Day in the Life of an Idiot

 I just spent a good part of the morning attempting to make a short video of myself reading from Unjust Cause.  It actually went pretty well, I was able, in fact, to post it all over: Twitter, Facebook, and even on Tate's old blogspot blog.  So... if you're interested in watching me touch my face and instantly freak out about it, feel free to check those spots, or you can follow this link to directly to YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viTDMRvqmME&t=9s

I may do this again, because I can't do readings otherwise. 

So, other than that, how have I been, you ask?  Pretty good, I guess?  I've been cooking a lot, as previously mentioned. Today's big sourdough adventure was adding the starter to my usual cinnamon rolls. They turned out quite yummy, so that's a win.  

Minnesota still has snow on the ground, so I have not been for my usual walk, unfortunately. The sun is quite bright out there right now, but I'm not sure if I'm willing to brave the temperatures. Yeah, no I just asked the lady of the house the current temp, and she tells me it's 23 F / -5 C.  (The lady of the house is what we call our Alexa when we want to talk about her without triggering a reply. Sort of like He Who Shall Not Be Named, but slightly less menacing. Certainly feared and ubiquitous, however. I think we decided to name her that so that when, on those rare occasions, when robo callers ask to speak to "the lady of the house" we can put Alexa on.)  

Yesterday signaled the last day I was able to go without repeating a meal. Alas.

On a positive note, I got my assignment for the food fic exchange. I have until Saturday to write something and I already started. Whoot.

 I have to admit that even *I'm* getting a little sick of these.

But, since Trump forced Sessions's resignation yesterday*, MoveOn.org has mobilized their rapid-response to Mueller firing protest. Here in St. Paul, we are gathering at the State Capitol at 5pm.  It's 25 F/ -3 C here, today, with windchills that feel much, much lower. Mason this morning said, "Why? Why do we always end up having to protest in sub-zero weather??" I dunno, son, I said. It's the price of democracy: cold toes.



The sign (this one reads: PROTECT MUELLER) looks shiny because of my many "protest hacks" I have learned in the last two years, is that covering your sign in strips of packing tape will keep the markers from smudging and running in inclement weather (we had a touch of snow, earlier.) 

I have to admit I struggled with pithy, clever things to say this time. Admittedly, I have been taking the advice of an early 'protest self-care' blog that suggested that you pick one or two causes and follow those deeply and let others pick up the slack on the zillion other distractions that our so-called president has been flinging at us, like poo.  So, I have been leaving the Mueller investigation/Russia probe to my more politically wonky friends.  Thus, sitting in my dinning room attempting to have short, memorable signage was surprisingly difficult. I finally broke down and went for longer text on the "back side" of another sign:



This one reads: "You think our BLUE WAVE was a bust? Maxine Waters will have the power of Financial Subpoena." As I was looking up how to spell "subpoena," I kept thinking, "You try and spell that right, Trump supporters!"  

There are slogans on the flip sides of these as well. Another one of my "protest hacks" is that it's actually very useful to be visible from the BACK as well as the front. People can take your picture without worrying about getting your permission, if your face isn't visible. This is one way that I end up in a lot of protest albums. Not that THAT is a life goal, but it means that I don't have to take a protest selfie. I can just download the picture of me on the protest's website.

Wow, what is this going to read like five years from now? Is this going to be one of those "ha-ha, protest selfie! Gramma! Really?" or "THANK GOD YOU WERE ON THE FRONT LINES, GRANDMOTHER" moments?

Anyway, the flip side of the top one is this:



I am weirdly proud of my red-white-and-blue look here, even though I always feel like I'm some kind of kindergartener in comparison to some of the protest art that I will (HOPEFULLY) see tonight.

I have a very bad feeling that this is going to be a small crowd. I had a weird dream last night in which Mason and I brought a tent to this protest (and our computers for some reason--dream reason, I guess,) and when I stepped out to see if anyone had shown up, we filled the capitol lawn like we did at the Women's March. 

I've been thinking about the timing of this march (5 pm) and whether or not I should bring clip on lights to my protest signs. The sun is going to be setting, because: daylight savings. Hmmm, I will put my mind to that. I definitely should bring flashlights, though.  Currently, Mason will be joining me, but he may decide not to. To be fair to him, the last one of these he went with me to was for Net Neutrality and it was also SO COLD and there were, at MOST, 30 of us.

Which this could totally be.



The sign reads: Look who _is_ afraid of our Blue Wave. (This is the flip-side of the Maxine Waters one.)  
 
--
*Good F*CKING riddance, jacka$$.

St. Paul didn't close schools today.

