Tuesday, December 30, 2014

In which - Zephyr

"Once blind and innocent, you took the narrow road
With your hope and your faith all neatly in a row....


















But on that great dividing line between love and what you wished to find
You stumble and you fall....



















Look to where the colors flow, it's a fluid space where spirits grow
Unimagined on a hill...."
















Lyrics are from "Angelic" by Satellite Paradiso. I'd love this album even if John Ashton had nothing to do with it, but the fact that he does makes it even better.

Okay, yeah, and Maddy was getting all fancy and stuff with Photoshop Elements 13.

Monday, December 29, 2014

In which - Satellites and lost planes.....

Stupid computer....

"Maddy! Why isn't this stupid thing showing the song titles?"

She looked. "It has to be in their database to pick up the album info. I don't think it is - yet."

"Shouldn't it be in there if it's been released?"

"I think it's been released but not like "officially" officially released. Like it isn't available on say. Amazon or anything." She isn't sure how this whole Pledgemusic thing works any more than I am. It's a long (and presumably better) way from the days when Big Record controlled  - well, just about everything. But long story short, the long-awaited Satellite Paradiso CD arrived on the eve of Christmas eve - one heck of an awesome little Christmas surprise. (Of course, if Maddy ever bothered to actually CHECK her Gmail from time to time, she would have known it was on the way!)

And as for why we're using the computer to play it in the first place - well, we can't find the remote control for the CD player - Maddy *thinks* she might have accidentally packed it up with the air conditioner, because we found the remote for the air conditioner on top of the CD player - and in a cruel twist of modern fate, the CD player is inoperable without the remote. Oops.

All that aside, it really is one heck of an awesome album. We've actually been listening to a secret, pledge-only MP3 version we downloaded in May, but we never burned a CD copy - and it ended up marooned on the failed hard drive in Maddy's old computer. I think that's what they call first-world problems - although they're still not a whole lot of fun when you're having them.

"I like this one," Scaramouche said.

"It's called "Super Anti-Hero," I told her.

"It sounds kind of like the Alarm - like it could have been on Declaration," she said. "I'm glad to see him back, I always did like him."

"John Ashton?" I swear, this deva knows everyone....

"Yeah. I was up in Beasrville when they were recording Forever Now. They were a freaking trip. I just loved hanging around them. Somewhere there's a picture of John and my pet salamander at the time, Charlotte."

"I think they were worried toward the end that the whole pledge thing wouldn't come through." I was worried. I think Maddy was, but she kept saying she wasn't.

"I would have gone up there, but all that was right about the time the plane vanished."

"Why did they ask you to help?" I never was clear on that.

"The Ondines - ocean devas - don't have much experience dealing with humans, so they wanted me to act as an intermediary. They thought they might be able to help find the plane. Some of the whales had reported hearing what they thought was that pinger everyone kept talking about, and if they had - well, someone had to lead the humans to the right spot. That was where I would have come in."


"But mot humans don't even know what devas are - or would even believe in you if they did. How were you going to do that?"

"I have my ways. I've worked so much with humans. and I can speak just about any language. It's what I do." She shrugged. "But I wanted to help. I wanted to try to find out what happened. But even the Ondines and the whales and - well, everybody else - couldn't find the plane. Anywhere. Like the humans, we couldn't even find anyone who could definitely say they'd seen it. One Ondine thinks - thinks - she saw it turn back over the Malay Peninsula, But she isn't sure it was really MH 370." She shook her head. "Trust me. The humans aren't dumb. None of us could find any trace of it, either. And when a whale can't find it, you know it's lost."

I'll have to take her word for that one.....

Wednesday, December 24, 2014

In which - Merry Christmas!

Have a wonderful holiday, everyone!

*Looks at top of tank*

Crap. How did THAT get in the photo?

I hope Santa brings someone in this house some actual photo composition skills for Christmas. Because none of us seem to have any....

Sunday, December 21, 2014

In which - Happy Yule!

We'd like to wish our readers in the northern hemisphere a happy first day of winter (is that an oxymoron?) our readers in the southern hemisphere a happy first day of summer (no oxymoron there!) and everyone else a very happy Yule!

(And that tank is NOT as scuzzy as it looks. It's just algae on the front - again. It was cleaned about five days ago.)





By the way, this is what we woke up to this morning. it snowed off an on most of the day. Just a coating, but enough to make it what Aura calls a totally dreich day.























Bonus pic. :)

Saturday, December 13, 2014

In which it's stormy - inside....

"That's weird. I thought I heard - thunder?!" Much like the Spanish Inquisition, nobody expects a supercell thunderstorm - at least, not in the dining room. "Tempest, what are you doing?"

"Okay, please don't let that thing rain on my sewing machine...." Maddy added, coming in.

"Don't worry. It's under control. I haven't let a storm get away from me yet," Tempest said. "But could you open the back door for a moment, please? Just the glass. We need some cooler air in here for this to work."










She did. "For what to work?"

"This," Tempest said. "Okay now, Zephyr, we've got some cold air for the rear-flank downdraft. Pull that into the circulation...."

















"Little bit more...."




















"And perfect!" She looked apologetic. "It's far too cold to raise one outside. I needed warm air."

"That's what I tried to do back in El Reno." Zephyr looked sad. "But it didn't help. I thought it would do what it did here. Isn't that how you break a vortex?"

"It is - provided you have any cool air to work with," Tempest said. "Which you didn't. You can't work with what you don't have."














Just for the record....

That tornado exploded to just over two and a half miles wide in about thirty seconds. Radar-estimated winds at the base were 296 mph. Right at that moment, it was the strongest force on the planet - and Zephyr was trying to make it play nice and not go across the interstate.

"That's it," she said. "Even I couldn't quite see the outer circulation. The other devas had made it transparent. And it was going so fast. I thought I could dissipate it or turn it or something, but then it was on us - and I saw the truck get picked up. I tried to stop it, but it still rolled. And it was so big. I wasn't close enough to the other car..."









"And you saved everybody in the Yukon," Tempest pointed out. "That was very quick thinking."

(I think Tempest is happy to have a wind deva to work with who thinks the same way she does.)







Bonus pic:

Christmas dresses!