TGIF

See how things have improved? Just a couple of weeks ago I had to link to happy baby animal images just to get through the day and this week, No Baby Animal Images! Things are looking up! Okay, not looking up but at least they’re not dieing of dehydration while trapped on the roof any longer.

And Shrub did kind of more or less around about, nearly, almost apologize for his rather large part of the whole deadly mess – which is a sight better then he will ever do for what has happened in Iraq. I do plan on skipping entirely his speech Thursday night where he announces the feds will be spending more along the Gulf Coast over the next few years then they have all ready spent in The Gulf... Dogger needs a bath and in our house that takes presidents over The President.

Mini Kitty is scheduled to arrive today and I want to get the house tidied up and that includes Dogger as well. It probably also means cleaning the bathroom, kitchen, living room, dinning room table and vacuuming the carpets as well. In one night. I did some acute cleaning over the weekend but most of that has gone the way of all things from the past – it is a pleasant memory and I wish I had taken more pictures while it was here. Sigh.

Speaking of things that seem to be staying around. That bitch Ophelia is not getting the hint. I didn’t realize that weather systems could have social anxiety! I mean girl friend is just sitting there on the outskirts playing with her split ends pissing around and wishing she had checked to see what all the other storms were wearing before she came to the party. She’s really pissed that Katrina has been gone for two weeks and she still is getting all the press. It’s really making her feel inadequate because her sustained winds are “only” 80 miles and hour and everyone keeps telling her about Katrina’s sustained winds and now Ophelia is thinking about padding hers just to stay competitive.

I got an email from one of my land locked friends back in Texas:

Diana,

I wanted to see if you were alright from the storm. Is your family alright? I didn't know if I could get through on the phone. Of course,this may not get through if your area was hit badly. I just wanted to check on you and see what was going on.

I had to write him right back to assure him that up here in Raleigh we aren’t under water or experiencing any failure of utilites from the storm at all. I mean, like nothing. I also think my friend may need a little bit of a geography refresher as to where I live and where the water is from here. Answer? A long way away. Storms do come here but to be really destructive this far inland, they have to be a very nasty storm – see Fran, see Floyd. Isabella caused a lot of damage in the western part of the state, but not here. It depends on where they make landfall and how fast the storm moves or does not move and how much wind it has and how much rain it carries with it. He bases his weather anxiety from a life time of tornados and watches and warnings and nasty storms that sneak up behind you and destroy your house before you can do anything about it. But they don't get the kind of coverage that hurricanes do.

It was sweet he wrote though, but I guess that the Katrina fiasco and the resultant media attention to the aftermath really got people keyed up and paranoid about storms. I was that away about tornados. There would be a partially fierce one somewhere in the state and the next time it clouded over where I was it would make me anxious.

When I wrote him back I mentioned that my parents are coming up this weekend. He wrote back “Are they evacuating!? Or are they just coming for a visit?” I assured him they are coming up to go see Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me, they are not on the run for their lives. I saw it advertised weeks ago and after prolonged family conferencing we decided we did want to go and we hammered out which show we wanted to see and I got the tickets. I’m very excited about it.