening and the search for it consumed everything else we might have done that day. bunnyhugger and I retraced our steps out to the car and back without finding it. I went to the con operations and discovered the lost-and-found guy was on break. The hotel check-in booth said they hadn't heard anything but checked in back and advised checking again in the morning when Security might have turned over things.

We both, separately, went to both Con Ops and to the Hotel lost-and-founds Saturday, without success. Sunday too. Saturday I spent a good hour or so retracing my steps completely, including pressing the elevator buttons in the parking garage trying to ensure I inspected both cars. In that I failed; one of them just would not come, but bunnyhugger reasonably concluded that if only one door was operating all day Saturday and Sunday it was probably also the one working Friday when we got there.

The mysterious thing to us is that when we checked in we were, for the most part, around other people. Certainly once we were in the Ren Cen building, and even while we were walking around the edge of the building. If the hat had fallen out, why didn't anyone holler at us? If it fell when nobody happened to see, why didn't someone take it to lost-and-found? If they didn't want to take it to lost-and-found, what did happen to it? We can imagine someone who needed a hat figuring a used, probably ill-fitting one found on the street beats having nothing. But we were never on the sidewalks or streets when we checked in. Who goes to the second or third floor of a parking garage just in the hopes that something useful might be abandoned there?

The story of how the hat went missing itself has missing parts that keep it from making sense.

We were devastated, as you'd think, and there was no hope of the rest of Friday or Saturday being any good unless we recovered it, which we didn't. Sunday was a little better, up to the moments we remembered about the hat, at which point our moods crashed again, and we finally had to leave the convention and with it any hope of running across it.

bunnyhugger's mother says that she can make a replacement hat, she found the pattern and it doesn't seem too complicated. But it won't be the same; literally, the yarn originally used isn't available, and a replacement might not be sold until the winter-hat-knitting season opens in summer. And even a remade hat can't be the original, and will be all the more awful to risk losing by using it as a hat.

Apart from that, though, how was the con? That I hope to tell you over the coming week.

But first, a normal dose of pictures from Six Flags America, grammar not included.

The slightly stoned-looking elephant on the outside of the carousel.

And a black panther or similar medium-size cat.

Ostriches turn up on classic antiques more than you might imagine. This is a very 80s effort and making a modern ostrich.

And here's a camel, which you don't see on many carousels. bunnyhugger got a ride on one of these, I believe.

That same cougar-or-jaguar-or-whatever cat but in different paint.

The chariot is a somehow under-decorated part of the ride. The particular color choice feels like a cake with decorative icing to me.

Trivia: Janis Kipurs and Zintis Ekmanis, Latvian bobsledders for the 1992 Albertville and Savoie Winter Games, and former medal-winners for the Soviet Union, manned barricades in the May 1990 independence movement. Source: Encyclopedia of the Modern Olympic Movement, Editors John E Findling, Kimberly D Pelle.

Currently Reading: The Red Planet: A Natural History of Mars, Simon Morden.

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While I was dealing with trying to figure out whether I could see my psychiatrist, and what it would cost if so, I got an email from medicare.gov about the Medicare Advantage "open enrollment" period: anyone who enrolled in a Medicare Advantage (part C) plan at the end of the previous year can change to a different Medicare Advantage plan between January 1 and March 31st. I decided that it would be worth it to get into a PPO instead of the HMO I had somehow signed up for, even though it means I'll be starting over on the annual out-of-pocket maximums for prescription drugs and for medical care generally. I put the application in this afternoon, and was told the process might take 10 days, but I also think it's supposed to be effective the first day of the month after I requested the change. My confirmation email from Medicare says the plan will notify me after they verify my information and confirm my enrollment, so I will wait and see.

Fortunately, I can afford to do this, rather than having to find new specialists who are in that stupid HMO's network, or spend large amounts to see my current doctors. (Switching now is expensive because I take one very expensive drug, the Kesimpta.)

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So... I spent a little money.

I bought a Super Snark guitar tuner. It clips onto the head stock of the guitar and can be used for both electric guitar, base and acoustic guitar. It's made tuning much easier. This is important because with my decaying physical hearing, I'm trying to train my brain to hear better. I've been working on it for several months by playing almost every day. I've noticed that my left ear hears better than the right when it comes to hearing things in tune.

I've bought a bunch of guitar straps!! My 12 string kept slipping off my knee when trying to play it so putting a strap on to keep it stable really helps. I've been having problems finding strap locks that I like locally so I may have to check online. There's these cute button ones that look like they come off of Grolsch beer bottles. They should be fine for lightweight acoustic guitars but I wouldn't trust them for my base. I still have my old strap locks which still work just fine for my Phony Fender.

They Phony Fender is getting new strings. It's about time. I've put them on but I haven't tuned it up yet. I want to give the strings time to settle. In addition, the initial stress of stringing it up the E string caused the nut to pop off. I've glued it back on and I want the glue to set overnight.

I've got a no-name short scale electric guitar that needs new strings. Also a classical guitar that needs them. I've got the strings, I just need the time to put them on. I really dislike stringing guitars - it's a pain in the neck.

The Hagstrom hollow body bass (in the picture) may need some technical help: a neck shim, maybe a new nut and complete set up. It also needs a new case. Because it's an unusual base the local shops are unable to find one that fits. I may end up building a case. I'm putting both ideas on the back burner right now.

