Hot bumper sticker

I love this little bumper sticker. If I still put stickers on my bumper, I'd buy one.
We sure enjoyed the week or so of cooler weather there, when the north wind gave us lower humidity and temperatures.

How's that for a short blog post?

Hurricane Ike Video

Ike, take a hike!

So here's the tale, for those who are interested.

After the power went off Friday, and I phoned in an update to Dave so he could post it as a comment to the blog, the house started warming up, as it tends to do in Houston when you don't have AC. So we went outside, and there were several neighbors standing outside on our driveway. They were there because our house happened to be a sort of midway point between their houses.

So next thing we all knew, we had brought chairs to our driveway and started bringing cold ones of various kinds and sat around talking about hurricanes and other exciting stuff. Might as well, nobody had power, and it was getting really warm indoors.



photo by Wm

We sat around getting to know each other, which was a new thing, because until then, most of us were only on a "how's it going" basis. People kept bring out more cold beverages, knowing full well that we weren't about to keep them cold for long. I think we stayed out until about 10:30, when it began lightly raining again. The wind wasn't too bad - unless you got out of your chair, in which case it tried to blow away.

We knew that Ike wasn't going to arrive until one or so in the morning, so we "hunkered down" as our local officials had advised our area to do. (They discouraged us from evacuating because the roads were full of people who needed to get out by that time).

It was hard to get to sleep because it was so hot. We got some breeze from the south-facing window, and it was good, but it was still stifling. It started blowing hard at 2:00 am, sustained winds of 65 mph, with gusts to 90. But the hurricane force winds got here about 3:30 or 4:00, and lasted until about 6:00. We weren't in the eye. At the worst of the storm, our wind was directly from the north, and it was shooting rain into our doorknob's lock slot and water was streaming out the doorknob on the inside. There was a constant howling sound under the rising and falling noise of the rain hitting the walls. We left windows on the downwind side open so we could get some more cool air, but it was still hot. If you ever wondered, a hurricane doesn't cool you down like a normal thunderstorm.

Next morning, after the winds left, I went outside in the gently falling rain to see what damage we had. Our fence was still standing, but the length to the east of the gate had been moved about ten inches or so out of the yard. The posts, instead of breaking off, had simply plowed a trough into the ground and moved out of the yard! Our neighborhood got off easy, thanks be to God. Virtually all the trees were young, and so they leaned at a 45º angle to the ground instead of breaking off and flying away. Several of our new friends and I went to each tree, pushed them back to more or less upright, and pressed the soil down with our feet. No one of us could have done that, but with all our combined strength, we got all of them up except the second biggest tree in my yard. It will continue to lean, possibly as a cool reminder of the hurricane.

Some people had gone for a local tour outside of our immediate neighborhood, and said that we should go see the older areas of the Plantation. We left Poet's Corner and we could immediately see that the fence hiding the railroad tracks was down in several long stretches. There were some large, older trees by the bayou that were down, and when we got to the railroad overpass west of our house, we saw about forty people standing around with cell phones on their ears. Seems that you could go up there and try to call - some could get actual voice calls, but most of us could only text. I dubbed it "cell phone village." We went further, and toured the older areas, and there were downed trees everywhere. Most had been pulled off the road, so traffic could move. Where trees had landed on the brick fence, it was collapsed. Here are some photos of the plants around our house, and then some of the Sienna Plantation area.


This is the crepe myrtle outside our house. It was on the west wall of the house, where the wind struck us for the last half of the storm. If you look close, there are still a few leaves attached here and there.



Here's the rose bush in the back yard. There are still some blooms, but I have no idea how they managed to hang on.



Here's the little shelter they built to commemorate the old Sugar Cane plantation that our houses now occupy. The structure did very well - the downed tree is resting partly on the roof, but doesn't seem to have hurt the shelter at all.


Here's a sign leaning way down at the school. This is the way most of the trees were leaning. Some of the signs were simply sheared off at ground level. I guess it has to do with how strong the poles are.


