Tag: Climate

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Okay, Not how I planed to spend this week.

As I’m sure you’ve heard by now, there are multiple fires burning in Southern California.

Tuesday afternoon I got an evacuation notice on my phone. Then, there was a helicopter flying overhead announcing mandatory evacuation. Then there was another evacuation notice on my phone, and finally there was the sheriffs department driving up & down the streets announcing evacuation on their loudspeakers.

Hmm, says I, they must want us to leave.

I suspected it was coming and I’d already planned to stage stuff in the event there was an evacuation. I didn’t get a chance to execute my cunning plan before the evacuation was upon me.

So I grabbed some stuff, put the dog in the car and away we went. 

By the time we left the house, it looked very much like somehow the neighborhood had been relocated to Mars on a very bad day.

Jesse was freaked out and would not settle down.

I was annoyed by that and of course the usual California driving skills or more properly lack thereof.

I made a brief stop, or what was supposed to be a brief stop at a storage locker where I unloaded a bunch of stuff in an attempt to give the dog more room to lie down & relax. This as it turns out was an error.

While I was able to offload, I wasn’t able to get back on the damn freeway. Either the exits were closed, or they were blocked by the aforementioned Excellent California Drivers. Many of whom wouldn’t allow a change of lanes. At least one of whom used the emergency lane to “get ahead” and forced me out of the lane so I was unable to get on the freeway safely. 

Mind you by this point we were 15 – 20 miles away from the evacuation zone and in no danger whatsoever. This was just normal California assholery. It is also the kind of behavior that begets freeway shootings.

I figured “Screw it” and stopped for gas. Then I found a whole string of entrance ramps blocked off forcing me to take surface streets parallel to the freeway until just before Pomona.

Once on the freeway it was a simple matter to get to Orange County and stay with some friends. It’s good to have great friends that will put you up in a pinch. It’s even better to have friends that will put you and your big ass dog up when they have a lovely pet free home and it is pet free for a reason.

My friends have gone above and beyond in this instance and I truly have no idea how to thank them.

At this point I know the firefighters are doing all they can do. I know that there’re no guarantees but I hate not knowing what is likely to happen. Is my house going to burn? Is it not? If it burns, then I have a clear direction. If it’s not going to burn, I’d really rather be home and not imposing on my friends like this.

In an attempt to minimize the mess and stuff that a dog invariably brings into your life, I had Jesse groomed today, while I was at it I had my car washed and my hair cut too. My hope with Jesse being groomed was that he’d shed a little less and wouldn’t be in any way offensive in terms of dog stink.

He’s been sleeping since we got back and I know I’m going to have to take him out on at least one, maybe two more walks tonight.

I don’t really think about it, but having a fenced in back yard is super nice. Their yard is not fenced in, so I’ve been walking Jesse on his leash a lot. Normally Jesse & I go for our morning walk, then I leave the sliders open so he comes and goes as he wishes the rest of the day.

If I move off the mountain, either because of the house burning down, or just because It’s time for me to move on, I will be looking for new digs that have a fenced in back yard after this experience, I’ve decided that is a must have.

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Ahhh That was so nice…

Thunder over the mountains and then the sky opened up for a little while.

We needed rain. The unrelenting heat and nasty air quality have been brutal.

For just an hour or so the air was cleansed of dust and little super annoying clouds of gnats that insist on flying in eyes and up noses.

Jesse and I both face the clouds of annoying bugs on our morning walks.

But best of all, the stench of whatever the fuck kind of pot one or two of my neighbors are smoking was washed from the air and the coolish breezes removed it from my house.

This stuff, whatever it is, smells like the dirty gym sock you blew a couple of loads into, then forgot behind your bed for 2 months, where the cat pissed on it repeatedly.

It’s pretty damn revolting! Give me cigarette, or cigar smoke any fucking day. If I thought I was going to have to deal with this for the rest of my life, I’d start smoking Marlboro Reds again, at least then I’d be smelling something not entirely unpleasant.

A comedian described New York City as a horrific stench of body odor, weed, and piss. At least all I smell is the rancid stench of weed.

It was nice to have the rain falling and just the sound of rain for an hour or so. It was calming, although Jesse didn’t care much for the thunder, he also wasn’t panicked by it. I take that as a good sign because if we move East of the Mississippi, thunder storms are a way of life.

Neither Jesse or I have been sleeping well. The crazy lady neighbor has taken to wailing, screaming, & cussing between 2 and 5 AM. 

Sometimes she goes from dead silence to full insanity in an instant. It’s like she wakes up screaming. Other times, she’ll work herself slowly into whatever froth she’s aiming for.

If she works herself slowly into a rage, Neither Jesse, or I pay much attention until she’s bellowing so loud her voice is echoing off the canyon walls. When she goes zero to 1000% in a second Jesse and I are startled awake and both of us have a hard time getting back to sleep.

It’s funny, because he’ll have his nose against mine, when I open my eyes he’s looking at me very intently as if to say, “What the hell is that about?”

Much as I like having the widows open. I’m looking forward to it being cool enough during the night to close the house. That would stop the disturbances. The random screaming and the clouds of pot or whatever.

The smoke locks my sinuses up within a couple of minutes and my throat starts to swell like when I have a cold. As luck would have it the one neighbor is an insomniac. So he’ll be powering through his pound of shit at all hours of the day & night.

I can literally go to sleep fine, then the wind will change & I’ll wake up choking because my sinuses and throat are obstructed. I’ve gotten up at 3am to hit the Flonase then waited for it to kick in before going back to bed.

The past few weeks I’ve gotten the double whammy. One of their habits will wake me up and just as I head back to bed and start to drift off,  the other one will start up so I’ve just started staying up.

This means that I’m getting maybe 4 hours of sleep a night and I really need at least 6. It’s making me cranky, impatient, & dopey as hell.

We might get some more rain tonight and into tomorrow morning. That would be nice. Who knows, Maybe for once I’ll wake those idiots up because I’m dancing naked in the rain at 3 am.

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Even the dog is over it

Climate change my ass!

We’ve had weeks of spring, the dog is fully into the quarter’s shedding so his coat is thinning. He looked at the wet snow shifting between rain, hail, sleet, then back to snow.

He looked outside this morning at the accumulated snow then turned around & went back to bed.

This is super annoying! The snow is that wet heavy stuff that’s a pain to clear.

The back deck says it’s 35°F but still it’s snowing & sticking.

On the plus side, thus far it’s not the predicted 18”

On the down side it’s more than the revised prediction of 1”

Now, we’re just waiting for the snow to stop. I’m pretty sure that it’s only going to be myself and the young neighbor at the end of the street doing snow clearing. Everyone else had the good sense to get the hell out of Dodge.

We finally got breaks in snowfall around noon and spent the next 3 hours clearing. I think we got 7-9 inches of snow, which was more than enough. As I mentioned it was the wet heavy snow that is a pain to remove, but which must be removed before it freezes to the pavement.

When I say breaks, it was interesting, There were bands of snow, then periods of sunlight. The temp also started rising so working outside wasn’t to bad either.

Tomorrow there’s supposed to be more snow but the temperatures are supposed to be lower during the night, I’m hoping that means the snow will be light and fluffy.

Later in the week it’s going to be sunny and in the 60s. That’s going to make a really big mess. 

There’s one good thing about this. 

We haven’t had any idiot snow players.

Jesse being outside running around in the snow while I was out clearing the street tired him out he’s snoring on the couch right now while I negotiate with my my aching back about the next move I’m going to make.