When I started losing my hearing about a decade ago I practically gave up on music: I didn't play and I barely listened to any. I regret stopping. I have to build up my strength and my fingering all over again. Still, I think I'm making progress.

Mood::

hopeful

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Uh, so, I have a weird Jew-y dilemna.

I volunteer with my neighborhood "snow brigade", which shovels for folks who need help. We're due to get some gross "wintry mix" and "icy sleet" overnight, although maybe not much accumulation.

The couple I got assigned to emailed to say — well, here: "Hopefully there will be NO snow on Friday night and Saturday since for religious reasons we are not able to shovel. If it's not much we can deal with it Saturday night."

I emailed back to say that I don't consider helping a neighbor in need to violate shomer Shabbat and I would be happy to come by and make sure their sidewalks and steps are clear.

They said, "It would be our sin to have another Jew do any work for us on Shabbos. We very much appreciate your kind thoughts to help us. But if we can't do it, you can't do it for us either."

Uhhhhhhhhhh. I am not sure how to respond to this. I don't think this is a sin! I try to observe Shabbat in the sense of resting and renewing myself, but very much not in a traditional way — like, spending a couple of hours mending and embroidering might be part of Shabbat for me because it fills my cup and I don't always get the chance to during the week! Going to the farmer's market and spending half my paycheck and cooking something elaborate on Saturday is a profoundly Shabbosdik thing for me! I don't want to tell them "your theology is wrong" and I don't want to upset them by doing something they have told me not to do (and would apparently feel guilty about????), but ... I can't just leave an elderly couple trapped in their house with icy sidewalks for a day!

*pinches bridge of nose*

I gotta get in touch with the snow brigade coordinator and tell her what's going on so she can try to find a substitute, I guess. I wish I hadn't made it so obvious I am also Jewish, just said something cheerful about being happy to shovel in the morning, but it truly did not occur to me that their observance would mean this. My bad. Ugh.

This is gonna be a real fun conversation with the snow brigade coordinator.

ETA: Snow brigade coordinator is going to check if there's someone I can swap with for future Saturdays, but since the blizzard has been delayed until Monday, when labor is allowed, we will deal with it if and when it becomes a problem next. What a ridiculous shenanigan.

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Wikipedia has blacklisted the site archive.today a.k.a. archive.is, .li, .ph, .fo, .md, and .vn), because Wikipedia editors discovered that the pseudonymous owners of the site were altering some archived pages. The alterations inserted the name of a blogger that the pseudonymous person who runs archive.today has a grudge against, because the blogger speculated about their identity.

Wikipedia editors were already debating whether to blacklist the site, after discovering it was being used in a distributed denial-of-service attack against that same blogger. The argument for blacklisting the site was straightforward: archive.today captchas were running malicious code on people's computers. The argument against was that it would be difficult to replace hundreds of thousands of links, an argument that made sense only as long as the saved websites were considered trustworthy.

My decidedly non-expert hunch is that using the site to look at static content behind a paywall is probably safe unless the site asks you to complete a captcha.

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Mood::

tired

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I know I've been going on a lot about Charles R. Saunders for an author whose books I still haven't read but. Here's a podcast about him! Wizards & Spaceships' "Charles R. Saunders ft. Jon Tattrie" talks about his life, his works, his mysterious death, and the politics that shaped his life, from the Black Power movement to the Vietnam War to bigotry in SFF publishing and to Black Lives Matter. It's really a wide-ranging, fascinating discussion and I hope you'll give it a listen and maybe even share it with people.

Happy Black History Month everyone!

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Welcome to the Zoo Crew! An eclectic mix of posters of all sizes and shapes!

From me expect snarky political comments, nerdy posts on how great Linux is and occasional hair pulling entries on how bad my writing sucks.

Oh, and getting on in years.

Enjoy!

Mood::

tired

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Mood::

calm

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Posted by Paul Taylor

https://wapsisquare.com/comic/to-the-bench/

https://wapsisquare.com/?post_type=comic&p=20659

https://wapsisquare.com/comic/to-the-bench/

https://wapsisquare.com/?post_type=comic&p=20659

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This week in my humor blog: a double dose of comic strip plot recaps, some useless home advice, and my dentist gets all clingy. Want to know more? Follow any of these links and you will.

Let's see if we can't finish that tour of Six Flags America historical panels and the grammatical problems count.

2014, they add the thing that one goes to a theme park in one of the Thirteen Colonies: a Mardis Gras section. No grammatical problems here but the Bourbon Street Fireball was a Larson Giant Loop and while there are people who call that a coaster we do not invite them to stay for dinner. Eight grammatical problems out of 13.

2016, they impose virtual reality on Superman: Ride of Steel. I'm dinging this for grammar because the phrasing suggests they had a virtual reality experience on Holiday In The Park, and also suggests that the virtual reality roller coaster ran five years. I can't find how long the virtual reality coaster lasted but I'm going to bet not that long. Nine problem panels out of 14.

2017: that elevated swings ride appears. Ten problem panels out of 15, as the sentence about The Wild One's centennial [nb] is a muddle.

2021: Delay from 2020, you say? And Spinsanity too the place of Dare Devil Dive, huh? Eleven problem panels out of 16.

And finally, 2024, the final panel in the park's historical parade, and we return to our old friend, the wrong it's. The tally stands at twelve problem panels out of 17.

There's no grammatical errors here, just a picture including a guy who looks uncannily like one of bunnyhugger's relatives, enough that we texted them to tease about this.