So there we are, with all our new friends, and one couple (Bob and Priscilla) has a generator and a grill set up. So the rest of us start digging food out of our freezers, and we brought over shrimp, and chicken breasts, and briskets and fish. Bob set about barbecuing happily, and we all set up chairs on their driveway, and we feasted on food that would otherwise have ruined. More adult beverages appeared, and we made hurricanes, which is a drink involving rum and something purple in color. A great time was had by all, and we speculated on when power might be restored. We saw brilliant flashes of light in the distance, which were not lightning, but merely transformers exploding as they tried to get power restored.

We had a little transistor FM receiver as advised by the local officials who tell you how to prepare for a hurricane, but it decided to start messing up on us. Specifically, the power button stopped working. If it was on, you couldn't shut it down. So I pulled the batteries, but then it wouldn't come back on because the power button didn't work that direction either, so GA beat it up, and it came on. Anyway, we heard news that the city of Port Arthur had banned liquor sales after the hurricane. How barbaric! After a hurricane is exactly when you need booze!

Word got in that a cold front was on the way. The prediction from the weather people was that it would arrive Monday, and that Sunday would be a hot day. I began praying that it would arrive early. And it did. Sunday was nice. We slept nicely, very nicely that night, as a cool breeze blew through our bedroom.

Monday morning, we had some cell reception in the house. Not enough for phone calls, but we could text. Soon, we could actually make calls - but we didn't make too many, because we had to conserve the phone batteries.

I spent most of Monday pruning the remains of my rosebush, clearing leaves out of our landscaping, putting appropriate foods into the compost bin, and so forth. It was a lovely day today. And then GA shouted "Woo Woo!" The power had flickered on for just a second. That meant that the electricity guys were working in our area. Sure enough, by 3:30 the power came on and stayed on. For us, the worst of it was over. There are still a half million or so families without power, and some more without drinkable water, and many many still without ice, which is more of a hardship than you might think.

It will be a week or more until we can buy any meats at the stores, maybe not that long until the lines at the gas station go down to a reasonable level. It still seems a little strange to be able to just flip a switch and a light comes on. It's kind of magic.

Lessons learned:

1) Trust God in the storm, as well as after.
2) A disaster is only as fun as you make it. Make it fun if you can.
3) It really feels good to have friends and family care about you.
4) Those things they tell you to do to be prepared for hurricanes? Do them.
5) Texans come together in hard times.
6) Caving lamps work very well after a hurricane.
7) Never move to Port Arthur.

ps. You may have seen something on the Drudge report about a woman in Galveston complaining that there ain't no FEMA coming there and they don't care about nobody. That woman is way out of line. They tried to get everybody to evacuate Galveston island up until the water was too deep to get them out. That woman is also not typical of Texan attitude. Most of us either evacuated, or we've been darn patient while people work hard to get things back to normal.

I figger she's not a Texan. She's probably from Louisiana.

We're back!

Yes, we're back. The lights came on again at 3:30, and we even have internet. That's three hours short of three days without power - which makes us very blessed. There are still over 2 million people in this area with no power, and some have no water. FEMA is trying to distribute what people need, which is a herculean task. A very few are complaining that not enough is being done, but the New Orleans attitude is in the minority. Most are good Texans, who understand that a disaster is only as much fun as you decide to make it.

I am in the middle of cleaning out the spoiled crap in the refrigerator and freezer, so I am kind of busy, but I wanted to let you all know that we are OK, really OK now, with electricity (how did people survive this climate without electricity???), potable water, and soon... soon... ICE! And I will be able to recharge the cell phone, so if you want to call, go ahead - just be aware that you may not get through.

Thank you, God, and thank you electric system repair guys.

More will follow. I think in a little while I will read all the comments that got left over the last three days...

Riding the Storm Out

---1115, 9/12/2008---
The water is now above the street level in Texas City. They have an info-babe standing ankle deep on the highway, and the water is over the curb, and rising quickly. Yes, this is mainland, Texas, not the island.

