Up Early -- Again

About one week in five, I get to work two early shifts, one of them a half-day of overtime. Poor timing, as tomorrow is the year's first (of four) meets for the Indiana Historical Radio Society and I'm going to be a couple of hours late. But it beats missing the whole thing.

Not a lot of original content for you but a gem of a link, the Abandoned Places photocommunity at LiveJournal. Fascinating, haunting, frequently updated. There are some very talented urban explorers/photographers posting there. One member posted a link to news stories about the Las Vegas Neon Museum -- not quite officially open and barely advertised, they are still getting as much traffic as they can handle!

On The Road Again

I went to see Mom X yesterday afternoon. After a week back in the hospital, she's in a (different and far better) rehab facility, this one in Noblesville, the next County seat to the North. It's a long drive from the Skunk Works' downtown main campus, but I don't mind long drives.

She's doing much better, despite some annoying and unexpected side-effects. Still pretty weak but definitely getting stronger and starting to feel a bit less weighed down by events. 18 hours in a lousy rehab center was a real mood-breaker but it appears time spent in a good one has a very positive effect.

...And while I don't mind long drives, I do mind freeway drivers, very much. I hang in the right lane with the slow drivers, bumbling along at a mere 5 mph over the limit; the idiots who come charging up behind me at 25 to 30 mph relative, talking on the phone, and slam on their brakes at the last minute scare me silly and the witling who came to a stop -- on the freeway! -- a few cars ahead darned near managed to work synergistically with his blithe-speedster counterpart to accordion a half-dozen cars. I find the freeway terrifying and avoid it whenever possible.

Alas, my night vision isn't what it should be, either. Spending most of my night driving under city streetlights, I'd missed that my car's headlights are aimed too far down; so my trip home, while a little less nerve-wracking, could've been a lot better. At least now I know to get 'em touched up.

And it was a good visit with Mom. Worth the flashes of fear going to and from. Next time, I'll plan my time and route better.

Ever Remembered, Long Forgot

No-one now can tell you much about George Ethan Loughenby, known as one of Britain's finest sculptors in the early 19th Century; his works, often carved in situ on natural rock outcroppings, were so highly regarded that when he began a huge outdoor piece, crowds gathered from the very start and proved so distracting he had to have a high board fence built to keep them at bay.

There was much dismay at this barrier and in a showing of the finest sort of public spirit, the great sculptor relented to the extent of allowing a number of peepholes to be drilled, though which his great work could be glimpsed without his being distracted.

...And it is for that, rather than his wonderful art, that we remember his name; for any time a great wonder is presented, we remember those tiny views, so charitably bored in the fence; and thus we say, "Loughenby Hole."
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You'll thank me later. Or not.

Zen Moment

Awake, more-or-less standing and coffee brewing,* I went to the front door to sniff firsthand this single-digit-temperature air the strange people inside my TV were so excited about.

Whoa. Brisk.

From the North, I heard a strange grinding, crunching sound. It was a bit like the icefall several days ago and it was moving closer, growing louder--

A single, small bright light speared the darkness, pursued by a tiny red light: someone on a bicycle zoomed by, crunching on the thin skin of ice in the (mostly) cleared center of the street in front of Roseholme, flashing into view under the streetlight and gone again, a silhouette in the predawn. An Ice Rider.

It's 4° F.

Godspeed.
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* Jamaican Blue Mountain. In the Chemex. Ooooo, my Mr. Valentine, he is So Fine!

Chaos Becomes Chaotic

It isn't funny. A fire has destroyed floats and thousands of costumes for Rio's Carnival and many of the "schools" will be scrambling like made, trying to replace in a month what took almost a year to make. --I don't know about you, but I look forward to the color and craziness of Mardi Gras and Carnival showing up in the news as a sign we made it through another Winter.

Still, I had to look twice at the Reuters lede, which described the fire as "throwing preparations for Brazil's annual festival of hedonism into chaos." Like it wasn't chaotic already?

Best of luck to the folks in Rio -- and Reuters, too.

Also, "Hedonism into Chaos" might make a darned fine motto for some people I know.

New Door Handle

In my car -- installed it the other day at lunch. I had broken the inside driver's side door handle one day when the door was frozen and I...tried to push it from the inside. The lock still worked but not the door-unlatching part.

The new one is a Taiwanese copy ($20.00 from Amazon!), shiny black where the old one was matte gray (both mostly plastic). Installation took all of ten minutes and it works like a champ.

Oooo, I'm livin' like the rich folk now! Don't even have to roll down the window to open my car door.

Psst

An interesting link or two, new at Retrotechnologist.

He's My Hero

Happy Birthday to Jules Verne, the man who invented the future! (As well as the kind of supervillians James Bond would later fight).

Some of the less-read novels are even more 'stonishing than titles most folks know, including far-out, impossible things like helicopter-flying Middle East terrorists, which we all know could never, ever happen. Er.... (City in the Sahara, so maybe not "Middle East" exactly.)

AOL Is Buying HuffPo!

....Those of us who remember The End Of The Internet As We Knew It, when AOL opened the floodgates and a zillion AOL users came tumbling onto Usenet, e-mail and ftping, may view this as an example of birds of a feather flocking together.

Closer examination finds a quickly-sinking AOL grasping at any lifeline. Swim, Arianna, swim! --Or not.

I'll pop popcorn.

South Secedes Peacefully

Civil War Ends In Compromise
Northern President says "No" to dual citizenship

...No, not here, silly. Sudan.

The Headline: "MSNBC Now #3 Behind CNN"

Not until the third paragraph did I learn that for the 7 pm time slot, Fox news was leading with 570,000 viewers* to CNN's 275,000 and MSNBC's 190,000: Fox News has more viewers than MSNBC and CNN combined.

And the headline read, "MSNBC audience share shrinking, CNN now second most watched news network."

Gee, I wonder why people find Authorized Journalists a bit...shifty.

(Mind you, I don't watch any of them on on a regular basis: too much commentary, too little news).
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* Aged 25 - 54.

A "Dusting" Of Snow

....Is 3 to 7 inches. Broad Ripple received about half a foot of snow, most of it after I managed to miss the bank but get to the Post Office (which means the first group of books has been mailed!)

Speaking of books, I recently read The Windup Girl. Interesting book, though I question one of the underlying assumptions. Very well written.