Today's been a long day in a few hours. I got to bed late - after a couple hours on the sofa with heating pads on my back that's held together with titanium plates and screws and my neck that's suffered multiple whiplash injuries - one hard enough to bend the frame of the truck and buckle the bed. The guy that repaired the truck wondered why the back window of the truck hadn't been broken by my head and I could tell him that the little Nissan truck had very good head restraints.
Woke up after far too few hours of sleep so I could get to an appointment with the eye surgeon. The better half went with me because the doc wanted to dilate my eyes and for me that will be a four or five hour recovery so I needed a driver for the return trip. The doc's happy, as one eye was 20/25 and the other 20/30 with no correction - on a good day that would have been 20/20 and 20/25 but the "tired" from lack of sleep detracts from that score.
Since we're halfway to Costco, we might as well go there so she'd made a list. I added Nutella because we were on the last jar. I needed to stop at Home Depot to get a spare key for the new riding mower. The HD out by us has them and I even know where to look but we discovered that the HD nearer Costco is too "citified" - all I saw were walk behind mowers - so they don't stock the "universal tractor key" that fits MTD and Craftsman riding mowers. Costco had everything on our list and most people were masked - even a four-year-old, when she wasn't pulling the mask down to put popcorn in her mouth.
We came out of Costco to find the dark clouds we'd seen earlier were ready to release some rain as there had been a few sprinkles. We got home without being in any serious rain and got all the groceries inside and put away. I headed for bed as I still couldn't see well and being in the dark doesn't change that much. I heard some thunder and then torrential rain and wind so I got up - in the now totally dark house with UPS units going "Beep! Beep! Beep!" - and took care of silencing the noise and getting us some light. Then the Weather Radio goes off with a Thunderstorm Warning - somewhat late, NOAA - but with the oddest description I've ever heard.
'The unusual Tropical Depression in the Gulf of Mexico has spawned some F6 tornadoes which have scoured areas of Mississippi and Alabama, picking up dirt and in some instances animals and taking that debris to altitudes of 65,000 feet and greater, then dropping the remains in thunderstorms tens or hundreds of miles away. If the current thunderstorms leave brown or reddish-brown debris, it is likely some of this debris and you should wait for the rain to end and only clear the debris if you have a Tyvek suit, rubber boots, heavy rubber gloves, an organic-vapor rated respirator and either chemical goggles or a full face shield. Or call your City or County Hazardous Waste Disposal number.'
'F6 Tornado?' That's an F5 with even faster wind speeds and it's a vacuum cleaner that just scours the ground and leaves it empty. That's great information for those of us who keep good batteries in their Weather Radios but what about Joe "I never change batteries"? Power's off - our co-op is showing more than 80% of their meters out and Georgia Power's outage map has 1,783,461 meters out (out of 2.6 million) and I know from experience that those maps get behind very quickly in large outages so probably closer to 100% out for both - so Joe and thousands of others won't have the Weather Radio or TV and they may not have a working radio in their vehicle, if there's a local station with backup power. Where will those people find out about this? Georgia Power also has a crawl at the bottom of the map: 'Assessing damage. Expect 48 to 96 hours before complete restoration.' That message is intended to inspire confidence? I need to go clean the solar panels out back and see if the storm damaged the equipment shed - I may need a generator and a week or more of gasoline.
I checked the thankfully undamaged shed, got out the pressure washer and made a path down the back drive to the road so I could wash things down into the storm ditch. I'll have about 16 gallons of treated gas left for the inverter generator when I finish that washing, so about 16 days of generator power plus the gas that's in the vehicles which is maybe another 20 gallons.
When I was cleaning the solar panel that powers the LED lighting in the shed, I found a little wad of yellow twine on that roof but when I picked up that "twine", it was very fine, blonde, curly hair - with a bit of pink ribbon at one end and bit of pale skin at the other. When cleaning the back drive, I saw something shiny and picked it up. It was an inch long chunk of very plump dark-skinned finger with a wedding band in the groove of that finger.
I don't think they're telling us the whole story.
---
End.
Woke up after far too few hours of sleep so I could get to an appointment with the eye surgeon. The better half went with me because the doc wanted to dilate my eyes and for me that will be a four or five hour recovery so I needed a driver for the return trip. The doc's happy, as one eye was 20/25 and the other 20/30 with no correction - on a good day that would have been 20/20 and 20/25 but the "tired" from lack of sleep detracts from that score.
Since we're halfway to Costco, we might as well go there so she'd made a list. I added Nutella because we were on the last jar. I needed to stop at Home Depot to get a spare key for the new riding mower. The HD out by us has them and I even know where to look but we discovered that the HD nearer Costco is too "citified" - all I saw were walk behind mowers - so they don't stock the "universal tractor key" that fits MTD and Craftsman riding mowers. Costco had everything on our list and most people were masked - even a four-year-old, when she wasn't pulling the mask down to put popcorn in her mouth.
We came out of Costco to find the dark clouds we'd seen earlier were ready to release some rain as there had been a few sprinkles. We got home without being in any serious rain and got all the groceries inside and put away. I headed for bed as I still couldn't see well and being in the dark doesn't change that much. I heard some thunder and then torrential rain and wind so I got up - in the now totally dark house with UPS units going "Beep! Beep! Beep!" - and took care of silencing the noise and getting us some light. Then the Weather Radio goes off with a Thunderstorm Warning - somewhat late, NOAA - but with the oddest description I've ever heard.
'The unusual Tropical Depression in the Gulf of Mexico has spawned some F6 tornadoes which have scoured areas of Mississippi and Alabama, picking up dirt and in some instances animals and taking that debris to altitudes of 65,000 feet and greater, then dropping the remains in thunderstorms tens or hundreds of miles away. If the current thunderstorms leave brown or reddish-brown debris, it is likely some of this debris and you should wait for the rain to end and only clear the debris if you have a Tyvek suit, rubber boots, heavy rubber gloves, an organic-vapor rated respirator and either chemical goggles or a full face shield. Or call your City or County Hazardous Waste Disposal number.'
'F6 Tornado?' That's an F5 with even faster wind speeds and it's a vacuum cleaner that just scours the ground and leaves it empty. That's great information for those of us who keep good batteries in their Weather Radios but what about Joe "I never change batteries"? Power's off - our co-op is showing more than 80% of their meters out and Georgia Power's outage map has 1,783,461 meters out (out of 2.6 million) and I know from experience that those maps get behind very quickly in large outages so probably closer to 100% out for both - so Joe and thousands of others won't have the Weather Radio or TV and they may not have a working radio in their vehicle, if there's a local station with backup power. Where will those people find out about this? Georgia Power also has a crawl at the bottom of the map: 'Assessing damage. Expect 48 to 96 hours before complete restoration.' That message is intended to inspire confidence? I need to go clean the solar panels out back and see if the storm damaged the equipment shed - I may need a generator and a week or more of gasoline.
I checked the thankfully undamaged shed, got out the pressure washer and made a path down the back drive to the road so I could wash things down into the storm ditch. I'll have about 16 gallons of treated gas left for the inverter generator when I finish that washing, so about 16 days of generator power plus the gas that's in the vehicles which is maybe another 20 gallons.
When I was cleaning the solar panel that powers the LED lighting in the shed, I found a little wad of yellow twine on that roof but when I picked up that "twine", it was very fine, blonde, curly hair - with a bit of pink ribbon at one end and bit of pale skin at the other. When cleaning the back drive, I saw something shiny and picked it up. It was an inch long chunk of very plump dark-skinned finger with a wedding band in the groove of that finger.
I don't think they're telling us the whole story.
---
End.