Still no rain in Sienna Plantation.

---1145---
The 311 service is no longer in effect in the evacuation zones. If you're in those zones, you can no longer get help leaving. You're on your own.
30 mph wind gusts are reported in the Sugar Land area. That's us. So it begins, but the real ugly stuff is still hours away.

---1305---
We are expecting a 20 ft. surge in the ship channel (that's a correction. Sorry). The actual hurricane eye will come ashore about midnight - 11 hours from now. That means about 1 in the morning it will pass over us, which means I can't take pictures, even if we get the eye. Darn.

The first rain in our area should begin pretty soon. We just went outside and cut flowers from our rose bushes and other flowering plants. We might as well enjoy them indoors, they'd be gone soon anyway.


---1315---
The rain has begun here. The fun begins.
By the way, the distance from the eye and Galveston is, at this moment, the same as the distance between Wichita Falls and Lubbock.

---1343---
Now we're getting rain, then sun, then rain. That's those bands you can see flying away from the hurricane if you're watching it on TV. They've seen 36 ft. waves out at sea near the eye of the storm. Mr. Elemental Energy Guy might not understand that, but most of us can realize that we're talking about 12 yards, more than a first down in football terms, only it's a wall of water that far above your head.

Here are the probables for our own neck of the woods: 10 to 15 inches of rain. Probable 65 mph sustained winds, with gusts to 100, for 12 hours. To imagine that, remember sticking your arm out the window while driving on the interstate. Remember how hard it is to see anything going by as you look at the shoulder of the pavement. Now... have you ever driven at 100 mph? (ahem, er, I would never do that, ahem, er, um). Remember how the bugs splat on the glass so spectacularly? Anyway, that's moving fast.

Getting dark again, here comes more rain.
Ike to Galveston is now only 168 miles and closing.

---1350---
They've narrowed the scope of probable landfall to between Sargent and Galveston. If you take the centerpoint of that range, and assume that Ike goes right to it, in the middle... and draw a line inland... um... that would mean the eye would go just about over us. I'm not sure what kind of pictures I could take of such an event at one in the morning, but it would sure be an experience I would never forget.

But the official track still shows it going east of us, which in terms of property damage and all that is a better scenario.

---1520---
Our sustained winds are now 23 mph, gusts to 25. Nothing really scary yet, then. Our main fascination right now is Galveston Island, where they still have some officials in the upper floors (for now) of the convention center, which is theoretically hurricane proof. Wink wink, nudge, nudge. The thing to understand about this is that the sea wall is already underwater, and the hurricane is still 150 miles out!

We've already been told that there will be no mail service tomorrow, which means they care about their employees here a lot more than they did in Wichita Falls when we had our mile wide tornado in 1979, where I wasn't allowed to go home until we finished the mail, even though I knew that my home was gone and the fate of my family was unknown. (More likely they're worried about the postal jeeps getting damaged).

The air is starting to feel a little funny, beyond just the humidity. It probably has to do with the barometric pressure, but I don't know nuthin bout no barometric pressure.

---update, 1535---
Soon all emergency staff in Galveston will be called in, and as of 9:00 tonight they will no longer answer calls for help of any kind. Three hours later, they will hear from Elemental Energy Guy, when the hurricane actually arrives there.

The first tropical force winds have arrived in San Leon (mainland), so we should have them in an hour or so (4:30?).

---1550---
Ike is now 183 miles away from our little home, sweet home. Surfside, which is already flooded due to the surge, is reporting that there are refrigerators, dumpsters and other debris floating in the water. This is the kind of local color they won't give you on the Weather Channel.

---1600---
A guy on Twitter says the seawall in Port Arthur is almost under water.

---1620---
Remember San Leon? In 20 minutes, it went from dry roads to being too flooded for cars to get through. Only those high tower pickups are making it through, plus a guy on a bicycle with his tires half under water. And it's just the surge - no serious rain there, yet.