Back to SteamTown. We wanted to get on that weird ride you can see behind the enormous tree, but if I remember right, there weren't any operators around just then.

They apparently had Old West gunfighting shows! But not when we visited.

So back to the carousel, for some more pictures of glossy animals with numbers that suggest some of these mounts have been moved around.

Rhino looks like the sun is just too much for them.

There isn't a full rounding board but there are tiger heads disappointed in you.

There's also elephants who wonder how long this is going to go on.

Trivia: 112 people (athletes, officials, and spectators) received fractures or broken bones while maneuvering on the snow (over fifty inches!) at the 1994 Lillehammer Winter Olympics. Source: Encyclopedia of the Modern Olympic Movement, Editors John E Findling, Kimberly D Pelle.

Currently Reading: The Red Planet: A Natural History of Mars, Simon Morden.

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I seem to be Canadian now, which is very exciting. (My paternal grandfather was born in Ontario.) I need to pull together a relatively short stack of documents to prove it (3 birth certificates, 2 marriage certificates, 2 name change records), and fingers crossed Canada (home and native laaaaaand) will welcome me home.

It is supposed to snow AGAIN this weekend. I keep reminding myself that this is how winter is supposed to be.

My to-do list has three MUST DOs on it:

write up notes for therapist before Monday session
read & comment on manuscript for crit group Tuesday
pollinator garden email

If you see me doing anything else except, like, keeping body and soul together for the next few days (if it snows more than half an inch, I'll have to take care of my neighbors, and a friend is coming over with her kid to encourage me to clean and have dinner, but other than that — !), yell at me until I go back to my aforementioned tasks.

I spent this week in slide deck hell and the week before in spreadsheet hell. There is still more slide deck hell to come, but I think I can pace it out a little more now. But spreadsheet hell will not end until May, thanks to HHS (pdf link). I like accessibility work, but I also like digital paleography and information architecture and wireframing and right now accessibility is expanding to fill all the available time and then some. Fortunately, one of the slide decks from hell actually requires me to work on a writing project, so I can cling to some vestige of being a creative person who doesn't live in slide deck or speadsheet hell. Maybe someday I will actually be one! Maybe someday I can contribute to CanLit!

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Quote from Daily Kos on 02/19/2026 about Andrew Mountbatten:

"Andrew has been arrested rather than being invited to go to a police station and be interviewed under caution. That is widely used by police rather than actually arresting someone. So this sudden arrest will have come as quite a nasty surprise to Andrew. The police can now do searches without Andrew having had any notice that they may be coming."

Does this mean that that the police can search all of 'Andrew Formerly Known as Prince' closets, bank records and online accounts and he can't do shite about it?

Do tell. Literally. 'Cause I don't want to see just a perp walk, I want a parade of pedophiles being marched off to jail.

*passes the popcorn*

Mood::

hopeful

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Today was a nice day!

Tuesday and I played quite a bit of Cadence of Hyrule, which was extremely enjoyable to do. I love Crypt of the Necrodancer very much, and I like playing video games with other people, so this was a good combo. It's exciting to me to get to be the better player at a game, because that is not generally the case. Not that I was doing a flawless job or anything, Tuesday is also very good at games, but I have played a staggering amount of Necrodance over the years, and I'm sure I was extremely charmingly irritating about all the parts where I was like "oh yeah, I know exactly how that mechanic works".

At lunchtime, we swung by the local little Japanese place, and got an assortment of things. Some of it was excellent (their little friend sesame balls were exemplary) and some of it was merely acceptable, which is still a nice situation restaurant-wise. Foolishly of Tuesday, I now know this is quite close and may drag us there on future visits as well.

More video games, then being floppy in bed and doing some parallel play, and finally it was dinner time and we settled in to watch Everything Everywhere All At Once, which I had never seen. We'd specifically been trying to find a time to watch it when we could watch it on Tuesday's properly big television (rather than laptop screens or something else inadequate) and I do think it was worth it.

The movie is absolutely as splendid as everyone said. Some of it was extremely predictable, but in the way that felt right. It felt like the joy of storytelling, the hope of seeing everything come round the way it ought to, while still being beautiful and joyous and just an absolute delight. And the actual visuals of it are astoundingly well done! There was a moment where I realized I want to do the double feature of this with Wizard of Speed and Time. Specific theme: it would be good to watch this on a device capable of going frame-by-frame when necessary.

(I should make sure I've shown Tuesday WoSaT at some point, because if I haven't, that _really_ needs to be rectified. I think she would find it Good.)

Tomorrow we get more being floppy and goofy together. Probably more video games. Certainly more being very much in love. Eventually I get on a train and head back to Somerville (in time for dance, even.)

As long as I ignore the fact that I need to work on grading at some point, I am having a lovely vacation!

~Sor
MOOP!

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I'll probably start on Motor City Furry Con come Friday. Today, busy but also TCM was showing My Fair Lady, which is the best sort of musical to watch because there's enough earwormy songs that they overload you and cancel each other out and leave your head clear.

Anyway it's got me thinking about Henry Higgins's entire deal. He's big on the idea that the English should speak English correctly. He's familiar with all the many varieties of dialect and accent and word choice but the whole plot kicks off with the idea that he can teach anyone to crush their distinctiveness out. But he's also motivated by the idea that this puts all English speakers on an even footing, that speaking Movie Received Pronunciation is a way to demolish the classicism that divides people.

