Happy anniversary, dear doe.
Yesterday besides an unexpected-by-me pinball tournament night was also an extremely warm day. The sort of impossibly warm day you liked when they were one or two freak days of spring inserted inappropriately to the middle of a cold winter every couple years. Less so when it's a bit warmer than average in a winter that hasn't yet had a snowstorm worth speaking of.
But the thing about freakishly warm days --- we're talking one with a high of 72 degrees, which is warmer than we keep our house --- is that they're storm-bringers, as the warm air and the cold, or at least medium, air fight it out. It's just the sort of thing that brought that storm that destroyed Silver Bells In The City back in 2016 and much the same was forecast for last night. It delivered, too, arriving near the end of the six-hour-long tournament.
For a while it was so intense there was no seeing out the front of the bar; it was just a sheet of rippling light grey. By the time we were ready to leave, the storm was less intense, but it had wholly overwhelmed local drainage. The back door of the bar, where we normally enter and exit, and right by where we parked, was leaking. Water was flowing in through the bottom of the doorframe, and turned to a tidal wave as I briefly opened the door, just like we were in some very clean remake of The Shining. We packed up everything we had in the plastic bin we use for all the pinball stuff, and hustled around from the front of the bar. By then it had settled to a reasonable storm in intensity and stayed that way while I drove home. The only drawback is that roads were flooded. Maybe only a couple inches, but after the trauma I had from killing my Scion tC in the rain I wasn't going to risk that, and we turned around and maneuvered through the center of the road and such a bit.
I was asleep before the tornado warning or watch or whatever was called for our county. But tornados did hit the town one over from ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger's parents, and also hit the town where MWS --- who was at the tournament --- lives. Quite some excitement.
Also along the way I mentioned how Channel 6 weather guy Jim Geyer had retired after decades here. She hadn't known, and had only noticed that she didn't see him on the news anymore. His legacy hasn't left, though; all the current crop of Channel 6 weather people talk about ``a rumble of thunder'' when that might be coming in, the way it did last night.
Now let's get back to some more pictures of letterboxing and enjoying the local non-river beach.
Some of the trail followed in search of a letterbox. I always like bridges going over water.
The tiny handful of bleacher seats somehow make the basketball court funny to me.
There are a lot of rules for the GaGa Ball Pit here. You wouldn't think Lady Gaga so uptight about ball pits. Also: have fun! Also, I guess you need to bring your own ball?
Finally at the beach! Some plovers or whatever, birds or something, having a nice time at the waterline.
And then a seagull comes in being all like that at them.
Seagull pondering: is it me? Am I the problem? Why do I drive off all the plovers or whatever the heck they are? Do I even feel good when I'm doing that, never mind after?
Trivia: The phrase ``leap year'' derives from the cycle of Dominical Letters in Catholic and Anglican calendars, rotating from A through G; as March 1st is always the letter D, the dominical letter for the leap day is skipped --- it leaps --- from one part of the sequence to another. Source: Marking Time: The Epic Quest to Invent the Perfect Calendar, Duncan Steel.
Currently Reading: NACA To NASA to Now, Roger D Launius.