Still no tropical winds here in the Plantation.

A guy on Twitter notes that there is a giant crane towering over downtown Houston. I guess there's nothing they can do about it - it's assembled on top of a construction site. But there could be a nasty consequence, I'm thinking.

---1655---
We're starting to get semi-serious gusts of wind. The trees on the other side of the levee, visible from our kitchen door, are doing some real swaying, and making a constant swoosh sound. We are now told that they will have hurricane force winds in Galveston by 6:30. They're announcing curfews for most towns around here, so I assume we in the Plantation are included. As if I were going to get out in a hurricane to go buy a burger. I don't know if the curfew applies to Elemental Energy Guy™ awaiting his death on Galveston Island.

They're saying all cars in Harris county need to be off the road by 6:30, presumably to give them a bit of headroom for avoiding the hurricane winds that will hit Houston shortly after. I still haven't figured out when we start with the hurricane winds - how far in advance of the center do they go?

The eye of this thing is apparently so big (80 to 90 miles across) that we will likely be in it as it passes over, regardless of the track. What we may get is wind from the east, then the calm, and then wind from the west. I'm just guessing that, of course. But if it happens that way, the worst wind will be striking the two brick walls with the fewest windows. One can hope. If so, our neighbors will be happy that we have the two-story home sheltering them.

If we still have power at 1:00 am, or when the eye passes over, I promise to blog about it. If the sky is bright enough to take photos, I will do that.

Meanwhile, GA is asking about taking Hunkering lessons, to make sure that we properly hunker down, as requested by our local officials. I would hate to find that I had unintentionally hunkered up.

---1800, or 6:00 pm---
People in Kemah are starting to worry. They're about 15 ft above sea level, and the water is pouring in from the sea, over their little barrier. TV shows water up to the nozzle on the fire hydrants, which means 16 ft so far. As I watch the live reporting from the scene, I wonder if our Hil would like to be out there, knee deep in salt water, with a microphone in her hand, explaining why the water is so deep, and asking the locals how they feel about it.

They're losing power in Galveston as I write this. They already have uprooted palm trees lying across the road, and there are chunks of a hotel blocking the way, too. No word on when the reporters get to flee the island and go report on the rising water in downtown Kemah, instead of watching each other hang onto utility poles with one hand and a microphone with the other.

The wind is getting stronger here, though we haven't had any rain for the last hour - just wind. But it is getting noticeably stronger. And here it is: sustained winds, 29 mph, gusts to 42. Here we go, folks!

---6:15 pm---
Hurricane force winds have arrived in Galveston, though the eye is still 98 miles away. No word on Mr. EEG.

The guy next door got out his hammer, and he'll putting plywood on his windows as the wind blows. Thanks, guys, for setting the example while I could still have done something about it.



Stay tuned!

Hurricane Ike Turner

OK, this could be bad.

We won't really know until it actually gets here, but it could be bad. We've decided to stay here, mainly because none of our neighbors in Sienna Plantation are bailing out, and they probably know more about hurricanes than we do - especially since this is our very first hurricane ever. And anyway, we don't want to miss our first hurricane. I'm all about experiences.

So far, it looks like Ike is going to come ashore and tramp right through the middle of Fort Bend county, where we live. It's kind of hard to figure out exactly where it will go in relation to our home, because the scale they have to use on this is huge.

So, I decided to make use of blogging technology to keep everyone updated. The updates will, of course, cease abruptly in the case of a power outage, or a flooded study.

At the moment (2:45 pm Thursday), they expect Ike to roll ashore tomorrow afternoon. We may have some winds and outer bands or stuff before then, but they will likely be more like the usual rain storms that don't really hurt anything. By Friday night, we should have high winds and hard rain. By that, I mean that we are promised 75 mph winds - but the barometric pressure inside the eye suggests the possibility of 125 mph winds. If it gets that high, we may have windows blown in. Jeff has suggested that we put tape on the windows in an X shape, which apparently gives them more strength. Jeff has been in many hurricanes in his day.

