Imminence

Saturday morning, still nothing much happening with the ocean, waves are average with the tide incoming.  Nothing out of the ordinary.

The sky is heavy, though, and the humidity is up around 200% or so....thick as pea soup.  It's the northern reaches of the storm, you can see it on the radar map. 

Traffic is light, some optimists with surf boards on the roof, a lot of pickups with one guy each, maybe contractors still boarding up windows, or something.  Pablo and I walked our two miles, met one runner and three people on bikes, and a lady walking two small dogs who said she is leaving soon.  Pablo will go with my mother to a relative's house inland, one less thing I need to worry about.  I'll see about leaving once something is actually happening.  I'm not big on doing things "in case."

Right now there's a bunch of little kids (like K-5 ages) playing on top of the sea wall.  Looks like a bad case of 'let's go to the beach to see the hurricane.'

I'm ready for breakfast, then laundry, then a shower, and we see what happens next. 

Beautiful day, let's go to the beach!

So why is it that everyone is coming to see the beach today, and having seen the one- to two-foot waves and glaring sunshine, leaving disappointed?  They were expecting maybe a train wreck?

Oh no, I almost forgot - maybe they are trying to see the hurricane!  Well, guess what?  She's not here yet.  Give her time, she's gotta dump a lot of water on someplace else, first. 

Twixt the terremoto and Irene

Of all the odd places to find myself, here I am, in post-earthquake and pre-hurricane New Jersey.  Yes, New Jersey.  The newest third-world place on the planet.

When Pablito and I went out for our last of the evening piss, there was lightning over the ocean.  Now the rain has started again, after an afternoon and evening of sun and clouds and pretty colors at dusk.  Not the hurricane-rain, this is still the high-pressure-system-from-the-midwest-rain.  No matter, it is still rain, and we are all feeling sorta squishy here, there's been so much of it lately.  I expect to wake one day to find myself moldy, with mushrooms growing between my toes. 

For those readers who don't know, Pablito, aka Pablo, is my Chihuahua.  He routinely goes out for a bedtime piss, if it is not pouring - Chi's don't do water, you know - and gives me a chance to take a reading on what's doing out on our edge of the world.  Last week or two, not much has been happening.  The weather changed, the bennies went home, and we are in fall mode, even tho the calendar still says August.  Happens every year, halfway thru August it turns to fall, and that's all she wrote.

Most years, it's a relief.  No more idiots leaving their trash on my lawn, or trying to wash off the sand with my hose.  No more peeps from Paterson having a domestic in the middle of the street.  There are places to park, and no more traffic!!!!

This year, it's weird.  The other day we had an earthquake - a real rolly-jiggly kind of one, complete with a rumble, LA-style.  And now we're waiting for a hurricane to come up the coast and make more of a mess of what's already not in such hot shape.  Sure, we got the main drag repaved this summer - but all they did for the drainage (of which there isn't much, in this town) is move the floods from where they were to new places.  We're still figuring out where those new places are.  Pour enough water on it, and I'm sure there will be more surprises yet to come.

The suspense is killing me.  I would love for this storm to get here and get it over with, instead of suffering days worth of warnings and speculation.  In that regard, I think I prefer earthquakes to hurricanes.  There's no pregame show for an earthquake.