Weekend Roundup

As happens every so often I slammed smack into Morphean nonchalance last night about halfway through a post and actually slept for nine hours, or roughly two days' worth, the result of good honest farmboy labor, robust marital duties, and some 15-year-old Calvados. It looks like I slept through the horrible storm which was the second of two I was guaranteed was headed my way yesterday evening. The rainfall gauge reads "zero", but I'm sure that's in error.

Naturally these storm lines, marching across western Indiana like the Hun, were the cause of a great deal of panic in local newsrooms. There were reports of three-inch hail, or "hell" as the woman my Poor Wife has dubbed the "weather coach" (for her affinity for primary-colored pantsuits) kept saying. The situation was so fraught with terror they had to call in two other members of the Weather Team, one just to move a cursor around the screen like a kid looking for hidden doorways in an adventure game. And I finally got to experience the full impact of VIPIR, which I now admit beats DopRad 9000 all to hail. Not only can it switch to 3-D view, which gives the storms little rain lines underneath and makes them look like psychedelic mushrooms on parade, but it can zoom in to give actual street names. Although this feature is somewhat dulled by the fact that the operators never know where they are, so they wind up either highlighting the Interstate you already knew was there or trying to get the thing to name somebody's driveway.

We did have to turn on the air conditioning for the first time this year, or "cooling season" as the weather-types like to say. This was due to what the weeknight Weather Bunny had described as a "Line of Discomfort" descending on us. "Be sure to stay hydrated," she cautioned.

The other big event of the weekend, teevee-wise, was watching, or rather fast-forwarding through, the tape of the Miss Universe Pageant. We always tape these things so we can watch when we have the time necessary to recover from the massive doses of psychedelics required to make them entertaining. It's like a home-grown episode of MST 3K, and somebody always gets off a corker. "Rule Number One: only one hairdo at a time," is my personal all-time favorite. The trophy went to my wife this year, who asked, "Did she just get out of the hospital?" as Miss Venezuela or somebody sashayed past in an evening gown that featured an abdominal tourniquet. I had to forego Hinderrocket's live-blogging of the "event", but it was worth it. And did I mention that Billy Bush has all the charm and wit we've come to associate with that illustrious name?