We aren't really worried about flooding here in the Plantation, because we have a 50 ft. elevation and lots of strong levees.

The evacuation from Galveston has begun in earnest, and the roads started getting majorly clogged by people fleeing the low lying areas to our south - Pearland and the other 775 zip code areas - about an hour ago. I got back from my dental appointment as it was getting thicker. We're watching channel 2, which seems to be the most reliable and up to date, much as channel 3 was back in Wichita Falls (good old Skip McBride).

I have brought in all loose objects from the yard: gardening tools, buckets, potted plants and so forth. I need to also bring in the burglar warning from out front, even though it's stuck deep in the ground. If it does get pulled out, it will become a deadly missile indeed.

Feel free to leave comments on this blog. I think I have it set where you can, but I am going to go make sure in a moment that it allows comments by non-registered folks. I will put the updates on the actual blog area; check to see if there is a newer blog entry, but I plan to just keep updating this one.

---update, 9-11, 3:25 pm---
Galveston is already flooding in the lowest areas. Storm surge is already here. wow.

---update, 3:32 pm, or 1532---
They say now that we may be enduring hurricane force winds for 18 hours.

---update, 1615 (or 4:15)---
The "track" they keep talking about is mostly just an educated guess, though apparently very well educated. We just heard that the track (which is an average of the various computer models, aka spaghetti) has shifted slightly northward. This is bad for Houston downtown, but good for harB and GA and Wm. We are now predicted to be on the "clean"side of the storm, which means the winds will be not so bad (75 mph or less), and they will be from the north instead of from the south. Most of our southern exposure consists of windows, on both of our two stories. But the north side of the house has only ground level windows. The upper level is one massive brick wall.
So we will wait until tomorrow morning to tape the windows.
In any case, the wind and rain (outlying tropical rains) will probably begin about 0100 hours tonight, and won't become severe until tomorrow afternoon at the earliest, and probably Friday evening. We still get trash pickup tomorrow morning, so I will likely take it out to the street after sun up depending on how hard it's blowing - and bring the empty container in as soon as they dump it into their Tonka truck.

Meanwhile, the surge has arrived on Galveston Island already - this is a little surprising to the weather folks here, and probably means something, though I don't know what, exactly.

---update, 2049 (8:49 pm)---
A while ago we heard the neighbor hammering plywood over his windows. In the dark. That makes me a little nervous.
They're supposed to update the track in another hour.

---update, 9:08 pm---
The county judge here says that Saturday is going to be "ugly." I don't like the sound of that.

---update, 10:10 pm---
The new track says even further east. Still not good for Houston, but better for us. The good news: they say it could possibly come ashore as a category 2, which would be a wonderful thing. Also we won't have tropical force winds until after 7 am tomorrow, and no hurricane stuff until maybe 5 or so in the afternoon. But the bad news is that surge. It could reach a 20-25 ft. storm surge if it hits Galveston directly. And even if it misses, it could be 18 ft. That's well over the sea wall.

But the track, remember, is sort of an average. Some of the trackettes go directly over Ft. Bend county. If so, we will see the eye in our first hurricane.

---update, 10:50 pm---
Have you looked at the satellite image? This storm is huge! It fits neatly just inside the shape of the entire Gulf of Mexico. And it looks like it's going to go straight into the ship channel, which is really bad news for downtown Houston. Also, by this time, hurricane Rita had changed her direction, which is what many were hoping for this time around. It has not happened.

===update, 730, 9/12/08===
Good morning. The track is still pretty much right where it was, so that's probably going to be it. No sudden shift to the north, just rolling along on schedule, with murder in its eye. It's likely going to move right up the ship channel, flood downtown Houston without mercy, and we here in the Plantation can expect some strong winds and rain from the east, then from the north. We could see the eye sometime before it's all over (that would be a bonus), but most likely we'll see sheets of rain on our north facing windows. I really hope that we don't see sheets of rain blowing onto our living room floor.