And that's the dichotomy of a standard, isn't it? A standard is freedom; it will work equally for everyone. But a standard is imprisonment; everyone must fit themselves to it. Why can't a thing only have the good parts?

Let me continue the parade of Six Flags America's Grammatically Almost Right historical posters.

So after a spot of trouble the park closed and reopened and got its fourth wrong it's out of five.

Yes, Mind Eraser was the name of Professor Screamore's SkyWinder and the wild thing is it had that name before Six Flags bought the place. I assume the Crazy Horse Saloon is what became the SteamPub. And six panels in they still have only four wrong-it'ses. The -'s are a little dubious but I think we can allow that for the purpose of this text.

Then in 1998 their owners bought Six Flags and we get two error-free panels in a row!

Pausing for a moment here of a map of the park from the days of Coyote Creek. Sometime in the 90s.

And then the totally different look the park had in 1997 as seen in a reproduction of the park guide for the year.

There were a couple little bits of ride pieces; I imagine this was taken off the Pirates Flight.

Concept art for the entrance, which is pretty close to what the entrance looked like when we were there. They mostly changed the approach to the entrance to add metal detectors.

No it's errors on this eighth panel, but ``rollers coasters'' is an unforced error. I assume some style guide required them to put JOKER and TWO-FACE in all caps but that needless space in TWO- FACE is another flop. So that's a count of five bad panels.

Superman brings us to nine panels, only five of them with problems.

2001 saw the introduction of Batwing, a dangling-participle coaster, that we went to the park three days in a row hoping to see open, without success. But we heard later that the final day we were there it had a rare moment of working, so, shame. We missed it. Also, it's sloppy to talk about the end of the early-2000's coaster wars without mentioning the beginning or their existence or anything. Six problem panels out of ten. (Having written that, I'm not sure this really is dangling. It feels awkward to me, and I don't have any confidence that the author of these knows what they're doing, and resolving a thing without introducing it is a problem, so I'll ding it.)

2005 saw the return of our old friend the wrong it's. Seven problem problems out of eleven.

2012 adds another wrong it's, and whiffs on the spelling of Apocalypse. The recent renaming I suppose explains why it was the only roller coaster with specific merchandise but, really, how did The Wild One not get anything? Eight problem panels out of twelve.

Trivia: Sarajevo's original budget for the 1984 Olympic Games was about $160 million. A referendum for higher taxes to pay for construction was supported by 96 percent of the voters. Source: Encyclopedia of the Modern Olympic Movement, Editors John E Findling, Kimberly D Pelle. The book doesn't say if that was 1984 US dollars or the book-publication-2004 dollars. It notes that about that time Yugoslavia saw inflation of about 50 percent so one imagines any budget figures are really just ``bunches of money''.

Currently Reading: The Red Planet: A Natural History of Mars, Simon Morden.

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Just finished: The Threads That Bind Us by Robin Wolfe. Turns out I'd mostly finished this last week with the exception of one story and a very detailed explanation of the embroidery process. Anyway. Holy shit. You need this book in your life. Yes you. Also you.

Simple Sabotage Field Manual by the U.S. Office of Strategic Services. This is a nice little handbook from 1944 about what to do if you are just a regular guy and your country gets taken over by a fascist government. Nowadays I think the recommendation is "vote Democrat harder" but back then they knew that fascism was bad and so the advice was more "fuck their shit up so it's harder for them to do a fascism." Obviously a lot of the specific advice isn't really relevant now because the technology has massively changed, but the principle is worthwhile: wherever you can introduce friction, do so, and every small action helps. If I hadn't read The Threads That Bind Us, this would be the most heartwarming read of the past week.

One other thing I found interesting was the section on meetings. The recommended strategies for sabotaging meetings look a lot like our union meetings, and well. You gotta wonder. Anyway, it's free and it's a quick read.

The High Desert by James Spooner. I had this on my iPad for apparently quite a while so I must have bought it at some point but I don't remember when. It's a graphic novel memoir by the guy who did the Afro Punk documentary about growing up Black, punk, and in a crappy little town. Both the writing and the art are top notch and it's a joy watching him go from angry kid to activist.

Currently reading: A Drop Of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett. Finally getting around to the sequel to The Tainted Cup. Din and Ana travel to a remote canton that is currently not part of their empire, but will be soon, to investigate the death of a treasury officer who disappeared from his room and was later found mostly eaten by hungry turtles. (It turns out that the turtles are usually very hungry, but this time they were only slightly hungry, otherwise he would have been fully eaten.) This is really fun so far.

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Still not really up to starting the Motor City story but a little exasperating moment today as we got back to normal.

After several instances of having the mail held and them just ... not ... delivering the held mail at the end, I've started checking the box that I want them to keep the mail at the post office where I will pick it up. So this afternoon after work I drove from the office to the post office, gave them my name and address, and stood back to wait and hear how this went wrong.

The clerk --- the same one I had to ask last week why the post office hates us when they just lost a priority mail envelope bunnyhugger had sent from there (it was delivered two days later without ever being scanned at any point ever) --- disappeared for somewhere between ten minutes and all the time in the world before coming back to say there wasn't any mail for us there. Not a bit.

I pointed out that the Informed Delivery e-mail had pictures of stuff we were supposed to be getting, Friday and Saturday and today. And they had dropped a package off on our doorstep Friday, when they were supposed to be holding letters and packages for me to pick up. He couldn't explain where our mail had gone and I just gave up and went outside and yelled at the building. I figured to go home and print out both the receipt from my mail hold request and every single Informed Delivery e-mail so they could know just what to look for.

