I had an interesting sighting the other day. I was driving home and pulled up to a stop light. The dude in the car next to me was reading a blue sheet of paper, possibly a flyer or event invitation. Just as he finished his reading, the light turned green, at which point he wadded the sheet into a tight ball, dropped it out the window, and drove off.
He was driving a Prius.
Late last year Kimberly and I started ring shopping. We found a setting that she liked, and some time later settled on a beautiful stone. I picked up the finished ring in the middle of January and have since been planning my perfect moment. It dawned on me after a month that, given no pre-determined schedule or deadline, this is just the sort of thing that I’m apt to ponder for, well, ever. Last night, in a fit of spontaneity, I grabbed the ring from its super-duper-secret hiding place, knelt down on one knee, and proposed to Kimberly. Through the pounding in my chest and dull whooshing in my ears I remember sounding a bit like Corky from Life Goes On, but I must have gotten at least a few things right, as she accepted. Most of the rest of the evening was a flurry of laughing, giggling, and dancing in the kitchen. The giggling came entirely from her, of course. *ahem*
Later in the evening, about to turn in for the night, Kimberly was overcome with another wash of excitement. “We’re getting married!” she gleefully exclaimed. “We’ll never kiss another person. Never have sex with another person. Ever!”
In response to this, my brain stem briefly popped open one yellow reptilian eye to ask, “Wait, I’m sorry, but what’s that you say?”
So, while very new and unfamiliar, this feels good, it feels right. We’ve been thinking that November would be a nice time for a wedding, and we’ll keep you posted.
I’ve been reading a book by Richard Dawkins called “The God Delusion.” Interesting read, and he refers to a scale with seven milestones. Thought I’d put it out there and see what happens.
Yes, the poll is anonymous. Even I can’t see how you vote, so please do.
Oh, and the poll only appears on the home page.
If you haven’t been following the news, most of the Puget Sound area lost power at around 8pm last Thursday night. The outages were caused by a righteous bitch-slap of a wind storm which downed about 82 billion trees, most of which fell on nearby power lines. A large number of power poles couldn’t withstand the added weight and snapped as well. Folks at the various utility companies estimated that just over one million customers were affected (in the dark). Note that one customer is equal to one subscriber or household, and since they use a 2.8-humans-per-household average, there were over three million people sitting around wondering when they were going to be able to watch Seinfeld reruns and daytime soaps.
We’re fortunate enough to have a gas range, gas water heater, and gas fireplace, so we got on ok. It’s funny, though, how one’s priorities change the longer one finds oneself in this new environment. My first thought was, like many people, entertainment; What about the TV? What about movies? What about surfing the web? Whatever will I do?? Ultimately, we played Scrabble. We played a lot of Scrabble.
Next comes food, as you start contemplating the relative decay rates of milk vs. meat vs. cottage cheese vs. Velveeta. The Velveeta wins handily, by the way. Nothing else even comes close to its freakish longevity and just gets tossed out.
Next on the list, not far behind food concerns, is heat. As the first night wore on it got steadily colder in the house, even with the gas fireplace roaring away. We spent many hours huddled on the floor in front of the fire, and I can’t help but think that it’s similar to being on the moon with its 400 degree difference between light and dark. Leaving the fireplace’s 4 foot sphere of influence was a dreaded event, an action reserved for only the most dire of needs, the lot of which I’ll leave to your imagination. I realized on the third night that our thermostat bottoms out at 50, but with frozen puddles and bowls of dog water outside, I can easily assume that it was considerably less than 50 degrees in the house. We eventually rearranged the furniture and moved the couch within a couple feet of the fire.
At some point over the weekend we decided that buying a generator was a good idea. Evidently about three million other people came to that conclusion as well, as every store I called was sold out. Even the little DC to AC inverters you plug into your cigarette lighter were all gone. The reports that I got indicated that all stores in the state of Washington were sold out of any device that could power a light bulb, let alone a furnace. One Home Depot employee said that they’d received a shipment of 130 generators the night before and had sold out in a little over an hour. Another shipment of 40-some generators the same night sold out in 22 minutes. I was about an hour from departing for either Boise or Portland when a friend called to tell me that Lowes in Issaquah had 5 generators stacked up by the front door. I called to pay for one over the phone, and took it home that night. And Oh!
Let me just say that again.
OH! What a fantastic toy! I read the directions (mostly) and proceeded to rig my new personal power plant up to the house in the most frighteningly improper and fire code violating manner I could devise. I soon learned that there are some things that you really don’t want to do with a 5000 watt generator. I learned these lessons the loud “b’zappy” way. I learned them in the “wait, is that a bad smell?” way. Once connected properly, however, that little thing powered up the furnace, fridge, lights, lamps, stereo, TiVo, plasma and tube TV’s, vacuum cleaner, microwave and conventional ovens, and the dishwasher at the same time. Not bad for $500, and it increased my Spark Plug Grunt Score to 23.
