Monday, March 9th, 2020 —> 0˚C / +32˚F -very grey and cloudy @ 12:55 pm on, I believe, Jean Cippolini’s Birthday – { SP? } —> here in Atlantic Canada —
– Chunks of snow looking like fallen pillars from the ruins of a Greek Temple? –
— This shows the effects of snow followed by rain, followed by freezing – followed by human efforts to chop through very ornery hard stinkin’ snow banks. Cathi did this, I was not able to attempt to get up, go out and help her – 🙁 —
– And then we had a wind storm — We are not complaining. Other Canadians were clobbered with incredible amounts of snow. –
— I think the temperature was 0˚C – and the wind chill was more like -20˚C – { Translation: 32˚F with a wind chill or -4˚F } The wind kicked up lots of sand and other flotsum, and blew a lot of pieces of leaves, pine needles, and even bits of tree bark around.
– And this is a shot of our driveway – after a lot of snow and rain and freezing rain and Ice pellets { sleet? } and thawing and freezing and then large doses of salt and sand –
— And – if that’s not scary enough ….
– Garbage Day in our humble neck of the frozen north. Please note that half the road is covered in ice that melts by day and refreezes by night. There’s a turn that could send anybody who loses control due to ice conditions – into our friendly neighbourhood utility pole. –
— Yup, if you’re a big fan of ‘white knuckle driving’ – come pay us a visit during the worst of any winter. This might just be any adrenaline junkies’ vision of heaven on Earth.
– We have had to chop the top off the pile of snow and now hard ice several times to get it down to what you might be able to see on the left side of this photo – to give Cathi a chance to see where she’s going if and when she leaves the driveway. Thanks to our wood stove and I think a cord and a half of split hardwood – the house is as nice and cozy inside as it might look here – unless you’re really pissed off since you learned that Canadians do not live in igloos. –
— Yeah, I’m becoming allergic to the teevee news lately – But Jess Jackson did endorse Bernie Sanders – Wow.
– On a brighter front – Whattaya do when the weather conspires to keep you inside? I build game words – This is Kameron the “Ottarian” and Kaelyn, the half elf half Ottarian. marvelling at a greenish morning fog in Cavendish area –
— “Ottarians” believe they evolved from playful river otters. They have smallish claws that allow them to pick most locks with ease and they have no concept of private property, but they are nurturing and helpful and want to share everything that ‘follows them home’ with anybody who might like it. When the weather in “Aerendel” – my game world – became warmer, Kaelyn got rid of her bard boots and ran around barefoot.
– One of the pitfalls we encounter while building 3D game worlds is sometimes landscapes decide to unravel – Here “Jessicka” has been taken slightly aback when sunrise over Ridgefield revealed a piece of a mountain that came unglued – and threatened to float away. –
— Very solid looking landscapes are actually two dimensional, and from the wrong side of a mountain, your mountain is pretty much invisible. You can tell water to be reflective on both sides of its surface, but if you want to build a cave, you need to have an extra layer of stone veneer and flip it upside down, then very carefully check and recheck to make sure the interior of the cave’s ceiling is completely inside the mountain’s { or whatever’s -} exterior dimensions.
– One of the core principals that formed the basic weird properties of the Aerendel Universe – is the ‘myth’ that an early resident of that universe thought that the forces of evil were about to destroy all of creation for the plus-perfect hell of it -then, and with the aid of her trusted closest friends, using their arch-angelic creative powers – fashioned an ‘Anomaly’ – a cave that bridged all limits of time and space, and gave that anomaly a bit of sentience so it could find and rescue innocent creatures about to be murdered by bad guys and lead them back in time to before the bad guys went bad. –
— Maybe this should have been the caption and the caption should have been here? —> TaleRocker the Bard has discovered that the rumours of a Castle that appears and disappears at random times in odd places is actually true – and if that’s true – then maybe the rumours of a sentient anomaly protecting the innocent on this world are also true —? Hmmmm —
– Rachel is DJ Otterson’s daughter’s avatar. Just to confuse you – DJ’s daughter’s name really is Rachel. An earlier version of this avatar looked a little bit more like Rachel, but Rachel the human played with the face and body ‘morphing’ routines and believes this version of herself looks like she is proabably more fun to hang around with. – ‘Laerry’ is Rachel’s husband’s avatar. His ‘real world’ name is not Laerry – and his ears ‘in real life’ do not have elvish points. –
— I could bomb you with several more screen shots from our game world, but that might slow down your load time beyond ‘reasonable’ – I really like Rachel’s latest version of herself. I don’t think I’d buy a used car from her, but she does look like she’d be fun to hang around with.
* * * * *
— And now, the more or less ‘important’ news of the ‘real world’ …
— The price of a barrel of oil fell to $30.00 U$ over night. Will this convince any greedy oil barons to give up and invest exclusively in renewable resources? Probably not.
— The last time I gritted my teeth and took a peek at one of our news channels, the Dow Jones was down more than 1,800 points this morning.
— Ya want a Conspiracy Theory to chew on? —> If the puppeteers who are pulling Donald J Trump’s strings { So expertly and so subtly that he doesn’t even know he’s being played? } are actively trying to destroy – not just the U$A’s economy, but that of the entire world – What the bleep do they believe they can gain from that? Revenge for all the dirty tricks the C.I.A. pulled on our trusting allies? And if you add the Coronavirus to this mix – if some of the people I’ve heard on late night radio are right and the ‘Red Chinese’ are orchestrating the downfall of ‘Western Culture’ as part of their 50 year plan to become the sole power on this planet – How could they have allowed one of their own people to let a cat out of their top secret facility where they supposedly weaponized this virus for future use against their enemies, real and/or imagined? One possibly goofy theory I heard was that Bill Gates is behind this pandemic – trying to reduce the population of earth down to a nice manageable size so the soul-less elites can control everybody. But then somebody else wondered if we’d have to wait for half of those elites to drop dead from the virus before anybody admitted they might have a problem.
— I think I’ll go listen to Melanie { Savka? Safka? } singing “Glory, Glory Pyschotherapy -” and laugh myself back to sleep.
–— “Toto stop your barking, we’re not in Kansas no more -” {{{ Thank you Melanie! }}}
— Have a nice life, people —
— xoxoxoxo { Merry old philosopher: } Jim