Of course, it was all dropped off in our mailbox at home, along with a letter for two houses down that we keep getting mail for because the letter carrier apparently can't tell our numbers apart.

I do not know why the post office wants me angry with them but fine, they've got it.

Venture with me now into Steam Town, at Six Flags America.

What could be more steampunk than carp who're harassed by people tossing coins in the fountain? Yes, carp with top hats and those geared monocles harassed by people tossing farthings in.

The artificial waterfall uses the same technology our backyard pond does, only theirs is bigger. Same problem with the rocks not covering the plastic cover though.

We didn't go in to the Filaments Steampub, but considered it. I kind of like the name.

But here's the roller coaster we went there to ride, Professor Screamore's SkyWinder.

Do you recognize it? ... Because it's another installation of the same track we know as Thunderhawk at Michigan's Adventure, Flight Deck at Canada's Wonderland, Infusion at Blackpool Pleasure Beach, and Mind Eraser and a half-dozen Six Flags parks.

The climb up to the station took you right up to the woods, though.

On the station was this defunct(?) zeppelin prop.

Here's the operator's station and a couple people wondering why I'm photographing them.

The place had a big cafeteria where we got some pop and rested from the sun (and, later, from a shower) and it had a wall with a lot of posters to explain the park's history.

So yes, the park started out as a project of Ross Perot and ABC, and it strikes me as very close to the drive-through safari that made Great Adventure, in New Jersey, which also opened in 1974.

By 1982 and 1983 the park had reached the point they weren't able to tell the difference between ``its'' and ``it's''. But just wait!

Four panels in and three of them have used the wrong it's, which does great things to leave you confident they're giving an accurate history of the park. The coaster's original incarnation at Paragon Park does appear to have been the tallest in the world at its opening, which adds to our tally of coasters that were world's tallest coasters at the time they opened (this, Montaña Rusa, Top Thrill Dragster/Top Thrill 2, Kingda Ka, and in the category of wooden coasters Mean Streak and, for bunnyhugger, American Eagle and Son of Beast) since Wikipedia considers the category established in 1917. (I think records of earlier coasters are too incomplete to say what was the tallest before this.)

Trivia: Italy raised money for building the complex for the 1956 Cortina d'Ampezzo Winter Games in part by the football pool Toto Calcio; a fifth of the revenue from these bets on Italian soccer matches went directly to the Italian Olympic Committee. Source: Encyclopedia of the Modern Olympic Movement, Editors John E Findling, Kimberly D Pelle.

Currently Reading: The Red Planet: A Natural History of Mars, Simon Morden.

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I am visiting Tuesday! Which is a very good thing <3

Today was the mostly mellow day, since she was working from home. Tomorrow and Thursday she has off --I'm here basically as long as I can be before rushing off to run dance Thursday night. (I'm debating whether I spend more time on trains and come visit more on some other times this break, but my timing is a little weird for it)

While she did work, I played Stardew Valley, but then we had a nice evening of playing Bomb Corp with Charis and going off to obtain a pizza. We ate the pizza while watching Middleman, which was especially good because she was at my _favourite episode_. Gods, I love this show so much. I am definitely due looking at my calendar and picking a weekend for a Middleman sleepover watch party again. Watch from like, 8pm-11pm on Friday night, then make pancakes in the morning and watch from 11am-8pm or so. End with the live table read of the episode 13 comic, and probably with some kind of reading of the episode 14 script (did that ever get table read? I might actually have never read the 14th episode, and I should do that!)

If this sounds deeply exciting to you, you should let me know and I'll put you on the list for it. Also mannn, I need to get back into the swing of dragging Scoop over to my place for DnD and watching Middleman with him afterwards. That was a good run of weeks when we managed it!

I don't know if Tues and I have any specific plans for tomorrow, beyond being cute and sweet at each other. Sleeping in, a thing I don't do often enough! That part's good.

I hope you are happy.
~Sor
MOOP!

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I realized over the weekend that I hadn't checked on those insurance/medical specialist referrals, and when I did check, they were all sitting in MyChart, but hadn't been sent to the insurance company. The insurance chat agent was able to tell me that yes, they need to be in their system, and gave me a fax number to give my GP's office. So I called this morning (yesterday having been a holiday) and asked my doctor's office to do that, urgently, because I'm seeing Dr. Awad tomorrow.

When nothing had happened by midday, Adrian suggested I call the insurance company and ask whether it would be OK if they received the referral after the appointment, on the theory that this probably happens a lot. So I called, and they said yes it would, so I'm going to cross my fingers, and didn't call to reschedule that appointment.

I also finally managed to talk to my Fidelity advisor, and set up a three-way call with him and BNY (where the inherited IRA is). That involved a lot of waiting on hold, and the agent saying he needed to check one more thing.... He then told me that it would take more time for them to figure out where that unexpected balance came from, and they had to figure that out before they could transfer the money. No, I don't know why: the balance information is from their system. So someone is supposed to call me back, hopefully soon, and then I hope they will either transfer the money to Fidelity, or be willing to send me a check for the balance and close the account.

It took me a little while to figure out why I was feeling worn out, but at least part of it is that I made multiple phone calls, and everything is still in process, if not in limbo. A bowl of Lizzy's "chocolate orgy" ice cream helped some.

