clock

Tuesday, June 23rd, 2020 12:59 am
darkoshi: (Default)
A very strange thing happened today. A storm was coming, so I opened the windows of my house to let the wind and cool air blow in.

After the storm was over, a neighbor started working in his garage. He works on cars. I always close the windows when I hear him working, as he occasionally uses a foul-smelling chemical. So I closed all the windows.

After closing the window in the bedroom where I sleep, I heard a ticking sound. It was Qiao's little wind-up clock which is on top a chest of drawers, in the back against the wall. There was no one around who could have wound it up to make it tick today. Only my niece could have done it, but she doesn't normally go in that room. I doubt she even knows about the clock; and she left for work today before I even got up out of bed.

That clock hasn't been wound up since at least last November. That was when Qiao and I were in the bedroom discussing whether he wanted to sell certain of his items in a garage sale or keep them. I think he wound up the clock back then. He used to do that sometimes as a prank, as he knows I can't stand the tick-tock sound. When he'd do that, I always had to put the clock in a different room where I wouldn't hear it until it stopped on its own. So that is what I did last year before returning it to its place on the chest of drawers.

But now out of nowhere, it started ticking on its own again today.

I called up Qiao (who's at his house; he stopped by here earlier today to deliver me some take-out food - he stayed in his car, and I walked outside to his car to get it) to tell him there's a ghost in the house.

I'm not superstitious, but.......

That was 5 hours ago, and it is still ticking. Before going to bed, I'll have to put it in another room.

I only found these 3 web-pages on this phenomenon:
Reddit: Is it normal for old wind up clocks to start ticking on their own?
Old carriage clock started ticking on its own
what does it mean when a broken clock starts ticking after a death?

The last page says: "It comes from an old superstition. It was/is believed that a broken clock that suddenly begins to work is a sign that someone in the household (or family) will soon die."

Like I said, I'm not (normally) superstitious, but damn. I'm a tad concerned. Like maybe something hasn't happened yet, but will when it stops ticking.

I talked to both my dad and mom yesterday, separately; they were fine. But, but.

Logically, I think the spring must have snagged on something all those months ago to make the clock stop before the spring was unsprung, and somehow the air pressure change of the storm unsnagged it.

Edited to add: I took a video of the ticking clock earlier. Even watching the video on my camera feels creepy.

weird time bubble

Monday, March 26th, 2018 09:45 am
darkoshi: (Default)
This is one of those weird mornings. I went to bed at 2:30am, 2 hours later than I should have, and 1 hour later than usual (for a work day). But I woke up an hour early and couldn't fall back asleep. I got up and checked my email, so that by the time I started getting ready for work, it was around the usual time. But when I finished washing up, it was only 9am! Then I ate breakfast, and spent a lot of time replying to an email, and now it's still only 9:45am! Usually I'm rushing out of the house at 10:15am (especially if I did anything like answer an email), wondering where the time went.

Dinosaurs?!

Monday, September 11th, 2017 11:41 pm
darkoshi: (Default)
After Hurricane Harvey, I saw this funny video on Facebook of a dinosaur crossing a street:
https://www.facebook.com/smanby/videos/vb.756584058/10155822480429059/?type=2&theater

Today on the news, they showed a clip of what looked like the same dinosaur sweeping the street in Beaufort, SC after Irma passed through!

So I did some searches, and found all the following. What is going on with all the dinosaurs? Did I miss something?? Are people dressing up as dinosaurs this year, instead of clowns?

http://www.islandpacket.com/sports/golf/rbc-heritage-tournament/article144830739.html (2017/04/15)

http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2017/04/17/mom-wears-dinosaur-costume/ (2017/04/17)

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nicole-wells-dinosaur-costume-scares-horses-palmetto-carriage-works/ (2017/05/19)

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/348646-protesters-wear-dinosaur-costumes-outside-the-white-house (2017/08/30)

https://www.yahoo.com/style/awesome-mom-wears-dinosaur-costume-send-daughter-off-kindergarten-203840661.html (2017/09/08)

lilac twist

Wednesday, January 25th, 2017 10:15 pm
darkoshi: (Default)
Best headline I've read so far, this year (via andrewducker):
75-Year-Old Texas Woman Flies Through Tornado in Bathtub, Lands in Woods Unharmed

Actually, both she and her son flew in the tub after having taken refuge in it. This article has a video interview with them:
A 75-year-old took a bathtub ride to survival during ETX tornado

.

