First Snow

As it should be, the first snow of the year is after Thanksgiving, I woke up this morning to a dusting of fluff outside. It had shifted to rain by the time I took the coffee grounds out to the compost heap, but now it seems to be snow again--giant wet flakes, and lots of them. Right on.

I seem to have forgotten about Thanksgiving haiku again this year. Or rather, I thought of it, but was too caught up in fending off an oncoming cold and making pies to do anything about it. (Making pies and having a cold is a bad combo, true. But apparently the cold was only a proto-cold, and I've squashed it with daily overdoses of Emergen-C (black cherry flavor for Heart Health.) As there's a ton of B vitamins in the stuff, it's also doing a fair amount to hold back the tide of annual holiday depression, which I appreciate.) Anyway, if anyone has a haiku to share, feel free!

Gaming seems to be taking up a good deal more of my brain space than usual lately--which is honestly fine by me, I miss it when it DOESN'T take up brain space, especially now that I'm not In The Industry anymore. The thing about having your hobby also be your career for many years is that you start to take it a bit for granted, it eats up all aspects of your life without your really noticing--or minding, even if you did notice. But now I Make Time for it, and think about it in a more structured way I suppose... and I wonder if I'm coming up with a better product now, as it were. I suppose you'd have to ask my players. At any rate, I've got a lovely Sunday afternoon stretching before me with icky weather (it's back to rain now as I write this) and nothing to do but housework and answering the Call of Cthulhu... I'll take it.

Time Traveling Frogs

Apparently, if you start a post on Sunday, but then finish and post it on Tuesday with the word "Tuesday" in the headline, Blogger will timewarp it back to having a Sunday date stamp, regardless. They're frogs from the fuuuuuuture!!!!

At any rate, today Sunday is Sunday, and this being the only day likely to be both dry and above 40 degrees out before winter really sets in, I spent it frantically doing all the yardwork tasks I'd failed to do earlier. Mowed my leaves. (Thank you, mulching mower! I say it every year...) Cleaned my gutters. Cleared the leaves off the driveway. Drained and put away the hoses. Cleaned out my community garden plot. Put away the chiminea--I'm not sure I've ever remembered to do that before the first snow. I was a machine of efficency.

I also managed to strain a quad muscle climbing back down off the roof of the garage, hurt my back in some unspecified way, and smashed my face straight into the edge of an open door while walking through my darkened house last night. Even machines have their poorly oiled days...

Tuesday FrogBlogging


Meet the newest members of my ever-growing menagerie. After two years of research and thinking it over, I've finally set up a dart frog terrarium with not one, but two Dendrobates Leucomelas in residence. Before you ask, NO. They are not poisonous when in captivity. In the wild they eat ants, which have formic acid in their venom; the formic acid is metabolized by the frogs into the neurotoxin secretion that dart frogs are famous for. No ants = no poison. I hope.

Hell Yes, I Cried.

Ok, just to get it on the record even though I have utterly failed to blog since the election--yes. Yes, I cried during the victory speech. I was OK til he got to talking about Lincoln and then I lost it--my companion on the couch had already had the waterworks on for a while at that point, so I was in good company. And thanks Elee and Erik for hosting me on such a glorious night, by the way! 8 years of feeling unrepresented by my government are finally over; Obama's not perfect, but his themes of change and hope really do resonate with me. I've needed some of both for quite a while now.

And Indiana sure does look beautiful in blue. :)

Wooooo! Way to Fire Up the Base!!!

Breaking news--we've just received word that John McCain, who hasn't seen fit to visit our fair state since July, who didn't even bother spending a single advertising dollar here (ads were eventually put up by the Indiana GOP) and who apparently assumed that our voter base is made up of mindless automatons, will be holding a campaign rally here in Indianapolis on Monday! Monday, the day before the election! And he'll be staging it at....wait, this can't be right.... at the AIRPORT?

Yes, it's true. As if McCain's general lack of respect for his Hoosier supporters could not have been more thorough, he is now sending them the message that just as he couldn't be bothered earlier in the campaign to spend some money or time in our state, he now can't be bothered to actually leave the airport terminal to stage his rally. "Hi Indiana, vote for me, if you haven't already voted for that terrorist--oh, whoa, is that the time? Sorry, I've got to head out, we left the engine running on the Straight Talk Jet!" Unreal. What's more, our airport is undergoing major renovations at the moment. While they're nearly done and I'm sure McCain won't be speaking amid piles of acoustical tile and bags of cement, it's significant that the approach to our airport from the highway has changed dramatically in the last 2 months, along with the parking situation. There may be serious wayfinding issues even for diehard McCain fans who genuinely want to hear the man speak--and a low turnout would be an unfortunate headline for our paper on Tuesday morning, wouldn't it? Local polls show Obama by .7%--McCain can't afford a screwup here. And yet, he's trying so hard to have one.