That wasn't a lead-in to another blog about the rain.
I started this blog with a serious intention to keep it up with at least weekly posts, but that hasn't happened so much. Busy, busy.
Being back in school is stimulating, much like being chased down by large farming machinery would be. I'm taking an algebra class which I hope will end soon, because I'm hanging on to a B right now, and it's slipping. The sooner it ends, the higher my grade will be, I'm convinced. Hopefully this is the last math class I'll ever have to take.
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Monday, January 7, 2008
Here comes the rain again
The joy and the downfall to living on the beautiful marina is all that water.
I often brag to my contemporaries that I live literally a stone's-throw from the water. I have a friend in Columbus OH who has a lovely brick house in the heritage district there, with twice my square footage, and I tell him how lucky he is all the time. Well, he recently reminded me that he has to drive quite a way to get a water view, so I know I'm lucky too.
But last Friday reminded me that the location I live in and love comes with a cost. Right around mid-day, the 5th most severe storm in half a century was battering California, coinciding with the seasonal high tide and easterly winds keeping water from exiting the mouth of the Bay. This group of events backed up the storm drains, and my street was flooded. Everything on the ground floor of our building and those surrounding was in danger. This neighborhood has flooded before (2005), and residents who had to endure and rebuild from the damages last time were bracing for a rerun. I ran home from work as soon as I could, and we sandbagged our garage door (heavily -- I'm ready to build a fox hole, should that need ever arise), and battened down the hatches.
Thankfully, the tide went out in the afternoon, the storm drains cleared up, and before anything serious happened, the river that was my street had gone out to sea.
In the midst of the scare, a couple of noteworthy events reinforced my optimism about humanity:
First, our friend Ed who works for the City but lives 20 miles away came down from home on his day off and gathered his crew to sandbag my garage door for Kristi because he knew I would be at work when the water was at its highest. That's like something Mother Theresa would do (you know, if Mother Theresa had a truck and a bunch of sandbags). I don't know what I did in a past life to deserve a guy like him in my present one, but I sure am thankful for the selflessness he has displayed many times over the course of our friendship.
After I got home, I went to the City corp yard where they have a big pile of sand and bags to put it in, and there was a guy there named Ron who helped me fill up about 30 sand bags. He said he lived down here on the marina too, so he was very aware of what I was doing. I assumed he was a City worker, assigned to help in the yard. He wasn’t; just a neighborhood guy who spent the day helping people fill up their sand bags. He’d been out there in the rain since the morning, just knowing that all of his neighbors would be in and out of there all day. We brought him some coffee, and I offered to have a cold beer ready any time he walks by my house. Was a cold beer the neighborly thing to offer to a sock-soaked guy manning a shovel at a sand pile in the rain?
I often brag to my contemporaries that I live literally a stone's-throw from the water. I have a friend in Columbus OH who has a lovely brick house in the heritage district there, with twice my square footage, and I tell him how lucky he is all the time. Well, he recently reminded me that he has to drive quite a way to get a water view, so I know I'm lucky too.
But last Friday reminded me that the location I live in and love comes with a cost. Right around mid-day, the 5th most severe storm in half a century was battering California, coinciding with the seasonal high tide and easterly winds keeping water from exiting the mouth of the Bay. This group of events backed up the storm drains, and my street was flooded. Everything on the ground floor of our building and those surrounding was in danger. This neighborhood has flooded before (2005), and residents who had to endure and rebuild from the damages last time were bracing for a rerun. I ran home from work as soon as I could, and we sandbagged our garage door (heavily -- I'm ready to build a fox hole, should that need ever arise), and battened down the hatches.
Thankfully, the tide went out in the afternoon, the storm drains cleared up, and before anything serious happened, the river that was my street had gone out to sea.
In the midst of the scare, a couple of noteworthy events reinforced my optimism about humanity:
First, our friend Ed who works for the City but lives 20 miles away came down from home on his day off and gathered his crew to sandbag my garage door for Kristi because he knew I would be at work when the water was at its highest. That's like something Mother Theresa would do (you know, if Mother Theresa had a truck and a bunch of sandbags). I don't know what I did in a past life to deserve a guy like him in my present one, but I sure am thankful for the selflessness he has displayed many times over the course of our friendship.