On top of everything else, my gum is bothering me again ("again" because it's a problem for a day or two, then it's fine for a while, and then recurs).

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We went to Motor City Furry Con this past weekend and, not to spoil things, we didn't have a great time. I haven't had the energy to start writing that up yet so you're getting a double dose of Six Flags America photos, from the full day we spent there.

But I can at least share a small side anecdote from today when I went to bunnyhugger's parents' home to pick up our pet rabbit. (bunnyhugger had to work; I had the day off for the state holiday.) Besides getting them a half-dozen paczki to thank them I wanted to get a pop for myself and the nearest Freestyle coke machine --- so I could get a Mello Yello Zero Citrus Twist --- was at Wendy's. The drive-through line was about 362 cars deep so I went inside, instead, and asked for a large fountain drink cup. The clerk handed it to me, I started to pay, and she said ``nah, you're good''.

I offered again to pay and she said nah, she didn't care, it's just the cup. Part of me wanted to protest that I was also getting the pop but I finally remembered I could act like a normal person instead and say thank you and maybe that's kind of you. And to appreciate that sometimes something's going on at a Wendy's and the cashier just does not care about collecting money for the pop machine. Lucky break, huh?

As promised, Six Flags America pictures:

The seats for the Firebird ride, which much like Mantis-to-Rougarou was converted from a standing train to a floorless. Here, the floor's in hiding.

Track of Firebird, with The Wild One behind it. In the middle you can see the miniature railroad, which wasn't running any of the days we visited.

Six Flags America logo that finally shows some localization to it.

The entrance I mentioned that goes underneath The Wild One, into the inevitable Gotham City part of the park.

I was excited to see they had a super-round-up ride; I always like those. Ah, but ...

That's right, the ride wasn't running. The promise it would open later in the season seemed touching; we wondered how much effort they were putting into getting a ride open for at most three months or so.

Riddle-Me-This's ride inspection sticker and certificate, showing the ride was looked at that year at least. The Certificate of Inspection lists as governor Larry Hogan, which was most recently true in 2023.

bunnyhugger pointed out the Joker's Jinx ride had some nice HA decorations around it. Or, from this point of view, a bit AH on top of these poles.

The elevated swings ride was not as tall as Windseeker, but was down part of the day anyway.

And the ride is Wonder Woman themed --- the ``Lasso of Truth'' --- with an entrance that kind of suggests Wonder Woman unwisely gazed upon Medusa and got petrified. Although I guess she was created from stone originally? In some versions of the story? So maybe she's just being normal.

Here I noticed there was a good angle to show what kind of a spaghetti bowl the Joker's Jinx was, and now you see it too.

The last big bit of money put into the park was for Steam Town, a redevelopment of the western area into something More Steampunky. There's a roller coaster in there too, so we're in there.

Trivia: Germany's team won the four-man bobsled team in the 1952 Oslo Olympics with a team weighing a total 472 kilograms, about 1040 pounds. After this the international federation for bobsled and tobogganing limited the weight of future teams to 400 kilograms, 880 pounds. Source: Encyclopedia of the Modern Olympic Movement, Editors John E Findling, Kimberly D Pelle. (They actually voted for the limit shortly before the games --- team weights had been spiralling --- but it did not take effect until after.)

Currently Reading: The Red Planet: A Natural History of Mars, Simon Morden.

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The world is complicated and there are a lot of things to have feelings about, obviously on a macro level, but for me on a more micro level as well.

But.

I spent the day with various groups of friends, and doing a bunch of knitting work and making things with my hands. And it feels very very good.

I'm happy for that. I hope you can also find things that make you happy.

~Sor
MOOP!

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ARGH, the box where I stashed a bunch of pharmacy receipts has vanished into thin air and I cannot imagine where it is, nor can I persuade myself I would have thrown it out! This apartment is not large. I cannot remember the last time I saw it, but this doesn't say much.

I have made progress on the jeans I am repairing, except that there is a new spot that has worn out. It feels positively Sisyphean. Jeans of Theseus. Well, it keeps me from doomscrolling.

Steaming potatoes before browning them continues to be one of the great discoveries of my adulthood: it's so fast! and tidy! and produces perfect potatoes! I do need to acquire bamboo steamers for better steaming of fish and various Asian dishes and whatnot, but first I gotta figure out where would I put them? I have a tiny kitchen and a lot of equipment but I swear I use pretty much all of it (I would use the pasta roller more if eggs were affordable, but that really is the only thing I look at and wince, trying to justify the space). Semi-relatedly, the attempt to make the trash situation less horrible seems to be working: a small trash bin forces me to take it out more often, before the contents get gross. I should've gotten a foot-pedal model, but that is really the only flaw in the system, and I do like that the legs elevate it so I can clean under it easily. It's almost embarrassing how easy this dose of shame was to hack, but better late than never, I guess.

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https://wapsisquare.com/comic/silly-me/

https://wapsisquare.com/?post_type=comic&p=20655

https://wapsisquare.com/comic/silly-me/

https://wapsisquare.com/?post_type=comic&p=20655

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Sweetiecat is starting to do better. Her tail isn't dragging, she lifts her head to look at me and she's purring a little. Last night she jumped up on the bed next to Steve, which she hasn't done in a while. She is eating and visiting the litter box, and moving around.

Zoomy is a bit of a sad sack, because he feels left out; Sweetie is getting all the attention, he thinks. I have the door open, and he could come in at any time and curl up next to me, but he is not doing it; he's fussing about Sweetie. She's his big tolerant sister who puts up with him jumping on her until she does a judo move and stand over him and lets him know that's enough. He is a dear loving boy, and getting bigger every day, or longer.

