Inside of a Dog, It's Too Dark to Read

(Yvonne, I'll explain it later. *grin*)

http://xkcd.com/453/

So I managed to find PetsMart (kibble) and Walgreens (milk) open on the way home, just barely; missed all the grocery stores by a handful of minutes each, though. Extra salad fixings would have been nice....

I've driven through thunderstorms that had me more worried. Driving through Katrina (Phase I) was easier than some thunderstorms. It's just wet and more wet and totally overcast and just a little blowy. Really, it's no big deal and it's getting less so. And I'll get paid for a full day, too. ^_^

Now, if he'd ever have got his act together and charged in here as even a strong Cat 1 — then you keep your head down.

~HAPPY END OF HURRICANE SEASON!~

[throws biodegradable confetti]

I have not been having the best of days, from some angles.

For instance: while doing an ice run over to my VFW post, D'Argo and I met an adorable 7-month-old boxer and his little 6-month-old Boston Terrier friend (complete with small cocoanut). The larger puppy, whose name I never quite caught, gave me happy schlurps and finally engaged D's attention, at which point they started doing that thing with their 'hands'... and I got clobbered in the side of the mouth. Ouuuuch.

heidi8 and I never made it to lunch -- her Publix got restocked and Ma decided she was far too uncomfortable not to go to the doctor right this minute -- which means I left the house, after having changed into non-yardworky clothes, having left my driver's license and any possible plastic money at the house.

Not that I could find rechargers for my Treo 600 anyway, since both the wall and car chargers have broken. :headdesk:

And my laundry is adamantly refusing to dry.

However. Considering I am not experiencing Sebacean Heat Death, I feel I am getting off somewhat lightly. This falls under 'nibbled to death by ducks'.

And I am very soon off to a land which has power, functioning environmental controls appropriate to the environment, power, Starbucks, laundry facilities and T-Mobile stores which are properly supplied. And power. And food I don't have to cook over a hibachi in the dark, although the fire looks very pretty that way. [falls wearily into the care of sit_good_dog]

We'd bloody well better have power by the time I get back. Even people in Broward have power already, never mind all the places I mentioned previously. Grumble.

My friend Missy's mother's service has indeed been postponed -- she can't reach the rabbi at all. What we - consisting of me, two friends of hers down from various up-norths and her Labrador Gabrielle - was just meet at Missy's house and talk about all sorts of things. Her mom was nice, even with all the medical problems that just kept mounting. A little nuts with the saving of things (I found the must-save-chicken-fat thing really quite hilarious), but as Missy says, that's how she was raised, when they had to make things stretch farther.

Ah well. Hopefully, I'll be back from my holiday (see, I'm warning you lot about it this time) in time to make the rescheduled memorial.


Alas, poor quiet and darkness -- I knew it, Horatio. Aside from MIA having planes coming and going almost constantly since they restarted service yesterday afternoon, the sky was never really dark dark. Even at ick-o'clock in the morning, there was always enough of a glow all the way around my so-called horizon, enough for me to see pretty well by, and for trees et al. to be clearly silhouetted. But then, I do have pretty good night vision.

Tonight, though, it's really ripped. They seem to've restored power (those priorities of theirs) to the elderly-residences a few blocks away, and as a side effect, the Great Big Lights that stick above all the nearby buildings from my PoV are on. So there's these great glaring sodium vapour lights casting all this light on an empty park. Because, y'know, curfew. What a waste. They couldn't save my knockwurst instead?


The cast iron has been busy. Eggs and hot beverages (well, the hot water was in the kettle, really) this morning in the frying pan, oatmeal and a mini-pizza this evening in my mini cauldron and personal-pizza-sized frying pan. I've got quite the little setup just outside the back door. I think I need some tips in fire maintenance, though.


Back to tree schleppage tomorrow. Oh, I got to use a machete yesterday! Not well, but eventually successfully. I think I'll stick to my tree saw, though.

We really have to find my mother's car keys, too -- her car is really in the way of dragging this great pile of proto-mulch out to kerbside.

Still no power, of course. I've been able to listen to a little of our local NBC station, as they're the only ones who broadcast on a normal radio band as well. They said about 60K+/- customers have had power restored; apparently 200 substations have been damaged, it's not something as relatively simple as 'a ficus fell on your copper'.

Broward County has major water problems - there's some sort of leaks in their mains, apparently, and those who have pressure at all are under a boil-water order. alysoun_ff, we need to check to see if Sangre del Sol needs water run up to them.

Fuel's going to be a problem soon, of course - no power, no pump. Channel 6 has reported a couple service stations near, ironically, Channel 4's HQ are open, though, out in Doral.

Also, money - no power, no ATMs. Wachovia's the only banking chain who's opening up right now, 9 to 5 hours tomorrow.

---=>°<=---
Naturally, our splendid exemplar of a refrigerator/freezer [/sarcasm] reached 'ice cream soup' stage by yesterday afternoon. Mind you, we've had amazing weather since Wilma passed! Right now, Ein -- either the world's most expensive or cheapest private electrical generator, depending on which direction you want to look at things -- says it's 72F. With a breeze! It's gorgeous!

Thinking of 'gorgeous', the sky last night, alas, was niceanddark, but also covered with a light haze except pretty much at the zenith. Bah. I think tonight will be clearer, though, and almost as dark.

---=>°<=---
Today, as yesterday, I have schlepped tree. Lots and lots and lots of tree. I've de-canopied most of the large chunk of mango which fell over our fence (nota bene: mango is very much easier to saw than shaving-brush tree), and the neighbour has been machete-ing the large sections still on his side. I'm still working my way through the shaving-brush tree trimmings, too, and doing some large-scale weed-whacking -- an errant Florida holly, some weird thing with big leaves that grows into a fat stem way too fast -- at the same time.

