Tag: winter

On sorcery

On By Luther M. SilerIn Reading1 Comment

BeatsByDrDre_AChristmasMiracle15.jpgIt’s snowed twice this winter.  The first time was last week, which was basically just a dusting– a bit wetter than that, maybe, but nothing that was any big deal.  It melted within a couple of days.

My neighbors, down the road, have a full-sized snowman in their front yard, and it’s been there for a week.  At one point, it was completely surrounded with green grass since the rest of the snow had melted.  It’s as tall as I am.  It’s been snowing for the last day and a half or so, way more than the first time it snowed, and I still feel like there’s not enough snow on the ground to make a proper snowman.  I don’t have any idea how they pulled this shit off; there are cul-de-sacs all over the place in the neighborhood so there are plenty of crossroads to sell your soul to the Devil at, but it seems like a snowman is maybe not the best use of that transaction.

I’m this close to knocking on their door and asking them how the hell they did it.  I’d speculate about some sort of snow-packed-onto-a-giant-kids’-ball thing, but I’m no more certain that’s possible than building a snowman out of no snow.

Explain this to me, someone.

I’ve spent my weekend playing The Witcher 3 and reading.  Neither is going well.  I just bailed on Ada Palmer’s Too Like the Lightning, which is as openly convinced of its own cleverness– the narrator literally brags about it– as anything I’ve ever read in my life.  I know people who would probably really like it, and I’m not sure I’d bother arguing with someone who loved it, but it’s one of those “not for me” things.  I’ve had bad things to say about the Witcher in the past, but the huge number of accolades it’s continued to receive and a sale over Black Friday weekend where the game and both its DLC expansions went on sale for less than twenty bucks managed to catch my attention.

And as of right now?  Meh.  It’s keeping my attention– it’s not terrible, by any means, but I’m going to lose interest before I finish it.  I slaughtered a bunch of guards at one point for making a rape joke.  It’s that kind of game.

Diving into Michael J. Sullivan’s The Death of Dulgath next, which ought to hit the spot.  It ain’t gonna be art, but I don’t really need that from my fantasy.  And I’ll keep playing Witcher until either the next rape joke or the combat gets boring; we’ll see what happens first.

Snowpocalypse 2016, round 2

On By Luther M. SilerIn Photography5 Comments

I recognize that I basically post the same four pictures every time we get a blizzard around here.  They’re still fun so I’m gonna keep doing it.  🙂 

Note how the fence is basically a vertical wall of snow at this point.   

   

Snowpocalypse 2016

On By Luther M. SilerIn PhotographyLeave a comment

2nd snow day in a row, this one for basically every school in northern Indiana but one at the moment, and no one in my family attends that one stalwart school.

This is the lilac bush next to my back door, taken from inside the house, because the bush is now blocking the door:

More later; I’m going to give the neighborhood half an hour to wake up and then go clear the driveway again, because there’s a berm at the foot of the driveway and my wife still has to go to work.

In which I used to like these

On By Luther M. SilerIn Politics4 Comments

Snow day today, the kind where there’s no visible precipitation of any kind in the early-morning hours where school is cancelled, but it happens anyway because people look at the weather forecast and see this coming:

Screen Shot 2016-02-24 at 8.20.29 AM.pngThat’s heading northeast, so we’re getting the long axis of it.  Last night before I went to bed they were suggesting we’d get 12+ inches of snow during “Wednesday” and another 1-3 “Wednesday night,” but both of those estimates have been revised downward a bit since I went to bed.  Still all sorts of nasty coming, though; we’ll probably have a foot of snow by bedtime tonight.

At any rate, Hogwarts cancelled, so I’ve got the boy home with me, and it’s even less likely that I’ll get anything done today in what has already been a monumentally unproductive week.  My former district did not cancel, nor did any of the other big districts in the area, so they’ve decided to catch crap from getting the kids home inevitably late, because most of the bullshit today will be toward the end of the school day– there are some flakes falling right now but no accumulation, but it’s supposed to get genuinely nasty after noon.  It’s a no-win situation either way and I’m really glad I’m no longer required to either participate in or defend it.

(I’d have cancelled, if it were up to me.  Or at least started with a two-hour delay to get better information.)

Last night was a night heavy with politics; I watched (and live-tweeted) the entire Democratic town hall event and then went to bed once I discovered that the Nevada caucuses wouldn’t even start reporting results until after midnight.  It’s looking like the fascist has finally managed a clean win; this was the first contest where #2 and #3 combined didn’t blow him away, and in fact Rubio and Cruz together still lost, implying that either Nevada is stronger territory for him than most (which makes a lot of sense, given the number of casinos) or that Bush’s people mostly migrated toward him. I am beginning to come around to the idea that this racist hairpiece is going to win the nomination, if only because either Rubio or Cruz needs to drop out right now for someone to beat Trump and neither of their egos (Cruz’s in particular) will allow them to do that.

