Reviews, Recipes, and Random Slices of Life

This was the year that 4th Street Fantasy became the premier dark fantasy convention in the Midwest. ...That would be because all the lights went out, and power wasn't restored at the hotel for a couple (?) of days. The summer solstice storm of 2013 hit the Twin Cities area hard, leaving 500,000 households without power, uprooting trees, flooding streets, and creating sinkholes that looked like Godzilla had been stomping around Robbinsdale.

I was at dinner at Super Moon Buffet* with a group of friends from 4th Street when the heavens opened. Between the torrential downpour and the near-tornado-strength wind, it became a question of how to get to the car, and who was going to get in it, and if it was safe even to drive back. You see, half of our party had chosen to walk to the restaurant! I dashed out to the car with the driver and settled in. Driver went back. I was just wondering what the other people were delaying for (and deciding that I wasn't going anywhere unless the car started to float away) when the restaurant lost power. In the end, we were able to get everyone out safely in a couple of car trips. When we got back to the hotel, we learned that it, too, had lost power. They had some emergency lights, and that was it. I was happy that I'd just downloaded a flashlight app on my new cellphone, especially after the emergency lights in the bathroom ran out of power.

Eventually, I got home and discovered that we had also lost power--and many large tree branches, but nothing that caused significant damage. It was actually really nice. Phil and I had a relaxing evening chatting by candlelight while music played on the laptop that still had battery power.



The next morning, I got to see all the damage while I was riding back to the hotel. We got to play a game of bush-branch-tree, identifying what that ground-level foliage was by the side of the road. The answer was often tree. It took a couple of weeks after the storm before the giant tree that was blocking a road north of our house got moved. As of today, a month after the storm, there are still piles of fallen branches pushed to the curb and waiting for the city to collect them. They claim they'll get here eventually.

In many ways, the power outage was good for 4th Street Fantasy. It made the convention memorable, promoted camaraderie, and didn't (quite) persist for an intolerable length of time. People staying in the hotel who remember glacial showers and critical coffee shortages may disagree.



In addition to the lack of power, there were a couple of other differences this year.

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• 13:29 Everything is spangled with raindrops outside right now. It's a great time to take photos. I'm keeping an eye out for the golden hour. #
• 13:32 Randomly acquired a candy garter, which I'm planning on giving to a friend, but am tempted to keep for myself. #
• 13:59 One of the people I was to interview today neglected to show up. Or provide any explanation for said "not showing up." How rude. #
• 20:35 T-20 minutes to rhubarb muffins. Nik & Phil are drinking fine liquor and listening to pirate metal. #

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You know you're in Minnesota when it's 10 degrees outside, and you think, "Wow! It's wonderful that it's so warm!"

And then throughout the day everybody is commenting on how warm it is.

Today, I called in "cold" to work. Yeah. Well, not actually--actually I just said that I'd come in tomorrow instead of today. This whole "cold weather really messes with me" phenomenon is very inconvenient. I'm already worried that Job #2 will see me as being "unreliable", because I have to schedule around Job #1 (which hasn't needed me for a couple of weeks, but that's a worry for another post, and one that's been around as long as I've worked there). It's a fairly flexible job, and I want to keep it, for situations like this with Job #1....

The cold. Bad enough I've been forbidden from busing. Last night, the Mad Scientist spent an hour tearing through the house in search of a pair of non-existent snow pants he insisted that we had. We didn't. Now he's set to acquire me a pair of snow pants or overalls or whatever today. Oh, joy. He asked how much I cared about looks, because he was considering some really ugly ones ("not-ugly" costs lots extra). I told him they'd better not have clowns on them.

Oh, and if I wear my own slippers, I can also fit into his insulated winter snow boots. It's going to take me ten minutes just to unbundle after being outside.... Razzer-frazzer Reynaud's Phenomenon!

Note to self: Be grateful you're still allowed to use the fridge.

So you claim you like it when I post about what I do on a day-to-day basis. Hmm.

It was warm enough out this morning that I was able to wear my cheap pimp jacket again--a lightweight, black, "so fake it's not even really pretending it's leather," bright pink pseudo-satin-lined creation I got for Very Little Money many, many years ago. It disintegrates a little more every time I wear it--already it has weird patches like a balding armadillo and is missing two buttons, and the remaining two buttons don't stay closed because the fabric around them is warped and twisted. It flaps cinematically in the slightest breeze. It may be falling apart, but it still puts a little extra swagger in my walk...at least until I have to try and close the buttons.

Mist fogged the sky and hid the tops of the skyscrapers--crossing the bridge returning to Minneapolis, the downtown skyline looked like a strange construction of cloud meringue. My favorite kind of weather, as long as I can still recall what blue sky looks like. At Job #2, I have two desks--one in a bland cubicle that has a computer, and one in a large shared office with large 9th-floor windows overlooking the Mississippi River and the sweep of trees leading up the bank on the other side. I watch traffic crossing the bridges or consider the slowly changing foliage of the leaves. Today, I watched the fog grow thicker and denser, gradually erasing the world on the other side of the river.

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