And I have decided, after much upset and a cost-benefit calculation, not to go to Sacred Space, the big interreligious pagan conference that is less than 15 miles from me this time. ( more behind cut )

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A little sarcasm and a lot of truth, connecting one thing and another of everything around us right now politically -- and the end of it is FOTUS' ego.

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More of the 1st of July, Six Flags America, Maryland.

Back of the station for Roar, with the train roaring past behind the operator.

A photo opportunity for Spanish-speaking friends who support the message ``Yes Flags''.

As a (legacy) Six Flags park, they hd a Gotham City-themed area which results in things like this attempt to be a funnel cake stand but all DARK and BROODY because my PARENTS were KILLED. It was closed when we visited although note they were hoping to open later in the year.

Joker's Jinx is one of the rides put in when Six Flags bought the park. It had some funhouse mirrors out front, and a bit of similar theming inside the queue.

The Joker looming over the canopy here makes me wonder if the covering is a later addition, maybe to relieve the sun beating down on people in line. You can't get an unobstructed view of him but that could also be part of the wackiness of it, you know ?

Walking up the queue; there's some more mirrors and things to look at such as this.

I forget which ride this was on, but you can see some of Joker's Jinx in the background. It's your classic spaghetti-bowl track.

Whistlestop Park didn't actually have anything there, but the place looked like it had once held a couple of rides, and it seemed like it might have once been a stop on the railroad.

Skull mountain that's a part of one ride and that The Wild One ran behind.

Some of the length of The Wild One behind, with the launch hill for Firebird in the foreground.

The station for Firebird, which was the only roller coaster we found specific merchandise for. The ride was only about a dozen years old --- only Rajun Cajun was newer at the park --- and had once been a stand-up coaster, which has always been rare --- but it still seems weird they'd have merch for that and not for The Wild One.

Looking out from the front of the Firebird queue; you can see The Wild One outside it.

Trivia: At the 1932 Lake Placid games the (men's) speed-skating was for the first time done in a pack of all skaters going at once, rather than every competitor racing against the clock individually. After American victories in some of the early events, European skaters protested to the International Skating Union, which upheld the protest and required the races to be re-run, individually. The Americans won those races too. Source: Encyclopedia of the Modern Olympic Movement, Editors John E Findling, Kimberly D Pelle. But the entry for the 1932 Lake Placid games says that saw ``the emergence of women's speed skating as an Olympic sport''. This is what happens when different people write different articles! (Maybe it was an exhibition?)

Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine, Volume 84: A Man in a Moon, Ralph Stein, Bill Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle.

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I'll be leading a library Zoom on this historical fiction on Thursday night. I'm 70% of the way done and have liked it a whole lot so far.

Discussion prompts

This book mixes horse racing, racism of the 1850s and 2022, art history, and Smithsonian backstage life. Did the mixture work for you? Did you have a strong preference for some parts of the story versus others?
What did you think of the different narrative viewpoints (1850s groom/trainer, 1850s artist/writer, 2022 art historian, 2022 lab-runner / bone articulator, 1950s art collector, others)? Were all the voices convincing?
What did you think of the parallels in the relationships between Jarret and Mary, and Theo and Jess?
Have you read anything else by Geraldine Brooks? How did this compare?
What did you think of the endings for the various characters/timelines?

References and other discussion guides (dozens more discussion prompts)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexington_(horse) -- the real deal
BookBrowse
Books That Slay
Libromaniacs
Book Girls Guide (YA)

Music:: Mozart's Requiem, my niece singing, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GshwUSlIntg&

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skinnerhousebooks:

Valentine
Creation gives us snow.
Lest we imagine beauty was only for summer, or trees for leafing; just in case we thought cold was for winter or, at best, firesides or pots of pea soup, creation gives us snow.
Creation outlines each slender twig with snow, a flake at a time. With divine patience, winter writes a character, a syllable, a word, until nature’s grace is there on every tenacious surface.
And what of you and me? Ought we to think we can do better in our building of trust that we dare hurry such a thing as friendship?
Let us write our vows slowly, knowing some of the words like snowflakes will fall away, that from time to time a misunderstanding will come like a gust of wind or a bird’s foot to a snow-covered branch, disrupting the careful gifts of love. Let us work on our manuscript, mirroring nature’s patience, until the love is whole and the drift of our days is done.
Elizabeth Tarbox
Evening Tide

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With pictures, I've got into July, and the day we planned to spend nearly open to close at Six Flags America. Please remember while looking over these pictures that it was incredibly freaking hot.

Six Flags America started as a much smaller place and that's probably why the entrance was such a nothing exit on a four-lane highway.

You could easily drive right past and not even know it was there, in a way that reminded me of Canada's Wonderland.

The entrance, and parking lot, had plenty of trees and nice pleasant tall ones though.

I realized afterward we were never going to get a good picture of the entry booths, so here, have this zoomed-in picture instead. Also note the parking lot locator signs have ride pictures.

Again, you claim to be Six Flags America but I'm only seeing eight flags.

One of the midway buildings with Looney Tunes characters done up as founding fathers.

Oh, they ... didn't take down the National Ride Operator Day sign. All right then.

Evidence of park history: the entrance midway ends at a creek, with a good-size footbridge over it. But there's also this closed off and much narrower bridge that ends at nothing, now. What purpose did that serve, and when did it last serve that?

