surprising dark and surprising light

So I'm sitting here in the dark, writing this at 11:25pm, about four hours after the power went out, which happened about three and a half hours after the high wind warning was officially called off, and probably about an hour and a half after the winds had really died down anyway.

Friday's miles: 2.1
Saturday's miles: 4.0
Miles out of Hobbiton: 592.3
Miles out of Rivendell: 132.4
Miles to Lothlórien: 333.9

Fortunately, I'd gotten out during the last bit of it and had walked around a while taking pictures and movies of some of the last of the real wind. It wasn't what had been going on before, but it was still pretty nice. The difference between our house and the end of the block really was dramatic. Tomorrow, assuming they survived the abrupt system shutdown via power outage on our internal Windows file server ( :-p ), I'll post movies and stuff.

Assuming we have power then.

It's kind of annoying; towards the end of my walking around, I'd found the light pole I'd heard of that was rocking back and forth in the wind across about 30 degrees of range. It looked really cool - and was just in time to run out of battery. ;_; I got a still picture or two and ran to a shop to get batteries, but by the time I got back, the utilities truck had gotten set up and was busily securing the pole so it didn't flibble around anymore.

That being the pole that has caused our power failure, I think I damned well deserved to get that shot. The gods of photography did not choose to smile upon me in that. I wonder what I did?

I did see a downed tree across Burke-Gilman, and a lot of downed limbs, some of which were caught in other limbs and, accordingly, were caught all akimber, mid-fall, suspended until someone or something comes to free them for the rest of their descent to the ground. I also got yelled at by the asshat manager at Albertsons who didn't want me taking pictures inside their power-outage-struck store.

Then I came home and there was moving pictures off camera and then there was BEWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW <dark>. So annathepiper and spazzkat and I got candles and oil lights and battery lights lit and called in the outage and ordered pizza and had an unscheduled jam session in the semi-dark; I put risu's small Chinese lantern, lit, on the stairs, so the delivery driver could tell we were here, and he said later that he appreciated being told the lights were out when we ordered, and also liked the lantern light on the stairs, which...

Woah, wtf lights! Apparently, we're back. Cool, only four hours later. That's not bad timing for replacing a pole, I suppose. It's too late for me to dig up the pictures and I've got too much to do with getting servers back up and then going to bed, but I'll post this first.

Today's Cultural Warfare Update

(Excited because I'm finishing this up just as the Seahawks scored a touchdown, finally. TAKE THAT ONE BACK, FLAGMONSTERS!)

The Globe and Mail counts votes, also thinks marriage rights would survive;

Islamic Jihad surrounds EU offices, threatens violence over newspaper cartoons;

French editor who reprinted cartoons of Mohammed fired;

Focus on the Family targets Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the 9th Circuit as trying to "overturn American values," particularly complaining about how "he has repeatedly exhaulted 'individual rights' above other principles";

Lawsuit against Wal-Mart in Massachusetts; MA law requires pharmacies to carry all commonly-prescribed medications; issue is whether Plan B counts; note FotF continuing the "hormonal birth control causes abortion" propaganda;

FotF applauds five-second delay in Super Bowl TV broadcast for potential "objectionable language or other content" cuts;

FotF outraged at Maryland House of Delegates parliamentary maneuver to table anti-marriage amendment; Republicans will bring it back up in the Senate;

Alliance Defense Fund, a fundamentalist anti-GBLT, anti-marriage rights, anti-abortion rights group, asks US Supreme Court to intervene in lesbian custody suit;

State of Florida to fund anti-abortion faith-based "pregnancy clinics";

Focus on the Family news story on effort in Congress to ban RU-486, which actually is an abortifacient;

Virginia trying to ban GBLT-supportive clubs such as the Gay-Straight Alliance club network; Focus on the Family has railed against these clubs before, which fall under the Supreme Court's ruling coming out of a lawsuit requiring schools to treat clubs equally; this would directly violate that precedent and would no doubt end up in the Supreme Court;

Speaking of which, here's a story about states prepping outright abortion bans with the intent to challenge Roe v. Wade on the new court;

Focus on the Family ACTION ITEM for "H.R. 3753, the Home School Non-Discrimination Act," which I don't know what is right now and can't check because we have no power; also is a story praising new Republican Rep. John Boehner, new house majority leader, citing his support of the anti-marriage "Marriage Protection Amendment" and anti-abortion legislation;

Faith and Freedom Network condemns Brokeback Mountain and Hollywood for producing it yet again;

I'm considering dropping back on coverage of this since it's become so high level that all the major media outlets are reporting it now, but not yet, and I'll definitely keep an eye out for things the mainstream media isn't covering; the latest today was that Syrians torched the Danish and Norwegian embassies; I've been told that it's only the Wahhabis who object to any portrayal of the Prophet; it's interesting that this was in Syria, a largely secular regime who has fundamentalist pressures to let out and may be letting this steer that anger;

Danish cartoonists who drew the original cartoons are in hiding across the country;

Link to the "Buy Danish" campaign;

Freeport, Bahamas newspaper The Freeport News condemns lesbianism in high schools, uses scare-quotes around the word "Christians" when describing GBLT-friendly Christians; says it's harder to "ferret out" lesbians because, and I quote, "gay women do not physically exhibit the characteristics which make it easy to determine that a man is homosexual," calls for "polluting the minds of some of their students" with "lesbianism" to be made a crime;

Pope Benedict comes down on the wrong side, sadly; quote: "The right to freedom of thought and expression . . . cannot entail the right to offend the religious sentiment of believers"; meanwhile, in better news, the Denmark PM refused to apologise for a free press;

Family Research Council: Next Supreme Court nominee should not be a moderate.

( Articles and excerpts )

Only towards the end

As as that windstorm was winding down, I went out and walked about the area and took a lot of pictures and a couple of movies. And as promised yesterday - here some of them are.

( This is really a lot of pictures )