I have more to say about AnthroCon and I’ll say it later, but I do want to mention this before it gets lost in the shuffle.

On the way home yesterday evening, as we approached the Allegheny Mountain tunnel on Route 70, Lee and I were privileged to see a gorgeous, vibrant rainbow created by the storm that was in front of us and the sunset behind us. However, that was nothing compared to the vision we received on the other side of the tunnel: it was, as the man said, “a double rainbow, all the way,” and it was spectacular. It easily spanned half the horizon, stretching from one mountaintop to another, with route 70 shooting the gap. All seven colors of the spectrum were clearly visible, with the edges “fraying” into a fuzzy red-purple on either side.

Drastic action was required, so we took an emergency pull-off spot and got out to gawk. My little phone camera was not up to the task of capturing the whole thing, so I just took a pic of the most vibrant arc to send off to friends. Lee tried to get some better pics with his craptacular little point’n'shoot, but I’ll be very surprised if that was up to the task either.

Neither of us blissed out and starting ranting about it — that’s just not how we roll — but it was still a very cool experience.

-The Gneech

PS: At the time, we were pointed in the general direction of New York, which had just legalized gay marriage over the weekend. COINCIDENCE???

I meant to watch Dr. Who last night … it was the last really feasible window to do it in before my trip. And I just flat-out forgot. So I need to either carve out an hour for it sometime today or tomorrow, or be on vigilant guard for spoilers during the entirety of my U.K. trip.

I know this doesn’t sound like much of a crisis, but it’s sorta symptomatic of how things are with me right now. I’m forgetful, easily distracted, and feel like I spend a lot of my time fighting my way to a place where I can sit down and engage in something mindless … usually a sign that my brain is chewing on too much.

Some of it, I suspect, is continued grief on a subconscious level; my family in general and Dad in particular have been prominent in my dreams lately, and earlier this week I woke up wishing I could give my dad a hug. (And really, any time I can remember my dreams, it means my sleep is not very good. Dreams and I don’t have a happy relationship.) And some of it is also just the never-ending jumble of noise that’s always in my head and occasionally just wears me out. When the jumble of noise can be channeled into something productive, I get a book or something out of it … but the rest of the time, it’s just noise and it makes me tired.

I’m hoping that when the U.K. trip is off the table, that will free up some mental bandwidth and allow me to focus on getting some other things done and even — gasp — do some real writing again. I really need to put some serious work into finding a real project, settling on it, and getting somewhere with it. I feel like I’m spinning my wheels right now.

-The Gneech

So it’s a rainy day … tornado watch even. And we step out the door to run some errands only to be surprised by a frog on the patio. “Oh, neat! A frog! … Er … wait, there’s something wrong here…”

The frog, sitting in a fairly normal attentive-frog pose, was quite dead, with its mouth hanging open and a purple-black tongue lolling out. Yeeks. Ate some pesticide, perhaps? We don’t put any out ourselves, but who knows what the neighbors do. The frog has no visible wounds, so it’s not like some predator left a half-finished job on the porch. It looks for all intents and purposes that a frog just decided our porch was a good place to die.

Okay, creepy. We have a random dead frog on a cold and stormy day. But we also have errands to run, so random dead frog is left where he is.

Later, we’re back home and taking care of stuff and I happen to look out on the patio: random dead frog is still there, sitting attentively…

…facing the other way…

Time for the jibblies. O.o WTF, random dead frog? And why is it that you’re ten inches closer to the door?

Mrs. Gneech decides it’s time for the random dead frog to go. So we head out to the patio, to find that the random dead frog is now facing in a third direction. ¬.¬ But in short order it’s scooped up in a plastic bag and tossed into the trash. No getting in and laying a curse on the house for YOU, random dead frog!

Still.

WTF random dead frog.

-The Gneech

PS: I’m actually fairly sure that what happened is that the random heavy spurts of rain caused puddles which floated the dead frog around as they washed off the porch. But I didn’t see this with my own eyes, so it’s just as conceivable that we had a haunted frog on the porch. If it reappears after having been thrown away, we’ll know to call in the local exorcist.

http://www.comicsbeat.com/2011/04/15/end-of-an-era-tokyopop-shutting-down/

I knew they were scaling back as the manga market cooled down but … dang. O.o

-TG

Most cats have a “rake” reflex, i.e., if they have a grip on something, they’ll grab it with their forepaws and kick/scratch it quickly and repeatedly with their powerful hind legs. This is devastating to their prey and is one of their primary means of killing something they’ve caught (the other being to break its neck in their jaws).

Dasher, our big ol’ goofball of a redneck rescue cat, has a particularly strong raking reflex on a hair trigger. He usually takes this out on toys, but he’ll rake anything that gets near his belly … pillows, treats, the fleshy underside of your arm, you name it.

This can lead to trouble when he’s trying to groom his belly or back legs. All he has to do is get into the wrong position and Whap! he’s kicked himself in the head. When this happens, he has a tendency to stop and look around in bafflement, trying to figure out what hit him, then attempt to groom again. Whap! He then identifies the culprit as one of his back feet and attempts to bite the offender in frustration — which of course sets off the rake reflex again.

The net result of all this is that Dasher will sometimes sit for minutes at a time repeatedly kicking himself in the face as he attempts to bite his own feet off.

Man, there are so many other people I wish would do that…

-The Gneech

There is a burgeoning movement in the gaming community to declare today, the anniversary of the death of Gary Gygax, as “Gamemaster Day” in his honor. (And it’s also “march forth,” get it?) I hereby endorse this idea!

So wish your local GM a happy Gamemaster Day! It might save you from a TPK.

-The Gneech