---update, 1034---
I went on my morning walk. I figured I might as well, since the rain won't start for a while yet. The sky was sunny and blue at 8:30, cooler than usual, which is to say warm but not stifling.

An odd thing happened. The air had been perfectly still, but suddenly a strong, steady breeze came up from the north. It held for about five minutes as I continued down the path, then faded to a gentle breeze from the east. By the time I got back to my neighborhood at 9:30, I could look to the sky and sea clouds moving in a relatively fast arc, traveling from the east to the north and then to the south. These must have been the first signs of the hurricane.

I met some neighbors out talking on the sidewalk, so I joined them for a bit. One was surprised that so few people had boarded their windows. But others had the same view I did - we have no idea how to install the plywood necessary to protect anything. Do we drill holes into the bricks? The mortar? Won't that damage the mortar? Besides, I don't have a ladder long enough to reach the upper windows, I don't have a skill saw or the skill to shape it to fit, and besides, the Home Depots are out of plywood by now. Some had taken pictures of the long lines outside Home Depot and Lowe's, waiting to buy plywood if any came in. Another says if the winds get to 100 mph, he's going to go outside and lean in it for fun.

We're getting different estimates from different sources, but some say the winds will be 50-75 mph, some say 75-110. I don't think anyone really knows. Some tell me that tape on the windows will help protect them, others (including the Weather Channel™) insist that it will do no good at all. Most in my neighborhood say that the windows will generally be fine anyway, at least in our area.

We both showered and put on clean clothes, I'm doing a last load of laundry as we speak, and we have two large camp bladders full of water to drink, and when it starts raining I'm going to put the cell phone on the charger to top off the battery. Local officials are telling us if we're in the flood areas, to evacuate yesterday, but if we're not, "hunker down." That's Texan for stay put, hold tight. If the eye passes over us, I plan to get pictures and video if at all possible, but if that happens we will be in for higher winds, so who knows?

By the way, the comments you guys have left have made me feel good. You don't know how much my friends mean to me. Or maybe you do.

---1100---
Holy cow.
The local TV coverage on channel 2 just featured an interview with a guy who says he's going to stay - on Galveston, not the mainland. He says he's staying because he loves the elemental energy, and he has salt water in his soul. There's a TFM for you.

The authorities have a recommendation for such people: make sure you have an ID of some kind fastened securely to your body so they can ID you if you're recovered after the storm.

The background for the interview was the sight of the waves crashing against the seawall, splashing thirty feet into the air, and coming down in a huge foaming mass toward the camera. That's right: the 15 foot seawall in Galveston is about to be topped. When it does, soon, they will remove all the reporters and cameras, because the island will be underwater. Not just flooded, you New Age moron, underwater! The nearest land will be the coast of Texas, and all the elemental energy in the world will not enable you to swim that far. Each wave crashing into the island's pathetic little seawall has enough force to kill you if it hits you while you're treading water.

There are some brave souls who are going to ride this one out on the mainland, and they are risking their lives to do it, but staying on Galveston island when this thing actually comes over it, with a 20 ft (or higher) surge? Stay tuned as we clean the gene pool.

I think I will close this entry, and begin a new one. See the menu at the left for a link to Riding the Storm Out.

Comments are still enabled!

Morning walks

My morning walks take about 80 minutes to complete. I usually see at least some birds - no idea what they're called, but they're white with long necks and legs, and they're cautious but not really timid. I have occasionally seen deer.

When the levee makes a sharp, right 90º turn, it's high above the low ground on the left. You actually look down on the houses, behind their fences. Below are trees, fairly old trees, that stand tall. One of these has branches hanging within reach of the trail. In fact, you kind of have to stay to the opposite side on the trail, or else duck your head a little. There are grape vines hanging in the branches there. I saw some clusters of little unripe grapes, and next to each tree there is one grape vine growing up the trunk and mingling with the branches and leaves. Since that's too much coincidence for even an optimist like me to assume, the HOA or the developers or some really thoughtful resident must have planted one vine by each tree a long time ago - kind of like when I planted two oak trees in my front yard last year in Midland. Only the grape vines are still there, unlike the oak trees, which are gone because some attractive, stone-hearted California girl ripped them out to make it easier to mow (but I'm not bitter).

