Sunday - August 17, 2008

trying to blog

Yes, I’m still alive. These past few days have been very hectic for me. I’d planned to spend an afternoon at my brother’s, but that turned into 2 1/2 days. First because the project ran much longer than I expected. Then because all heck broke loose with the weather.

Or at least it appeared to. He lives a bit northwest of NYFC, so the television there is dominated by NY stations. And they had a storm. A big thunderstorm that moved rapidly east, and dumped a lot of rain along the way. But it might, just might, have the right kind of wind patterns that could cause a tornado. And the TV news people just went nuts. They had crews in the field. They had crews reporting from the airports. They had crews reporting from the west side, from mid town, from the western end of Long Island. Here’s the traffic cam shot of some bridge. Oh look, a cloud! Look, it’s dark!! We’re all gonna die! OMG it’s raining, hold your breath or else you’ll drown! Take cover right this instant!!! For over 2 hours that’s all that was on all 7 of the local channels. Doppler radar endlessly. With zoom. And little white dots that showed every last bolt of lightning. And are you prepared for a disaster and don’t drive into puddles because you could drown if they’re deeper than you thought. And are the hospitals prepared for an emergency and how would you get there anyway since the helicopters can’t fly in this wind and the ambulances can’t drive through floods and the wind is probably too high for rescue boats and anyway the boats can’t get up on the flooded streets in midtown anyway and we’re all gonna die!!!

It was a pretty intense storm. The sky got dark real fast, the wind came along, it rained real hard for half an hour, then the storm went past. But the TV was giving off it’s emergency BEEP every 20 seconds, with the flashing red trailer running across the screen : Get Indoors! Find Shelter! We’re All Gonna Die!!!11!

There was no tornado. A few trees fell down here and there, and the totally overtaxed power grid in Westchester County failed. But it always fails. And trees always fall down in Westchester and Long Island. Always. And the trains were running late, as usual. And there was a bit of local flooding, since the natural ground cover in that whole area is asphalt. But that’s about it. Chicken Little rides again.

No, I don’t take tornadoes lightly. If somehow a twister could form and somehow survive in the iron and concrete canyons of NYC it could do quite a bit of damage. And I suppose it was good that all the talking heads on the tube could go into Emergency Mode so quickly and professionally.  But it seemed like the greatest overreaction to a medium thunderstorm I’d ever seen. So much ado about nothing that you would have thought George Costanza got a job with the Weather Channel and the whole thing was some bizarre Seinfeld episode.

By the time I got back here Saturday it was time to go apartment hunting. We’re thinking of moving. This is a nice place, we’ve been here a decade, but the utility bills are fierce. The whole place is electric. Heat, cooking, everything. Ack! So ever few years when the lease comes due we look at other places in the area that go for the same rent. And they’re all slums. Always. But we have to go and look anyway.

The first place was a partially renovated 1840s house for the farmhands that had been split into 2 small apartments. There is a big sturdy chain link fence at the edge of the backyard, and on the other side is a highway. The busy end of the same highway in the picture actually. The owner had done a splap dash poor job of fixing up the kitchen and throwing some paint at the walls, but the windows were 19th century originals. So were the worn out floorboards, with gaps in them so big you could drop a rat right through. With next to no closets or storage space too. Hmm, no thanks.

The next place was a few miles up the road in some sleeply little town that was built when the railroad went through. In 1859. Which means that the houses there that are in really good repair are lovely, and the rest are termite traps. A town with no stores at all. No anything actually. This place was a dump too. There wasn’t a level inch in the whole place. And it was on the point of a sloping sharp triangular bit of land, so there was a main road right on the other side of the window - literally - on both sides of the house. But hey, the rent was cheap. And there were no termites. Because they’d been toasted. I looked around the clean and dry outside-entry basement, and I noticed that the great beams that held the place up had a crackled look to them. Freshly painted, but with some odd waffle - snakeskin like texture. I reached up to touch one, and a bit came away in my hand. It was black and powdery on the backside. WTF? Oh yeah, says the landlord, there was a bit of a fire down here a while back. A bit all right. The entire place went up. The only reasons the whole house didn’t collapse is because a) they used really big chunks of wood back in the day, and b) the place is right across the street from the fire house. And the fire siren. Which went off while we were there and brought conversation to a dead halt. Oh that? Oh you get used to it. We hardly even hear it anymore! Um, no thanks, I think I’ll look around a little bit more. We’ll let you know, Ok? Bye!

And today was double office cleaning. My usual Sunday work plus the Friday work I couldn’t get to because of the storm. But I did manage to snap a pic of some pretty low gas prices, a half mile down the road from that last apartment. Here’s hoping your local price is this low, or gets this low soon. Sayonara, and I’m off to help the wife pre-bowl tonight for the finals Tuesday. And then I can cook and do my own housework.

Posted by Drew458     on 08/17/2008 at 03:49 PM   
Filed Under: • Miscellaneous •  
• Comments (3) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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