Reports From Texas

Getting reports from various parts of Texas that Disaster Recovery is still underway. Ice and water are being given away at some locations now. Most are living by candles and batteries. It was a very powerful storm and estimates as to when they will get power back vary. Cleaning up is the best that they can do while waiting for insurance adjusters arrive. Most BBQ'd on Sunday everything out of their freezers and refrigerators. Now it all has to keep as they get time to eat it all. Trees that fell is the biggest issue in the suburbs. Repair crews can't get in until the are cleared first. Downtown Houston is layered in glass shards. Not a pretty site. Some are charging cell phones with generators and cars though they need to save the gas or wait in a long line for more. Galveston is going to take a long time to recover/rebuild. If work crews are ever allowed back there. Ferrying items from Galveston to the Bolivar Peninsula, or trucking from San Jacinto will take a long time to get there too. I'm sure they could use your prayers, too.

Mariah

And then, the winds came. The winds stayed for the first five innings of Wednesday night's game. Took a little washed out video with my cheap camera. Notice how the flags are just streaming in flat out. Debris was flying everywhere at times. Grounds crew kept it as nice as they could between innings.

Wandering Week

Listening to the Dodgers lose five straight is never fun. Though there were moments of fun. Streak finally broken in Wisconsin this evening. One more game there on Thursday afternoon before moving on. Enough of baseball for today. Took mom out to a nice restaurant last Sunday afternoon and got current on family history. We are flung all over California, with some in Nevada, Oklahoma, Texas, and soon New Mexico. Arizona was so forty/fifty years ago for any of us. Southern California Electric is now billing a tiered system. If you use a nominal amount, which I do even with all these computers because no air conditioning, one stays in tier one. Use a lot of electricity in a month, and you could get a bill that includes tier five rates. Here in the LA basin it is not so bad. In the San Fernando Valley, it gets very hot, very quickly, and longer to get to tier two to make it 'fair'. Fair is a concept that eludes me. Whenever a large organization, like a utility, tries to be 'fair' someone is going to feel put upon. I haven't heard a major outcry yet, but this next month should be a good test as we start having triple digit days and very cool and breezy evenings. If I ever get my air conditioner rolled out of the closet and hooked up, I may jump straight to tier three rates and have a lot of fun figuring out my bill. It might even be over thirty bucks a month! Sure was lucky to find a place upstairs with windows on all four sides. If only it was closer to the beach, like fifteen miles closer. Or to the mountains. No, it would only add to my commute four point five days a week. And paying fifty bucks for twelve gallons of ninety one octane is about half-way to my point of consideration of an alternate method of transportation. In the mean time, the cooper is still my favorite toy.

LA River has water in it!

Crusin' east on Sunset past Union Station I saw that the bottom of the river was no longer just concrete with a stream down the center, but completely covered in water flowing down to Long Beach, so I stuck the camera out of the top of the mini and snapped this going over the river bridge. Then I saw a link on LA Observed that led me to naturetrumps that many better shots and movies of water actually flowing around here. Much better than the dry concrete flood control channels that we have been use to since the great flood of 1933 or something like that...

Fine, Some Rain Came

Saw many drops on Friday and Sunday, and the mountains have a nice dusting of snow on them. Still many inches short of what will need before being taxed millions for recycled sewer water plants, or desalination plants. Come on rain!

So? Where is it?

I've heard nothing but predictions for rain all week on the TV and radio in this town, northern storm descending mixing with warm tropical flow from the southwest. Even Google Weather got into the act as this little graphic shows. We live in a desert, got only three inches of rain last year [June 2006 to June2007] and with the state cutting our water flow from the north because of a endangered fish near our pumping plants called the smelt, and mussels growing in the pipeline from the colorado river, we really need this rain. So I popped out onto the balcony an took a shot of the clouds, wires, rooftops, and a nearby hill, but no rain. Come on already, I'm waiting...

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