The Not Happy Thread

Yeah, the 18 wheelers hitting the pileup was brutal. Hard to watch. At least no kids were involved. Due to the time of day, they are speculating it was mostly commuters.

 

I saw this exact thing happen like twenty years ago in Minnesota on a bus on the way to a camp. I was in middle school, but I remember it still. Minivan somehow got traction enough to slam on their breaks, but the full speed semi- couldn't grab anything and was trapped by cement barriers from road work on the sides. Slammed into the cement, but bounced off and folded the van in on itself. I really hoped there weren't children in there, but this was mid morning during a winter break and I didn't think there was much hope of that. Ice can get you real quick, even when experienced.

 

Where I spent 2019 (they really were that big...)

Spoiler

 

Beautiful lattice structures. Love the crystallization at those temperatures. Ice is a lot of fun. Crystallizes differently at all temperatures.

 

I am beyond incandescent with rage.

 

I mentioned to my friend in Oslo that it was -2C here.

She was unimpressed.

 

It's -1F now. Thank you polar vortex! (That's -18C)

 

Urgh...my moped isn't working. It won't start, and according to research, that's probably a battery problem. Which would have to happen on Sunday of all days, when all the shops are closed and I'm going to have to work early tomorrow...

 

I have tummy ache.

Good god it hurts.

 

Update: believe it or not, walking a scooter charges it a bit. I walked to to the gas station and then tried to kick start it. Worked.

 

We closed the store early yesterday because of the impending snow doom. (We were supposed to get anywhere from three inches to three feet of snow.) I got in to work today, and the lot hadn’t been touched, except by the morons doing donuts in the snow sometime over night. So now the strip mall looks like one of those abandoned desolate retail places you see urban explorer types on Youtube break into.

 

I'm in south Texas.... So that's been fun. Pipes are all burst and the power was out 24 hours ( and rather cold). Hoping it stays on but there's no guarantee. I'm ready for spring. And beer.

 

Rolling blackouts and no water at home. Essential worker means I had to drive in this morning- spun out and ended up in the grass and had to be pulled out cause I was STUCK. Now at work (county jail) and we only have half the facility with water and the power has flickered a few times. I'm tired of living through unprecedented events. Can't we just be normal for once? It was THREE degrees yesterday morning. We have ice on top of snow on top of ice. And it's supposed to ice and snow again. What the heck??

 

That sounds like a recipe for a jailbreak to me.

 

Really sorry to hear about the Texas snow, blackouts and vehicle accidents. When Alaska has warmer weather than Texas, you know we live is an upside-down world!

 

The bird I posted about a while ago on the Happiness thread has just destroyed a couple of my sculptures I made many years ago from Super Sculpey. This little demon bird, some kind of finch or something, totally innocuous looking little thing like you'd see pecking at the ground in your yard, got in somehow and I haven't been able to get rid of it. It's completely fearless—it either understands that I'm a friendly large mammal like a deer, or it knows it can fly 30 circles around me as I clumsily attempt to catch it in what must seem like super slow motion.

I got used to the little guy being around, though he makes a surprising amount of noise flapping and fluttering and landing on everything. It's also small enough to go right under the floor gap on several of the doors in this old house (some of the gaps you can put a hand under). So it pretty much goes where it will, and there's nothing I can do about it. I was starting to think of it as a little feathered friend, and imagined maybe one day it'll eat out of my hand or something. Though I did get a little upset when I started seeing the little white splotches here and there.

It seems to like being in the same room I'm in much of the time. I'm starting to think it's because it wants to torment and mock me. I was sitting here in the studio, where the computer is, where I spend more time than anywhere else when I'm awake, and he was fluttering all over hyperactively as he likes to do. Suddenly he landed on one of the sculptures, an approximately life-sized hand anatomy study I did long ago, that stands upright on a high shelf. Immediately sculpture and bird tipped forward. The bird just flapped it's little devil wings a few times as the sculpture fell and several fingers went flying off in different directions .I've had that thing for over a decade and never put a scratch on it, then in comes this little half-pint terror and destroys it in an instant. But the story doesn't end there. In far less time than it takes to type it, the bird landed on the next available perch, a small head sculpture right next to the other one. About the time that hand was disintegrating, the head tipped forward and came crashing down, and the evil little monster flew down to land on the floor where I could swear it was tittering evilly.

Then disaster compounded itself as I leaped up screaming and cursing, tried to put my hands up to prevent any more of the rampage, and clumsily knocked 2 more sculptures off the shelf. The little caricature oven-mitt one survived, it only lost a tiny little hanging loop, but the second hand, which was an original (the other hand was a casting, fortunately the original of it still survives) shattered into many fragments.

I roundly cursed and threatened that little monster with all manner of deaths and tortures. I haven't seen it since, though I do hear it in other rooms now and then. I told it I was going to take away the food and water I put out for it, catch it, and put it right back out in the snow and ice. But after the flush of initial shock faded a bit I came to my senses and told it I didn't really mean any of that, and that it can continue to live her for a while longer. Really I have no idea how I could get it out if it doesn't want to go out.

 

We don't know either.

 

This is a terrible idea. From what I know of cats, the cat won't bother catching the bird, just casually glare at it disinterestedly, between knocking down more sculptures onto the floor.

 

How do you think they got this shot?

 

Haha! I was thinking the same. I recently had a lizard and then a mouse in the house. Haven't seen either for a while, but a cat would have taken care of them in short order. A bird is a whole different issue. Unless I could get a flying cat.

Hey, owls are called flying cats...

 

Of course, I'd just be trading a very small finch for a very large and far more destructive owl.

I could go with a hunting hawk with a hawker. That's the lethal way of course, and I doubt you can look up a place called Hawks-R-Us in the yellow pages and hire a hawker. And if I ask around, people would thunk I was saying Hooker.

Maybe a small fishing net or something? A capture and release. Though I foresee much desperate struggling, possibly of the disabling variety. The little bird-brain would think it was being killed.

 

Why am I now reminded of "There was an old lady who swallowed a spider" ?
Since I know this isn't helpful: I'm sorry for the destruction it caused, but I'm sure it didn't mean to. And it's very nice of you to give him a warm place during the winter (including water and food) .

 

It's exactly like that isn't it
How did it end up, with her swallowing a horse?