I continue to believe that whoever wins the Democratic nomination will beat this shitpile like a rented mule in the actual election.  Obama got the lowest percentage of the white vote of any winning candidate in history and still won resoundingly; white voters are a smaller portion of the electorate than they were in 2008 or 2012 and the asshole’s open, unapologetic, undeniable racism will get even fewer votes from people of color than Romney did.

This is the candidate you deserve, Republicans.  He’s what you’ve been working towards for 30 years.  If you’re horrified, maybe you ought to reconsider your affiliation, because courting the worst parts of American society has been the core mission of the Republican party for decades.  This is what happens.  You can’t pretend to not notice anymore.  This is the election where you either have to embrace the fact that your candidate is literally a fascist or work to burn your party to the ground and hope that you can build something that isn’t made of racism, ignorance and hatred from the ashes.

#WeekendCoffeeShare: Annoying Toddler Edition

On By Luther M. SilerIn Stories11 Comments

newcoffee

If we were having coffee, we’d be doing it in short-sleeved shirts.  I don’t know if the sudden warming trend is a Midwestern phenomenon or if everybody’s seeing a spike in temperatures yesterday, but my yard was covered in a few inches of snow on Thursday and by the time my wife got home from work yesterday it was ALL gone and now the universe is made of mud.  We literally went from 20s to 60s in a matter of a few days.  And the zoo’s open today!  It’s going to be insanely crowded, but we’re going anyway.

Also a fun feature of yesterday’s weather: insane winds.  I spent all day working in the office and waiting for a tree to fall over, and the winds managed to rip a shingle off the roof, which I’m not completely sure how to fix.  Plus I don’t know how much weight your average roof is okay to handle (the Googles will probably help with this) and so I don’t know if it’s a good idea for me to go up there myself to check it out.  No trees down, though, at least not near me.

(Considers Googling “Am I too fat to go on the roof?”)

If we were having coffee, I might kvetch about parenting a bit.  Tell the truth: how many of you have had the urge to bark the words “You’re four, what the fuck do you know?” at your kids at least once?  Because I was just informed that blueberry juice exists by a very small person with the unshakeable confidence of a serial killer.  And you know this how, person who can’t read?  Don’t get me wrong: I like four way more than I liked three, two, one, or especially zero.  But dammit boy I know better than you so shut the hell up.

(NOTE:  I am reasonably sure all kids do this, and one way or another this is a turnabout-is-fair-play moment.  One of my earliest memories is barking “It’s a sword holder!” at a friend of my mother’s who had just innocently tried to teach me the word scabbard.  This is the shit I’m talking about.  I’m sure all the parents have encountered it before.)

The plan for this week:  back to Sunlight, which got put aside so that I could frantically blast through writing a Benevolence Archives story that grabbed me by the throat and wouldn’t let go, and make some damn headway for an anthology story that I committed to months ago and have made a shamefully low amount of progress on.

Also maybe get a job.  That would be nice too.

How’re you?

Winter’s back!

On By Luther M. SilerIn Photography3 Comments

I have 1,000,010 things to do today, and the first of them is to deal with this
bullshit:


So I’mma go get started on that, I guess.

On that coat

On By Luther M. SilerIn Reviews7 Comments

c251b02839a49bab76294010e9a3ab40.jpgYou may recall that I bought a new winter coat on The Amazon the other day.  This is the coat in question, the Carhartt Men’s Big & Tall Arctic Quilt Lined Duck Traditional Coat.  Which is a hell of a name, but then it’s a hell of a coat.

We had subzero air temperatures yesterday morning (yesterday? Monday? Hell, I don’t remember) and way subzero wind chills and I had a variety of out-of-the-house errands to run, so I wore the new coat.

With a T-shirt on underneath it, and the coat not zipped up.  I had the hood attached.

I was overheated– not quite sweaty, but almost– by the end of the excursions.  This sounds like a bad thing.  It’s not.  It means that this sumbitch gives neither a damn nor a fuck about wind in the -20 degree range.  Which means it is exactly the coat I wanted.   There are plenty of pockets, the cuffs at the wrists are perfect— a frequent problem with oversized coats, since my arms don’t exactly match my chest and stomach– and the fabric on the outside is tough as hell and looks like it could probably stop a knife in addition to cold.