After I got home, I went to the City corp yard where they have a big pile of sand and bags to put it in, and there was a guy there named Ron who helped me fill up about 30 sand bags. He said he lived down here on the marina too, so he was very aware of what I was doing. I assumed he was a City worker, assigned to help in the yard. He wasn’t; just a neighborhood guy who spent the day helping people fill up their sand bags. He’d been out there in the rain since the morning, just knowing that all of his neighbors would be in and out of there all day. We brought him some coffee, and I offered to have a cold beer ready any time he walks by my house. Was a cold beer the neighborly thing to offer to a sock-soaked guy manning a shovel at a sand pile in the rain?
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
What a start to a new year
If the ringing-in party was any indication, 2008 is going to be a rip roaring good time.
Bob, Bill, Cathy, Chuck, Darrell, Deb, Doug, Greg, Greg, Jeremy, Kim, Kristi, Kristy, Lynn, Lori, Lori, Max and a good number of our kids all have an alibi for at least a portion of the evening.
This was our fifth annual. We've had some good ones in the past, but 2008 took the cake for me. Repeat customers, please chime in.
(Props: Chuck, Bill, Deb, and Max have attended - no, driven - all five)
Not all of our good friends could make it, but I'm very thankful for the mix that was here (and about those who weren't, I lovingly say, fuck em - they shoulda been). The Playboy Mansion may have had a (slightly) sexier party, but there weren't more laughs there. And the food and drink weren't as good there either. Kudos to Chuck for heading up the R&D Team for the menu (a beef martini? seriously). Thanks, everyone, for bringing your savory gems, sharp wit, verbal jabs, just desserts, and clean close shaves.
Jeremy left with a good head start before Greg even got here and got going. Not one to waste time though, he got up to speed pretty quickly. Once Kristy has the baby, we'll all have to get back together and pick up where we left off. We almost got Max to do the baby, we did get Darrell to do the Apache, and we had to stop Bill from being a sucka MC (I like Rob Base too, man). Kim started a chant about Kristi that I could only hear from the other room ("shirt! shirt! shirt! shirt!" - not sure if there was a poker game of some sort going on in there, but that's usually a good chant at a party), Deb added to her list of victims of the spit take (good bonding experience) and I dumped an entire coffee martini on an innocent bystander ("shirt! shirt! shirt!" - oh, sorry). No shortage of laughter.
We've been reflecting on it since we closed up (at about 4:30 a.m., with the hardcore partiers), and I just wanted to thank everyone for your contributions to a great time and a terrific start to a so-far banner year. There were too many highlights to list and too many libations to remember them all anyway.
Good friends, good times...
Bob, Bill, Cathy, Chuck, Darrell, Deb, Doug, Greg, Greg, Jeremy, Kim, Kristi, Kristy, Lynn, Lori, Lori, Max and a good number of our kids all have an alibi for at least a portion of the evening.
This was our fifth annual. We've had some good ones in the past, but 2008 took the cake for me. Repeat customers, please chime in.
(Props: Chuck, Bill, Deb, and Max have attended - no, driven - all five)
Not all of our good friends could make it, but I'm very thankful for the mix that was here (and about those who weren't, I lovingly say, fuck em - they shoulda been). The Playboy Mansion may have had a (slightly) sexier party, but there weren't more laughs there. And the food and drink weren't as good there either. Kudos to Chuck for heading up the R&D Team for the menu (a beef martini? seriously). Thanks, everyone, for bringing your savory gems, sharp wit, verbal jabs, just desserts, and clean close shaves.
Jeremy left with a good head start before Greg even got here and got going. Not one to waste time though, he got up to speed pretty quickly. Once Kristy has the baby, we'll all have to get back together and pick up where we left off. We almost got Max to do the baby, we did get Darrell to do the Apache, and we had to stop Bill from being a sucka MC (I like Rob Base too, man). Kim started a chant about Kristi that I could only hear from the other room ("shirt! shirt! shirt! shirt!" - not sure if there was a poker game of some sort going on in there, but that's usually a good chant at a party), Deb added to her list of victims of the spit take (good bonding experience) and I dumped an entire coffee martini on an innocent bystander ("shirt! shirt! shirt!" - oh, sorry). No shortage of laughter.
We've been reflecting on it since we closed up (at about 4:30 a.m., with the hardcore partiers), and I just wanted to thank everyone for your contributions to a great time and a terrific start to a so-far banner year. There were too many highlights to list and too many libations to remember them all anyway.
Good friends, good times...
Saturday, December 29, 2007
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