D'Argo has been thinking this is all rather lovely, except for people swinging machetes. He doesn't like that motion or something at all. I think somebody might have spooked him often enough, as they walked on the pavement past our fence and D bounced along inside trying to get their attention.

---=>°<=---
Would you believe a 15-mile drive was enough to charge Sothis up to 66% full battery? Woo! I still can't get anywhere on T-Mobile, but I registered on the network much more quickly today. I can still use Po Tolo as a PDA, of course. Considering that's where just about all my phone contacts are saved, that's a good thing.


selenesue, you and those-who-camp might appreciate this -- I have shown my mother how cast iron works on a hibachi (even if it's a hibachi in poor condition, it still does what it needs to). I poured her homemade chicken soup into my Dutch oven, plunked it on top of the coals that I started while I hacked away at the mango some more, and by the time I came back from my ice run to the VFW post on Miami Beach (ID needed after 17:30, thank you), it was flat-out boiling. I'll heat up water in the morning for us to have hot drinks, too. (Take that, propane! Nyah!)

I've got three sizes of frying pan, so there's eggs and stuff; the Dutch oven; and multiple drawer-creaking muffin pans, but I think we'll skip on trying to do muffins over a small fire. myfanwy got custody of the pie iron (I'd link, but I have to go inside to connect, and bah, Google for it. ^_^) since she grills so much more, but it's not really a pie iron sort of week. I'm still lusting after the Lodge grills, even if I wouldn't use one often. The oval ones have room to do two things at once, I think. And a camping coffeepot, I'm worried I'm going to burn the kettle if I don't do something like set it in the large frying pan for heat conduction.

Now, if I'd only picked up that ceramic cooking grill at Home Depot after all....


heidi8, I'll e-mail you my mother's number, since I can't use my cell. The La Mia market near me, zoo that it usually is, is running on genny, so if you need something you can't get yourself, I can look there. This is, of course, assuming that your Sidekick hasn't been completely drained already.

And I think that's about it for now. Might come back out here to the driveway and watch a movie after it gets dark. :)

All right, I'm an hour late, but that's because I was picking up branches.

I stuck my nose out (meaning, my whole self) around 11ish to see what near-eyewall conditions look like. The front door is both inset and opposite the wind direction, so it's not quite as mad as it sounds. Scary wind....

Around noon proper, the wind started abating; I scurried out to Ein-y-Gwyn to see if I had indeed left my phone out there (I had) and whether it has signal (it doesn't). Battery's dead anyway. Stupid phone.

We've got a strangler fig the idiot neighbour left unbalanced from Katrina - and lied about cleaning up the branches he sawed into our yard, too - that's taken out half the back-gate's fence. The shaving-brush tree came all the way down, it's a loss. A palm tree, half the mango and a large portion of the avocado from the back-fence neighbour are now in our yard, too. Our trees stood up very nicely, thankyousomuch, except the baby cassia, which just bloomed quite enthusiastically, fell flat over for the umpteenth time. It doesn't seem to mind being floppy, though. I mean, it bloomed.

Now... to wait for FP&L or their delegated associates again. THIS time WITH sunscreen.

The time of outage is 07:08, EDT (GMT-4). wo1f, m'dear, as much as I appreciate your optimism, I'm afraid you're going to 'lose' -- something down at this point means either a line broke or a fuse popped, and either way a crew won't even leave the depot within two hours, at the rate this storm's going.

According to the satellite, the eye is munching on Ft. Myers et al. right now. We've lost power here at least once, briefly, as Sothis's LAN connexion and the microwave clock were both knocked for a loop. It can't have been for long, otherwise I think the lack of A/C would have stirred me awake.

Looking out the front door doesn't look like too much, until you move around the house and hear the rain lashing the shutters. I opened the back door briefly -- it's sheltered, and I wanted to make positive that the screen door was latched -- and got hit with the same moist warmth as before, only this time it was moving. And sounded angry. I opened the door just in time to hear and see the sounds of transformers blowing, so it's anyone's guess (any takers on that poll yet?) how much longer I will have power.

The wind seemed to increase as I was standing there, and remembering that we had a tornado sent by bloody mad Ophelia when she was already all the blazes up to North Carolina, I thought it might be a good idea to close the door. Quickly.

---=>°<=---
And then we lost power again. Might not be long, folks... get your bets in now.

I just sent the following e-mail off to the U.N. organisation in charge of hurricane name lists:

Dear sirs and madams,

Considering the recent prolific activity of the Atlantic hurricane season, I wish you would consider including the missing letters of the English-Roman alphabet -- Q, U, X, Y and Z -- into our lists. Obviously you have name pools to draw from, as evinced by the Eastern North Pacific lists. I'm sure we could share, considering how unlikely it is the same name could occur on both sides of the continent at the same time (due to the alternating genders).

For instance:
Qadir      Qamar
Quentin    Queen
Quigley    Quenby
Quincy     Quon
Quinlan    Qadira
Quinn      Querida
Qadim      Qamra
Qingyuan   Qubilah

Transliterated Arabic and Chinese use 'Q' in Roman alphabet to represent some of their particular phonemes.

Ursula     Uriel
Uta        Ulysses
Umbriel    Upton
Ulla       Ulric
Uhura      Udell
Urania     Uriah
Undine     Umberto
Usagi      Urban

German and Indian name origins are particularly rich fields for 'U' names.

I hope you will take these lists into consideration.

Thank you,

[boring mundane name and location so they can tell I think about hurricanes a lot]

Those last couple 'Q' names were a pain! (Drat, I meant to alphabetise that before sending... oh well.)


Living in MIA final approach, I keep getting this sort of weird feeling every time I hear an aeroplane overhead right now -- 'They're not coming back....'


P.S.:  Alpha is a himicane.