I’m determined not to obsessively check weather updates over the next few days, but it’s hard. Hurricane Hilary seems pretty nasty and could bring flooding along the south Pacific coast and also to several western states that normally don’t deal with this kind of weather event. It could also exacerbate the excessive heat the southwest and midwest are experiencing, AND ultimately contribute to the wildfire issues the northwest coast is grappling with. We’ve just seen how hurricane-spawned winds can impact an area as it did with Hawaii.
Since I’m still not ready to jump into writing the seventh book of the Neverending Saga, I’m continuing my binge watching of “Suits.” I spent a goodly portion of my adult life working with and for attorneys in many settings: family and probate, corporate, environmental, commercial real estate, and financial. Still, I can’t say how accurate “Suits” is in matters of law–I’m watching for the characters, narrative arcs, and witty banter. It’s been a good diversion throughout August.
Watching television always comes with a sense of guilt for me. I have no idea why. Maybe it’s because many years of my adult life were spent without even owning a TV. I was never one of those people who turns on a TV as soon as I got home or woke up or settled down for the night. I watched sitcoms in the Nineties so I could join in “water cooler” conversations at work. I’ve rarely been able to adhere to a weekly schedule to watch shows, so streaming services are ideal for me. There are some shows Tom and I have watched together in the evenings. “Downton Abbey,” “Yellowstone,” “The Crown,” and “Bridgerton” come to mind in most recent years, and also a few comedy series, but even with all those, I tend to watch them either when the entire series has completed or at least when a season is complete. In years past, I did that with “Absolutely Fabulous,” “Sex and the City,” and “West Wing.”
Maybe to offset guilt, when I’m watching shows solo, I often multitask by doing something creative at the same time. This morning, I washed a quilt we throw over the sofa in the office and call “the dog quilt,” since it’s mostly to protect the sofa from the dogs. It has lots of worn places and dog-gnawed places, so I’ve brought out the plaid and patterned cotton fabric to begin cutting squares to start patching those spots today while I watch “Suits.”
The mending doesn’t have to be pretty–the dogs won’t care. This will give the quilt a few more years of use, which is better than letting it end up in a landfill.
In the season of “Suits” I’m watching now, a new character showed up and I kept wondering why I immediately liked him and felt like I knew him. Finally I looked him up and realized the actor, Dulé Hill, played Charlie Young on “West Wing” and was one of my favorite characters.
Another character showed up played by an actor who isn’t familiar to me, Scott Lawrence. I looked him up, and he’s been in lots of movies and TV shows, some of which I’m familiar with but never watched.
In researching him, I discovered that a LOT of people think this actor could portray Barack Obama. I see the similarities, but to me, he looks more like one of my Action Figure Obamas–this one:
That’s the 2007 candidate Obama manufactured by Jailbreak Toys®. I prefer the 2018 Factry© President Obama (also manufactured and distributed by Jailbreak Toys®). His hair, like many presidents, shows how the responsibilities and gravity of the office aged him.
Enough playing around. Tom just brought me the clean, dry, folded quilt. Time to start cutting fabric then sewing to the accompaniment of characters who can give me a refreshing break from the ones who live in my head without paying me a dime, despite the wealth several of them enjoy.
The storm is dumping rain here, and it’s expected to dump almost a year of rain in 24 hours. That’s right up there with the mudslides that happened when Death Valley got over a year of rain at once.
A friendly waiter at a restaurant I frequent says he his family live off of a dirt road. My apartment to and from is paved, but there’s a river going across the main street I’ve been going up and down daily for years now. I’ve seen that street flood to the middle of the road and above the curbs, but I haven’t seen rivers flowing across it. There are cross washes at intersections, not rivers jaywalking across the street!
This river is right next to a new set of apartments for low income, across a church. Seriously, someone should have known better. But, two days prior, the flooded signs showed up at the river crossing before the river arrived.
It’s only the beginning.
Please keep me posted on conditions there and how you and your area are doing. Comment on any of my posts. I’ll see it. Stay safe and home and dry. ❤ ️
It seems like I managed to escape severe damages. The new street jaywalking rivers deposited lots of mud from the washes they ventured out of. The water seeped under the window boxes outside, probably through the apartment foundation, but not through the window like most dirt. The interior walls around the windows were dry on this side, but the carpet was soaked 1-2 feet from those walls. I don’t expect the landlord maintenance to be able to get the water out of the carpet, but the outside painters in June should have done more repair and sealing work to those withered window box frames outside. This was fortunate, as we very nearly got a whole year of rain in a day and a night. This ancient glacier pit surrounded by mountains and volcanoes of ages past is all desert, but there is a thick hard clay layer. To pump water up, that layer has to be drilled through. Coversly, I guess to get all that water back deep into the ground, that clay layer also needs breaking up. So, mudslides were likely, just like Death Valley. I don’t know how those living along dirt roads fared, but judging from the mud left behind from over flowing washes, I would say they had it worse than my apartment seepage.
Thanks for the update. I’m so glad you didn’t get more water inside your place. I hope the water is starting to drain off and the rain is over.
Yeah, it’s drying a bit here, but thar wash next to the new low income apartments the river flowed into is just as muddy brown full of water. The wash that also overflowed near my apartment deposited lots of mud too and that intersection/escape route was blocked during the rain. It’s now cleared up more and passible, but the flowed water mud erosion was impressively carved like a super fire hose.
The apartment manager said her apartment door soaked up so much water that the paint bubbled and cracks appeared along the frame, into the light switch and down to an outlet.
I was fortunate.