Future Poltergeist

Today while in the car, DF said "We still haven't had any hippos at our house."  Which is completely true.  I got a mental image of a sign outside the door that says something like '1076 days without a hippo'.  Each day we could dutifully add one more to the number.  And then we, the parents, could hope that the number never goes to zero.

I'm back from Pacem in Terris and I had a very peaceful time.  You can click through to their website if you'd like to see pictures (and it might make it easier for you to understand the place as I write about it).  As I said, it was peaceful.  There was one big problem and I'll write about that up front.  The problem?  Bugs.  The weather for the past six weeks has been very wet and for the past couple of weeks mostly hot.  It's been the best possible breeding weather for insects and boy howdy, they've taken advantage of it!  This meant mosquitoes, spiders and even some cockroaches.  I have rather a large fear of bugs and it took me at least a full day to get over a panicky feeling that they were coming for me.  (Going to sleep the first night was rough.)  By the second morning, they were more a part of the environment for me.  If I'd been there a week, I probably would have named the roaches. As to the place itself, the peo...

For the next two days I'll be here , by my self.  Very, very much looking forward to it.

We lost power Friday night.  A storm rolled in about 8p.  I'd just gotten the kids down to sleep when the first winds told us that something big was coming.  We just had time for a quick round up of open windows.  I put my phone on the charger 'just in case'.  Then the lights flickered and the power went out. It was still plenty light out so we could watch the winds and rain.  We noticed some leaking from the seam where the porch joins the house so we quickly moved things out of the way.  We found the emergency radio (thanks Heidi!) and cranked it up.  Strong, strong winds outside.  I think I heard something about 70 mph winds.  The FP Gal said that it looked like a hurricane.  We set up candles and broke out some cards. The whole storm passed through very quickly.  It was all done in less than half an hour. We opened the window and could hear sirens going and going.  Police cars and firetrucks, but the sounds of it....

Here is a story of a guy who is making art reproductions with a 3D printer.  What an amazing idea!  The future sure is an interesting place.

A collection for you this time: This one is from Relia. The giant sequoia is from DF. And, of course, an architectural fragment is my pick.

This made me smile.

Just ran across this small video clip .  I've never heard audio Heinlein speaking before.