Up the River

Well, the item I wanted to buy for my brother seems only to be available used. I have reason to suspect a new edition will come out next year; if so, I'll grab a couple of copies then.

In the meantime, I bought: 1637: The Polish Maelstrom, the latest Ring of Fire volume; Exhalation: Stories, the new collection of Ted Chiang stories; From Fabletown with Love, another entry in the Fables sequence; Saga, Vol. 2; a hardcover edition of the first four years of Pogo; and albums by Reba McEntire ("Stronger Than The Truth"), Willie Nelson ("Legend"), and Brandy Clark ("Big Day in a Small Town"). The first two I downloaded to Kindle; the rest will arrive in a week or so.

As if I needed more excuses to goof off...

Stormy Weather

Well. I just spent a not-very-entertaining half hour, forty-five minutes in the basement. The university sent out a Tornado Warning alert, and I heard the siren start up, so I grabbed Gracie and carried her down the steps, then went back for Buster. (I could be sure Gracie wouldn't make it back up the stairs while I got Buster; the reverse would not be true.)

Neither dog likes the basement. (Honestly, neither do I...) Buster got up on top of a trunk and lay down, then decided that was unsatisfactory and climbed the stairs. He started trying to scratch at the closed door, but I called him off and he lay down on the top step. Gracie snuffled around a bit, while I found a position where I could see through the western window - I could track the rain, and there's a tree I could see to gauge the wind. After a while, I sat down on the bottom step and petted Gracie to keep her calm. Eventually, I could see that the rain was tapering off; I carried Gracie back upstairs and opened the door for Buster. The TW had expired about fifteen minutes earlier.

Next time, I'm going to have to remember to take my Kindle with me - something to do, plus it has a time display so I can tell whether the warning has expired.