I wonder if it wasn't the queue for a ride, and that it was more trouble to remove the bridge than to just block it off. But how long ago must it have been that the ride was removed if the ground is that much reclaimed by grass?

On to roller coasters! The other wooden coaster they had here was called Roar, and how could an old furry not like that?

Some of the big ol' heap of wood that makes up Roar. It almost looks like a demonstration of truss design.

Roar's loading station. Note that the A gets a different color, in color logos, a thing we noticed in several rides before we figured out what that might be for.

Trivia: In the 1924 Chamonix Winter Olympics women were allowed to compete only in figure skating; other events were judged too strenuous and perhaps dangerous to their ability to bear children. Women were finally allowed to compete in skiing events in 1948, and in speed skating in 1960. In 1998 women debuted in ice hockey, and in 2002, bobsledding, all events from the first winter games. Source: Encyclopedia of the Modern Olympic Movement, Editors John E Findling, Kimberly D Pelle.

Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine, Volume 84: A Man in a Moon, Ralph Stein, Bill Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle.

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The radio frequency spectrum is organized in bands (ranges of frequencies), with each band dedicated to one or more radio services (purposes and licensing systems). For example, U.S. broadcast radio is in two bands: the AM broadcast band is from 535 kHz to 1.705 MHz and the FM broadcast band is from 88 MHz to 108 MHz. (Here's a nice chart.) In many radio services, each frequency is assigned to a specific station in a specific area. For example, KOA in Denver is the only station allowed to transmit on 850 kHz with significant power at night in the continental US, and in the daytime in most of the western US.

The amateur radio service (ham radio) doesn't assign frequencies to specific stations. Amateur bands are open to anyone with an appropriate license, and it's up to amateur operators to avoid operating on a frequency that's already in use. This is normally fairly straightforward: listen first, then ask if anyone's using the frequency, then you can call CQ (ask people to call you). High frequency radio waves have a limited range though, and also a short-range "skip zone" where they can't be heard. So sometimes two people are calling CQ on the same frequency, but can't hear each other. I occasionally run into this situation with single sideband: one station in Florida and one station in Georgia might both be seeking contacts. If their timing is such that I can make out which is which by the sound of their voice, I can sometimes work both stations and tell them that another station is on the same frequency.

I've been practicing Morse code lately, and while some operators have a distinct "fist" (keying rhythm), often the only way to tell the dits and dahs of two transmissions apart is by the signal strength, if that. Today in the weekly K1USN SST slow speed contest I was listening to several rounds until I worked out the operator's callsign before calling them. An exchange is information given by the two parties in a contact. If K1USN is calling CQ and W1AW contacts them, the full sequence would be something like

CQ SST DE K1USN W1AW W1AW GA WATSON MA TU WATSON HIRAM CT TU HIRAM ES 73

with DE short for from, ES for and, GA for good afternoon, TU for thank you, MA/CT are state abbreviations, and 73 stands for kind regards, end of conversation. After a few passes, I'd written down W6RIF, called him, and got his exchange as WARREN IL (Warren in Illinois). I said TU WARREN TREVOR CO and moved on. I typed up my log file at home and ran it through a script I wrote to double check callsigns and states against the FCC database. I was surprised to discover that W6RIF is named Reed and lives in Virginia; neither the names nor the states sound similar in Morse code. I was pretty sure I'd copied the callsign correctly, and I relied on my phone to pick up the name. I searched QRZ for several variants with wildcards in various places, none of which turned up a more promising operator. I tried searching QRZ for just warren but in a hobby dominated by old white guys, there are a few thousand. I recalled finding a text file of SST operators and their exchanges, only one of whom is Warren from Illinois: KC9IL. I could confuse IF for IL (L and F both have three dits and a dah, with the dah one position different), but it's implausible that I misheard KC9 as W6R; none of those letters sound like the other. I had the insight to check the Reverse Beacon Network where people run software to automatically spot (announce that they heard) stations calling CQ in CW (Morse code) or digital modes. I looked up both callsigns, and saw they were both calling CQ on the same frequency in the same time range. It's possible that both of them responded to me at the same time, but I only picked up Warren's exchange. Maybe I ended up in both of their logs. I'm surprised they didn't notice each other on the same frequency: Virginia Beach and Chicago are far apart to be well out of the skip zone on 20 meters, but close enough to have a clear signal.

High frequency and medium frequency amateur radio is a curious hobby. In an era where you can place a phone call or send a short message to almost anyone on the planet for cheap, hams have to concentrate to pull out callsigns, names, and other details in the spaces between simultaneous transmissions, over atmospheric noise and static from thunderstorms, and signals fading in and out. Before I got my General class license, I was curious why someone would do this. The answer: it's fun in part because it's hard to communicate. It's a bit like a game of chance, strongly influenced by skill and appropriate use of technology.

Music:: KGNU - Blues Legacy

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quixotic

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Progress on art nouveau autumn:

I found my crafting table! The sewing machine still works and so do I. Of course, then I found the quilt scraps and got distracted:

The aforementioned Cutest Crochet Book:

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Apparently, after I stopped watching 'Primeval' because they'd killed off or lost all the original players, they brought it back for two more seasons, in the process finding two characters lost in the Cretacious Era. So now I'm watching entirely new-to-me episodes, and thinking how much more AU my AU series of stories is now with all this additional context.

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