Sunday, September 25, 2005

it's over

Ok. The "storm" has passed. I'm back home. There's a big pecan branch in my walkway which fell precisely between my roof and my fence. There are lots of little branches that fell pretty much everywhere. There are a couple of big big big trees down around my neighborhood, particularly at a bend in the street where it looks like the wind must have gotten really pissed off at being blocked. That's it.

I've moved all my furniture back to under the windows, creating once again a harbor for lost dog toys and wads of doghair. I've stacked my cans of Progresso soup under my cabinet since they don't really fit, and have rescued the garbage cans from my garage.

It all almost feels normal.

Tho' I suppose it was too much to hope for to have my New York Times delivered. A Sunday puzzle would make me very happy....

Friday, September 23, 2005

boring

hurry up and be done with it already.

Jeez. I realize this is probably not the right attitude to have, and surely I'll pay for it in another lifetime, (or even this one, just later), but I'm bored with waiting for the storm, and just wish it would hurry up and get here. I mean, since I actually got stressed enough to start popping anxiety meds again *before* the damn storm started, I should have at least a little anxiety now that it's supposed to be here.

My mom called earlier and asked me if my friend's house was a well-built house. I told her that no, they didn't opt for the brick house option, and took the entry-level stick house. yeesh.

Nuts. I just looked at the weather map. The storm has totally veered to the west. We're probably not going to get anything at all. The only thing that could happen bad is that it could still stall out and we could get just tons of rain. That would suck for my house.

Meanwhile, with little to do, and not a lot of anxiety, I'm trying to rally some enthusiasm for going looting. I passed the store The Great Indoors on my way here, and I could use a lamp.

hurricane central

Well, not really. I'm just holed up with some friends and another of their friends. Basically it's 4 geeks and a wireless network. I have learned how to play a new solitaire game (Russian solitaire) and have introduced my dogs to a whole new house. It's much bigger here, so they can build up a lot more speed as they race around the dining room table.

Most of the food I brought is for them. I also brought... and this is vaguely embarrassing... several meals worth of Jenny Craig food. Even though I feel totally empowered to eat whatever the fuck I want as a temporary refugee, I just didn't have anything bad for me lying around the house. Sorry state of affairs.

I took the dogs for a walk (I realize this is boring and journally, but I'm tired of solitaire...) and the wind had actually picked up enough oomph to blow my hat off. I think it was mostly bad aerodynamics because it still feels pretty calm out here, but the pictures show us under the edge of the storm, so it's *something*...

So, any aerodynamicists out there want to answer a question for me while I'm thinking about it? My house is in a very old neighborhood among very old pecan and cottonwood trees. In fact, I have a historically registered cottonwood tree right in front of my garage. (I'm sure the house was built after the tree, so I have no idea what rocket scientist put the garage door right behind it...) A lot of my fears about staying at my place was of big pieces of dead cottonwood tree turning into projectiles. My imagination sometimes gets the best of me, and the images so reminiscent of EMT training manuals of me with a big piece of tree branch sticking through my ribs were keeping me from sleeping, so I left.

Now I'm out here in the 'burbs. The biggest trees they have here were planted with the subdivision within the last decade. As I drove out I was thinking, "Whoa, that's cool. Nothing big to fall down on us." But then I also thought, "hm, also nothing to cut the energy of the wind, either..." I've taken enough physics classes, and have learned enough about hydrodynamics in both my diffie Q and stellar interiors classes to know about different kinds of flows, but most of my thinking on this subject feels instinctive, not equation-based. Does anyone know if having a little grove of trees around your house would serve to diffuse the wind energy by turning laminar flow into chaotic? I mean, yeah, trees fall down go boom, but might they prevent the wind from building up enough steam to take the roof off my house?

that's it for now. I'm going back to solitaire...

Thursday, September 22, 2005

update

A couple of things.

1) I have now, in violation of my diet, snarfed down a healthy portion of ice cream under the guise of cleaning out the freezer before the electricity goes. To be honest, though, it's fat free and made with Splenda, so it wasn't a huge splurge, and I got brain freeze before I could finish it, so my guilt level is almost non-existent.

2) the thing I most wanted to post last time was my ultimate point regarding the traffic jams. Katrina exposed how our country's emergency planning didn't consider the plight of the poor and immobile. Rita, I'm afraid, will expose how our country's emergency planning doesn't consider the weakness of a highly mobile citizenry. Basically, after 4 years of supposedly improving our country's defense and reaction to catastrophe, I think you can best sum it up as being catastrophic. All we're talking about is efficient and effective evacuation. Evacuation, for whatever the reason, is part of the most basic infrastructure of catastrophe planning.

3) I'm actually pretty impressed with Bill White, our mayor, who seems to be handling himself extremely well.

I will say that the final word has not come down as to the fate of the travelers on the highways. It may be that the promised gas tanks sent up and down the highway will actually get the stranded vehicles back on the road in time to escape the storm. The traffic may also clear out in time for those vehicles to get to safe ground before Nature uses them to play dice. If they're in the clear, then the evacuation was effective, just inconvenient. And quite frankly, in a catastrophe, I think we should be willing to put up with good enough.

Those are just my thoughts at the moment.

ah, nap...

ok, I've had a nap and I feel way more human. I've spent all day flipping between the news and the weather channel (and sleep) and I have noticed a spectacular phenomenon.