Some day soon those grapes will ripen, and the little animals in the area will enjoy them. Maybe somebody on the trail will eat them, who knows? Maybe I'll be the one. And I started thinking this morning: who else will even notice the grapes? Just other walkers like me? I doubt that the runners, the joggers will even see them. They're going too fast, thinking about their young, active things. Only the walkers, in our old man shorts, and our old man socks, and our old man t-shirts will see them, because we're the ones limping along with our old man DNA unraveling.

That's how you age, you know. Your DNA keeps replicating itself, following its instruction set, and there are tiny errors that creep in as it does. I don't really understand the process (as if you did, either), but they describe it as being similar to the little plastic ends on your shoelaces. They keep the DNA from unraveling. But they start to wear out, and the new cells have the DNA strands a little more weak and damaged, and so you get old and inflexible, until eventually you die (but I'm not bitter) like the useless refuse you were always meant to be (no, no no - I'm not bitter, honest).

OK, strike that. I'm useful refuse. Yeah, that's better.

Meanwhile, hurricane Ike is on his way, and nobody is sure where he'll step ashore without wiping his feet. It looks like he'll hit Rockport, then move up to San Antonio, and then go rain on Wichita Falls, my old hometown. We have to have a little fun.

That visit home

When I went north to visit my old stomping grounds (and a fat auld man like meself can do some serious stomping when he takes a mind to, ye ken), I made a short visit to my old house on Brazos in Midland (Midland on the Brazos, as it were).

I was curious about whether the new owners (who incidentally promised to take over the RO unit contract and then left me stuck with the bills for four months, but I'm not bitter) had appreciated any of the things I had done there. No, they hadn't. The garden space was removed, along with all the walkways I had put down. All of them. The pond is gone. The running stream is gone. They probably ate the fish. The two baby oak trees are gone too. Just a normal, boring yard, front and back. And I could have kept the other compost bin, but at least they gave it to someone down the alley.

I'm glad I at least kept the decorative rocks - the petrified wood, and all those.

What do you expect from California imports? No appreciation for the finer things.

Well, rain on 'em. I'll grow my avocado tree here, and enjoy the occasional hurricane.

Photo by wm

The Palin scandals!

You have no doubt been reading in the various media that scandals are breaking on Sarah Palin as the waves break on the rocky shores of Atlantis. Like Atlantis, she is sinking fast, and is proving to be the worst possible choice McCain could have made for his VP. But they aren't telling you the half of it, my loyal readers.

It appears that to celebrate her election as governor of Alaska, Palin had Jewish and black babies ground into sausage for a Republican fundraiser. To obtain these babies, she had the mothers forced to become pregnant, and by the way, all their mothers had to run marathons after their water broke.

She attended a church that had its members dance naked under a full moon as a sacrament, as George Bush speeches were played on the PA system. They then sacrificed baby seals on the altar at the stroke of midnight. It appears that the video has been censored from the libraries all over Alaska, even though it had been required viewing in the public schools up until the day Palin accepted the nomination for VP.

And though she claims to have been opposed to corruption, she accepted campaign funds from the Chinese communist party. No, wait, that may have been someone else. But she has yet to deny this allegation, or prove her innocence.

She is also an unrepentant heterosexual who buried fourteen virgin librarians under the newly poured cement of the children's book section. It also appears that she refused to attend Ellen Degeneres' wedding reception.

Worse yet, it appears that she didn't floss on March 3rd of 2005.

Her campaign staff does not deny any of these allegations. They are obviously circling the wagons in sheer terror of more scandal breaking by the hour. This is the worst political nomination since Karl Marx wrote the Declaration of Independence... in the original Spanish.