My only problem right now is that the hood is a little stiff and driving with it attached is kind of obnoxious because of how it pushes my neck and head away from my seat, but I assume that’ll loosen up and the hood is removable anyway.

Four thumbs up would wear again.  You folk who have Actual Winter where you live should seriously think about this thing.

On outerwear

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy8 Comments

Screen Shot 2016-01-14 at 9.40.35 AM.pngI have recently found myself in need of a new winter coat.  I was not aware of how particular I was on what constituted a “winter coat” until going through this process just now.  Complicating things: I need a new winter coat because, as someone who has spent most of the last several months sitting on my ass and/or battling depression, I am probably as fat as I have ever been in my life– fat enough that I am legitimately frightened to get on my scale and find out how bad it is.

So not only do I need a new coat, I need what is euphemistically called a “Big and Tall” coat.  I’ll say the same thing here that I say whenever I have to use that phrase: I have never seen a tall guy in the local fat man store.  Only motherfuckers who make me look skinny.  As someone who is currently most comfortable in XXXL shirts and 38″x29″ pants, I am one of the smallest people in that place.

My current winter coats (I have two; a nice leather coat that falls down a bit in the “warm” department and what I refer to as my Beast Coat) fit fine with a T-shirt underneath them, but they’re winter wear.  They’re supposed to be worn over layers.  If I’m wearing more than a T-shirt, my range of motion gets really constricted in the leather coat (which is cut like a sport coat) and the Beast Coat gets difficult to zip.

The Beast Coat is the type of coat where if you don’t need to be zipping it up, you probably ought not to have it on.  You may recall that the last few years have featured Polar Vortices and -50° temperatures.  Yesterday was the first subzero day of the year, but there will be more.

I actually ended up ordering my coat– that’s it, up there, although mine’s black– from Amazon, which may or may not have been a wise decision but will keep me from having to leave the house.  I learned some things along the way.  Here are some important facts about winter coats that you should know:

  • There is no such thing as a “winter jacket.”  Jackets are worn during fall and spring.  If you can describe something as a “winter jacket,” it’s not really winter.  I don’t care if it’s January and the northern hemisphere.  It ain’t winter.  The jury is still out on the phrase “heavy-duty jacket;” I picture such a garment as something to be worn on a shit-ass driving rainstorm sort of day, but not when it’s thirty below.
  • Again, winter clothing is supposed to be worn layered.  So an XXL winter coat needs to be a winter coat that fits an XXL torso wearing an XXL t-shirt and probably an XXL hoodie or sweater, too.  In other words, they should wear big compared to what’s written on the label.  A winter coat should be able to zip and/or button (preferably both) over several layers of clothing, at least one of those layers being thick on its own.  I see reviews complaining that things are wearing larger than their size claims. Yes, Texas, they are.  They’re supposed to.
  • Reviews of winter clothing of all types should be required by law to include where the silly sumbitch doing the review lives.  The garment above claims to be “Arctic Quilt Lined” and many of the reviewers mentioned being sweaty when they took it off.  I see this as a good sign.  But if I’m buying a winter coat I want to see reviews from motherfuckers in North Dakota or Minnesota or Chicago.  I want people who know cold reviewing these things.  If you live in California I give no shits about your opinion of winterwear and I should be able to filter your nonsense out.
  • Per BunKaryudo in the comments: I also want a section for what the reviewer does for a living.  Do you work outside?  I wanna know your opinion about winter coats.  If you just need to wear the thing to get from your car to your office, hell, I can make that trip in a hoodie and be OK.
  • This is more of a specific gripe about that coat, but winter coats should have hoods.  That one actually does, but it’s a snap-on and a separate purchase.  I don’t mind so much because Carhartt’s shit is basically indestructible and I’ll get more than my money’s worth out of the thing even with the extra expense.  But it should have been included.   No one who needs something that is “Arctic Quilt Lined” doesn’t need a hood.
  • If you are asking questions like “Is it okay to wear XXX type of pants with this coat” you need to go lie down or something.  If you are actually in need of a winter coat you are not worrying about how you look in it.  You are worrying about not dying because we are in God Doesn’t Love You season.  The lady seriously wanted to know if it was okay to wear jeans with the coat.  Shut up, California.
  • Temperature ratings are really nice.  I suspect if I looked closely into it I’d find that the methodology generating them was sloppy, but “this coat is supposed to be good for thirty degrees colder than this coat” is still useful information if I’m shopping online and can’t touch the thing.  More sites should do that.

After all that, of course, the coat’s going to show up on Saturday and I’m not going to like it and want to send it back.  Nonetheless.  You have the rules now.  You may begin doing things correctly at any time.