First, all the highways are packed with angry, overheating people occupying puttering, overheating cars. Many of these people have started their journeys 10-12-14 hours ago. They're running out of gas. They're suffering from heat stroke. There are people who have taken other people's lives in their hands by transporting medically needy people themselves and getting stuck in traffic.

The news is reporting all this with a ferocity. After all, this is the era of 24hr news, and if you've only got 2 hours of actual news it leaves the devil's workshop with an awful lot of "idle hand" raw material. Anyway, the horrors of traffic is all the news folk can talk about. Except for one thing. And that seems to be - "LEAVE NOW!"

The news people are whipping Houstonians into a panicked frenzy about the "must do" action of leaving town. Yes, I understand the risks of staying, but I'm just afraid that by encouraging people who are not in surge areas or areas prone to flooding to leave, you're packing the freeways with people who might get stuck on them in cars that Nature will use like a 5 year old child discovering the joys of collision for the first time.

"The road conditions are terrible, people are only moving 10 miles in 10 hours. EVERYONE LEAVE!"

Mind boggling.

'rita

mmm... tequila and lime juice. That's pretty much the only way I want to have a rita right now. Unfortunately it looks like I'm going to have a bigger, less alcoholic, one shoved down my throat.

Hurricane Rita, like everything in Texas, is looking like it's putting Katrina to shame. With any luck, the damage to the city will not be as Texas sized, but Galveston will surely get its ass kicked.

What am I doing? I'm pretty much stuck sticking it out. I've been wavering for a day about leaving. So far I've made the right decision. The three major hurricane evacuation routes, I-10, 45, and 290, are multi-laned parking lots. The medians are the resting places for those cars who have overheated (from the strain of moving at less than 3 miles an hour - this is not one of those made up numbers, 9 hours, 24 miles) or have run out of gas.

I am packed. I have the dog stuff packed. I do not have the car packed because I don't even have the vaguest idea of how to do that. However, I'm not ready to go yet. Until I see cars moving on I45 at a pace that would get me to Dallas in less than 8 hours, I'm not going. I cannot afford to be on the highway in a 2 seater convertible with 2 dogs on drugs in the heat, keeping my a/c off to conserve gas... If in 5 hours the traffic drops because they've opened the southbound lanes of these highways to northbound traffic, then I will leave.

I feel like shit. I need sleep. I need my mother to stop calling me preventing me from getting any and telling me to do things that are more dangerous than staying still. I'm just very tired.

Saturday, September 10, 2005

katrina

I keep forgetting that when I get all pissed off and tense and it starts affecting my sleep, that I can unload some of the internal stress into a rant, tuck it into a nice little html envelope and send it into blogland and be done with it.

Since I'm not updating any of these blogs with any regularity, something I would have initially reserved for the be appalled blog I'm going to just stick here.

Things that are stuck in my craw:

To "F the President": No, you fuckwit, it's not "Blame" it's accountability, and it's not a "game" it's your fucking job.

To Babs: Was four years in the White House not long enough to teach you how not to say really stupid things in public?

To the black community: Yes, this is a tragedy that affected black Americans WAY more than white. NO question about it. But, do you really think the response was bad because the victims were black, or could it be that the response was bad because the administration was off with their thumbs stuck up their asses in Iraq, that people who needed the most help were the poor, and that the REAL tragedy, and one that is pervasive and should not be ignored, is that the population of poor are growing, and that THE POOR ARE PRIMARILY BLACK? Isn't this the bottom line, not that the administration doesn't care about saving black people? I just think that framing the accusation as "the administration hates black people" is the wrong tack to take because it gives them something to argue about. They LOVE arguing because that, in turn, gives them something with which to distract the public from realizing that they keep giving tax breaks to the rich. Make them own up to the REAL disaster! Make the case that poverty is growing and that the poor are mostly black. They can't argue with this, and because poverty usually plays out in the public in terms of crime and drugs, Katrina is one of the few vehicles that allows the public to be made aware of the poverty and be sympathetic instead of afraid! This is an opportunity! Don't blow it by reacting like a victim, Mr. West! Take control and be an activist!

To the press: You guys have the opportunity of an 8 year presidency right now. The public has their eyes open. There's no way for the administration to spin this and look good. Don't let them stop showing the dead. While I understand protecting the privacy of grief and mourning, at some level it's important for the public to actually have visceral evidence of tragedy. If nothing else will spur them into action, let horror and disgust be the motivator. Hiding the dead serves ONLY to squash that visceral response. That's why Bush won't show the coffins of the dead as they arrive back from Iraq. It's not to protect the families, it's to protect his image and public support for the war. I'm afraid that the ban for Katrina is for a similar purpose. The public doesn't gain anything by having its news sanitized. The news needs to reflect the nasty, pustulating sores of society. Of course, it doesn't need to be sensationalized, just reported on. If seeing the dead turns people's stomachs, well, then, maybe they'll start voting for officials who treat war and the risks of nature a little less glibly. So... KEEP POINTING YOUR GODDAMN FINGERS AND DON'T FUCKING STOP UNTIL THEY'RE ALL GONE!!! Impeached. Resigned. Fired... I don't care. I just want them gone...

To Jon Stewart: Marry me?