Good cover of a good song:



Video title: kriill - Lilac Wine
Posted by: kriill music
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwXtKECKaLs


Their Facebook page: kriillmusic

creeping clowns

Thursday, September 1st, 2016 10:34 pm
darkoshi: (Default)
This is the weirdest news story I've heard in quite a while.

Investigation continues in multi-county clown sightings

Multiple law enforcement agencies are investigating a rash of incidents involving clown sightings at apartment complexes and other areas of Greenville and Spartanburg counties. ...

According to an officer speaking on the news clip on that page (@ 3:40), there's even a state law that prohibits people over the age of 16 from dressing in clown outfits. "We will charge you. We really don't want to, but we will... We want to encourage people who may be inclined to dress in clown outfits not to do it." ...
"The clowning around needs to stop. It's illegal. It's dangerous. It's inappropriate."

At 9:25 he mentions it might be related to a movie release (what movie?).

niceties, oddities

Wednesday, June 29th, 2016 01:20 am
darkoshi: (Default)
The killdeer chicks must have hatched. I saw & heard the 2 adult birds along with at least 3 small ones cheeping about in the shade of a tree.

Worked late today. Left the office a bit before 11pm. The ..critters.. in the trees making their noises - I don't even know what they are (note to self: look up the critter sounds; do cicadas make 2 different kinds of sounds?), but the sound is so relaxing and peaceful for me. And the quality of the night - the temperature, amount of humidity, scents as well as sounds - reminded me of similar nights experienced when I was a child.

.

Outside the gate on my driveway, something odd. Reddish brown spots, like something bled along there. They don't look like rust spots, as they aren't directly under the gate. Maybe a dog was wandering around bleeding. Or maybe a dog caught some prey and carried it, bleeding, in its mouth.

Then I remembered something odd from yesterday. Driving home, I had passed a guy jogging along the side of the street. It's rare to see a jogger in that area. He had orange shorts on. The odd part was a black scarf over his mouth. It had white circles on it which somehow reminded me of those ghost/ghoul masks. It's summer and was probably at least 85 degrees outside. Why would someone jog with a scarf over their mouth in summer? It's not a dusty area. I wondered if it was some kind of gang initiation.

.

For the past month, my LJ has been getting spam comments on old posts, all of the same style but with different wording and URLs, and from different IP numbers. At least one every other day. All comments on my LJ are screened by default, so it's not doing anyone any good.

.

Last Friday, the day I found out about my sister moving... when I went outside for lunch and a walk, I got caught in a rainstorm and got soaked. The forecast had foretold a clear sunny day, so although it started to get stormy and sprinkle, I didn't pay it much attention, other than bringing my umbrella along. My mind was on other things. Then suddenly it was pouring down, really pouring down, and even standing under a tree with my umbrella didn't help much. After it finally let up, I walked to our nearby Fitness Center to dry myself off with paper towels. It sounded like I was the only person in the building. Besides the paper towels, there was a blow-dryer that I used to dry my shirt. That was an experience. But my pants and shoes were still quite wet, and I didn't want to wear wet socks and shoes the rest of the day. So I drove home and worked the rest of day from there.
darkoshi: (Default)
Or rather, it fell and hit the front tip of my car while I was leaving work. At least I thought it did.

It was a dead pine tree trunk, no more than 5 or so inches in diameter, perhaps 10 to 15 feet tall. Whatever branches it had, had fallen off long ago. Part of the bark was gone too. It was a windy evening, dark clouds in the sky.