The wind chills are expected to reach -35 F (-37.22 C for my foreign friends--also is this right?  I don't know that my converter can handle minus temps). Winds are expected at 15 to 25 mph. How wind chill works is that it's "the measure of the perceived decrease in air temperature felt by the body on exposed skin due to the flow of air."  Another fun fact is that when the real temperature is -19 F, exposed skin can freeze in one minute.  The REAL temp outside at the moment is -23 F.  (My family thinks the skin freezing thing is false, well, fine: it's still colder here that it is on some parts of Mars.)

Minneapolis closed school.  

For a point of reference, Minneapolis is 10 blocks from my house to the west.  I can drive down University Avenue for less than a minute and arrive in Minneapolis.  

So... Mason is home today because I'm not sure what St. Paul is smoking, but it's not safe.

St. Paul has decided that all absences are excused today, at least, but we would have kept Mason out regardless and he doesn't even wait for a bus.  Why?  Well, firstly, in protest, because most other people do have to wait outside and buses do not run on time always.  Secondly, because the last time we decided to go in temperatures like these our car broke down and Shawn and Mason had to walk several blocks home while I was forced to sit in the car to wait for triple-A.  I was lucky, our break down was tire related and I could have heat, but our car door also sticks open and super-cold temps, so I was really very chilly.  

The decision, St. Paul has said on its Facebook discussion about this, was partly to aid homeless youth for whom school is the one place they can get a regular meal.  At the same time they announced this, a call went out to the neighborhood for warm winter coats for homeless kids because there's a real shortage.  So, St. Paul required homeless kids to leave the warmth of their shelters, wait for the bus without winter coats, just for a meal?  I'm not entirely sure how well all that works in terms of logic. 

So, yeah, that's my morning.

As I just told my friend in Wales when she asked me if I was writing--not yet, I have to drink more coffee and complain about the weather.  It's the Minnesotan thing to do.

:-)

I also thought I do a very mini review of Ms. Marvel #10.  My subscription finally came, btw.  Long ago, I decided to subscribe to Ms. Marvel because at CONvergence many years ago, I was on a panel with Sigrid Ellis, who suggest that the best way to support women comic book writers was to subscribe to the titles they wrote.  So, dutifully, I went to Marvel.com and put in my credit card info.  I was pretty sure I was being ripped off because nothing ever came.  Turns out, I apparently signed on to start AFTER #9.  At any rate, #10 "Generation Why" showed up at my doorstep a couple of days ago.  

( Read more... spoilers.... )

In general, I'm just as happy my subscription starts now.  I'm looking forward to seeing what happens next (though I'm really hoping for an actual defeat for the Inventor soon).  I really like G. Willow Wilson's voice for Kamala.  Like my example under the cut, it's funny and sharp and smart.  Also, I'm growing very fond of Adrian Alphona's art.  It's stylized, but in a way I like?

I think you can see the ice rainbow in this picture. It's right there by the church spire.

It's really, REALLY cold out today.

With the digital camera back in working order, I present to you my Medusa/Empress Marvel Tarot (tm) card. As usual, if you'd like to read all my various and bizarre reasoning for the symbols and whatnot that I included (or didn't.) Please read the longish description at my Tate website: Medusa as Empress



As I admit over at my other site, I actually don't really know a lot about the Inhumans, though I own a couple issues from the late 70s. When my cousin Laun and I used to play superheroes as kids, (and when we weren't being Avengers or the X-Men) I wanted to be Black Bolt. He was hard character to "play," however, since he can't talk. Anyway, I go on at great lengths about my various (mis)conceptions about the Inhumans and Medusa and Black Bolt's sex life over there. (I always figured they had hot sex. I don't know why. Maybe I always figured that a guy who couldn't talk would have other, creative ways of expressing himself. eh-hem!)

In other news, my parents, who are snow birding in Texas right now, would probably be extremely gratified to know that the temperatures are, once again, in the why-do-you-idiots-live-here range. I believe the windchill this morning was -36 F. The actual outside temp was something in the range of -15. The only really nifty thing about weather like this is the ice rainbow halo around the sun. The moisture and pollution particles in the air actually freeze, and are, thus, apparently, wonderful little prisms. So driving Mason to school this morning, I could see a perfect rainbow halo around the hazy sun. It was kind of cool, but from peronal experience, I also know that when you can see an ice halo/rainbow around the sun the roads are insanely unsafe. Think about it: if air freezes, so does exhaust. Black ice is everywhere. I heard about at least three roll overs on the highway this morning. Even the side streets were super-slippery.

Today is also, unfortunately, errand day. Recycling comes so I had to drag that out to the curb this morning; I had about a million packages to mail (so if you're expecting a book from me, it's coming!); library books were due, and groceries still need fetching. I suspect my word count isn't going to be SUPER-awesome today, although I impressed myself by being able to whack out over a 1,000 words that day I had company. Yesterday, I nearly made 2,000 (1,880 acutal), and, even though I have to take a break or two for shopping and whatnot, I'm thinking it won't be too bad (knocking on wood/keyboard.)

Okay, that's all I know. Stay warm, kids!