As far as our house and property, we faired rather well. A tree fell onto our tubular steel gate, folding its previously uniform shape into something you’d expect to see in a Hellraiser movie. And we lost a shingle from the roof. At least I think it was ours. I found a stray shingle in the back yard, and while it looks like one of ours, I couldn’t see where it may have come from. I climbed out the bedroom window onto the roof and spent a bit of time shimmying around in an attempt to locate the origin of said shingle. I’m not really comfortable on rooftops so tend to go up there as little as possible, but this time wasn’t too bad. The air was crisp, the sun was peeking out between the clouds, and all was quiet and still. Well, except for the constant drone of chainsaws and generators, and the occasional tikka-tikka-tikka of falling leaves and twigs skittering down the slope of the roof. Abandoning my search for the chink in our house’s armor, I turned to shimmy my way back toward the bedroom window and realized that the tikka-tikka-tikka sound was not, after all, leaves and twigs. I instead found myself face to face with the source of the noise. Katie. The beagle. Just standing there, grinning wildly, her grossly oversized and slightly East-West eyeballs bulging from her head, her tail whizzing about in its odd figure eight-esque patterns. “Hi dad!” she said. “Whatcha doin can I help hey what’s that over there wow this is pretty high up I’ve never been this high before sure would be bad to fall from up here what’s the matter you look surprised do I have something in my nose?” I stared back at her for a long while and finally spoke the words that had been feverishly bouncing against the inside of my skull.
“What the fuck … ?”
Our particular ‘hood came back on this morning, which is fine with me I suppose. I’d gotten rather used to living off of a generator, and frankly I kinda liked it in a super geeky livin-off-the-grid sorta way. Of course, we can now do laundry, which’ll be nice not only for us, but for my office mates as well.
So here are some of the things that I learned and/or noticed living in a city without electricity:
As all of you locals experienced, and most everyone else heard, we had a bit of a snow storm last week. Snow in Seattle usually reveals people’s true bad-weather wisdom and driving skills, and this year proved to be no different.
On Wednesday night I was downstairs playing a game of Rainbow Six, Kimberly had just gone to bed. I heard a faint *thump thump*, what I thought was her knocking on the wall to tell me that I’d forgotten to unplug the subwoofer again, but it sounded a bit “off.” I went upstairs to see what was what, and she said it wasn’t her. Hmm, ok, no big thing.
The next morning was like any other; we got up, got ready, smooch smooch, off we go. A few minutes later I heard a similar *thump thump*, which sounded like it was coming from the fireplace or the basement. “Great,” I thought, “the water heater just asploded.” Actually, it was Kimberly kicking the snow off of her shoes before coming back into the house.
“Someone hit my fucking car!”
To avoid sliding down the hill, and to ensure that she could get to work, she’d parked her car at the top of the driveway on Wednesday evening, right where I’d parked my truck the night before. Someone had, in fact, hit her car.
We went to Enterprise the next morning to get a rental and met a mother and daughter doing the same. Apparently the daughter, about 16, had parked her 3-month-old Kia on the street as well. When she went out the next morning to head to work it was just light enough to see that one of the windows had been smashed out. She couldn’t see the rest of the car, nor did she feel like dealing with the issue. She went back to the house and asked her mom for a ride. By the time they left it had gotten light, and when they rounded the bend they saw that not only was the window missing, but so was the entire interior. Someone had smashed the window, placed a jug of gasoline on the seat, and lit it up. She had pictures, the car was absolutely destroyed. The brand new stereo could be seen on the floor, and fiberglass sheets were all the remained of the two snowboards in the back seat. Our car arrived and we wished her well. As we were leaving I noticed that the rental agent had offered up a Ford Escape in, ironically enough, orange. The color of fire. They’re all heart there at Enterprise.
One of my favorite sites, Autoblog, ran the following story today. I … I just don’t … oh, I’ll just let it speak for itself.
“Spanish road signs to undergo sexism sensitivity training
Reuters is reporting that a Spanish town council known for its socialist leanings and support of feminist causes has voted to banish sexism from street signs. With all of the signs and crosswalk signals currently showing male figures, they felt it was high time to make some changes. Half of all future road signs and traffic lights will have to show female silhouettes. The figures will sport skirts and ponytails, because women never wear pants, apparently.
The town of Fuenlabrada is located south of the Spanish capital of Madrid. They have vowed to replace all of their old or damaged road signs and traffic lights with ones bearing the new images within a year. “In this way the sexism which until now has seen only masculine figures appear in traffic signals will be brought to an end,” the town council’s statement read. The town has promised that the changes won’t cost any extra money. Sign suppliers will simply be instructed to use the new female symbols on a go-forward basis.”
An image of the new design (possibly) can be seen on the original page, but what you really need to do is read some of the comments at the bottom, such as:
“It is so sexist that they cornered women into the stereotype of long hair & skirts. Some women have short hair and wear pants. This sign is also discriminatory against fat women, pregnant women, short women, women in wheelchairs…and most of all, women with feet.” -Shawn
“… as an asian, I am bitter that all the people in the signs are black. I think 20% should be white, 20% black, 20% red, 20% brown, and 20% yellow to have a diverse demographic representating equal opportunity.” -Aki