I was driving. In the edge of my vision, I saw the trunk falling, and slammed on the brakes. It hit the front of my car, breaking into a few pieces. My car drove over the fallen pieces. Amazed / awestruck, I turned to look out my rear window, and sure enough, the fallen tree was there in the street. But there were also 2 cars behind me so I didn't stop until the next parking lot. Then I got out to check for possible damage to my car.

Not a dent nor scratch. No noticeably new ones, anyway. Maybe it was so rotten and lightweight that it didn't do any damage. Or maybe it didn't actually hit my car?

I considered walking back to look at the fallen tree, but decided not to. It would have taken time; I was on my way home.

It had all happened so quickly. My memory of it was so faint, that I wondered if I would still remember any of it by the time I got home. I don't even remember any noise as it hit my car or the ground.

Today at lunchtime, I walked along the road where it had happened, hoping to get a better look at the fallen tree trunk. I expected it to have been moved out of the street by now. But there was no sign of it at all, other than a few pieces of debris that may or may not have been from the tree. All I found was a shallow hole of a tree trunk that had rotted away; maybe that was it.

I almost wonder if it could have been a hallucination. But I have no history of hallucinations.

If I hadn't slammed on the brakes, I wonder if it would have hit my windshield or the top of my car.
darkoshi: (Default)
My neighbors asked me about an unfamiliar dog they saw in my yard yesterday, along with my 2 regular dogs. They said it was a pit bull and that it was friendly - they were able to pet it over the fence. But when Qiao and I got home an hour later, there was no extra dog in my yard. I have no idea how a dog that size could have snuck both into and out of my yard. I believe the perimeter is fairly secure, considering what I had to do to keep Serena from getting out when she was younger.

flashing lights

Thursday, July 22nd, 2010 08:55 pm
darkoshi: (Default)
oh, yay. I got to see an exciting police chase pass my house 2 times, in different directions. They were chasing a rental truck with the back doors open, filled with tires. I suspect the truck had been trying to dump used tires, but it seemed odd because I saw the truck pass my house lackadaisically* several times, and a couple of youths rolling tires around near my gate, before the siren-blasting light-flashing cops started chasing them.

*wow, I spelled it right on the first try!

Actually, come to think of it, the last time the truck passed my house (I was cutting grass), it was turning the corner rather rapidly and in an unsafe manner, so much so that I deliberately stepped further away from the street, to avoid any possibility of being run over. Also, maybe the youths weren't connected with the truck, and just happened to be in the area, and took to playing with tires that had already been dumped.

(no subject)

Saturday, August 16th, 2008 11:48 pm
darkoshi: (Default)
Whoa. I clicked on the "random LJ" link I had saved a while back, and it opened up the LJ of a name I recognized - someone on the friends-list of someone on my LJ friends-list. What's the odds of that happening? Certainly, I've clicked the link several times before and not had this happen... most of the pages I've gotten have been in Russian, actually.

I suppose if I added together all the people on the friends-lists of all the people on my current friends-list, it might be a big number. But I'd probably only recognize a percentage of those - people who've left enough comments on the other person's journal that the name has stuck in my head.

Lessee... 2273 is the # of friends-of-friends, not including the groups. (Some peeps surely are popular.) But how many names would I recognize out of all LJ-dom? I'd guess maybe a couple hundred, tops. And me getting a random LJ page, and it being one of them?

somewhat strange

Thursday, May 8th, 2008 07:08 pm
darkoshi: (Default)
Walking back from lunch, I noticed something small and round on the walkway before me. Looking closer, it was a little turtle, the size of a half-dollar, with its head and feet tucked mostly into its shell. Then I turned my head, and noticed a lizard standing in the grass nearby. It had a reddish head and seemed to be looking at the turtle, or perhaps at me. I took a step towards it, but it didn't move. I paused for a while, considering the strangeness of the situation. I decided to pick up the turtle and put it in the grass, as I didn't want someone else to accidentally step on it. While doing that, I think the lizard scampered away. But the thought of that lizard was still making me uneasy - what if it wanted to go after the turtle? I reconsidered and picked the turtle back up and carried it a little further away, closer to the stream. It started to get annoyed at that point, sticking out its legs and wiggling them until I set it down again.

uncanny

Saturday, January 19th, 2008 08:10 pm
darkoshi: (Default)
I was unpacking some boxes, putting books and such into my new cabinet... took out something one of my brother's girlfriends once sent me (they were sannyasins). It is a story, a fairy-tale, set in the world of Osho. She put little red confetti hearts in the pages, so a few always fall out when I handle it. I don't think I've read it since the first time I got it, and I did not remember the story, so I decided to read it now again.

It starts,
"It happened, in the World of Osho, that there were two spirits who played together, as dolphins do, dancing in a warm, sensual sea.
They lived in dreams of white marble waterfalls and orchids and were awoken each morning by the chattering of green parrots. Their life was a feast."


I get to the middle of the last page, and read this line:
"It was January 19th, 1990. Osho died."

And I think to myself, wait, isn't today... yep, January 19.

things I find

Saturday, January 5th, 2008 05:11 pm
darkoshi: (Default)
While picking up trash along my street, I came across a $20 bill, wadded up somewhat and with a wad of chewing gum stuck to it. It looked real, the bill. The find surprised and amused me, a bit. I scratched the gum off it using a crushed plastic bottle, and set the bill back down on the ground, with a white stone on top of it. Perhaps someone else in more need of it will come across it, and be happy.

Last week, I came across a lizard in my juniper bushes. A larger lizard than the small ones that it is more typical to see around here. It was motionless on the ground, near the roots. I only noticed it, because there was a beer can above it in the branches. I am not quite sure if it is just a toy lizard some child may have placed there long ago, or a genuinely live one, in hibernation.

(no subject)

Monday, April 16th, 2007 07:48 pm
darkoshi: (Default)
It was a windy day here. At lunchtime as I walked along the boardwalk between the buildings, I saw the trunk of one of the big trees swaying slightly as I approached it. It seemed somehow uncanny, as if the tree were not just alive, but alive, like an Ent. The trunk was 2-3 feet wide in diameter near the base, and about 2 feet wide at my height... even though I've seen trees swaying in the wind before, to be right next to the trunk, and to see the motion not just up higher in the smaller branches, but way down there near the ground too... touching its side, even, feeling it press against my hand... Awe-inspiring, that such a giant towering thing nevertheless is flexible and alive enough to bend in the wind without cracking.

(no subject)

Wednesday, March 7th, 2007 10:37 pm
darkoshi: (Default)
Do you ever compose an email and read it several times, then send it... and then check it again in the Sent Mail folder, and suddenly notice a glaring typo? And feel that surely the typo wasn't there when you were reading it before... And wonder if your browser or email program somehow botched it up? Even while thinking it's more likely that you yourself botched it.

Tired.

Saturday, January 27th, 2007 06:22 pm
darkoshi: (Default)
I was going to try to fix something on my car. So I popped the hood. Except the hood didn't pop. Eventually figured that I should be able to trip the hood-latch by fiddling with it from underneath the front of the car, so I got down and fiddled. It didn't have any effect. So there I was, lying on the ground, looking up at the nice blue sky... ah, how nice. I've never been in this position in the front yard before, looking up at the sky... then I moved my fingers a bit again, and ta-dah!, the hood popped open. I checked the mechanism, and nothing seemed wrong with it, so I closed the hood and pulled the hood release from inside the car, and this time it worked.

But I wasn't able to fix the thing I wanted to fix. A water leak when it rains. At first it felt good, figuring out how to get the plastic pieces off the end of the wipers, to expose the nuts. But then I wasn't able to get the wiper arms off, and I couldn't get the plastic screws out either, which were holding down the cowl, without breaking them, at least. So much for that.

A guy walking down the street addressed me... "Hello. Are you married? Do you have a boyfriend? Do you want a friend?" No thanks, I replied, a bit amused. Later, he walked by again, and this time Forestfen was there, and he asked her the same thing. She declined as well.

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