wiredfool

Memorial: Anita Rowland

Anita was one of the first people from online that I met in the real world — in one of the first blogger meetups when I’m not so sure that they were called blogs, and I’m not so sure that they were called meetups.

My thoughts are with Jack and R and the rest of the family.

Reminded by Susan’s Blog, some time in the last couple of weeks or so I passed 8 years on this thing. Pretty good for someone who had never kept up anything vaguely diary like for more than a month or so.

5 women sitting together over teriyaki:

So let me get this straight — You’re dating your ex-husband, and still living with your current one?

I boggle.

I was about to say that the three storms in three days was over without a power outage, but as I was writing the title, the power blinked enough to knock me off the internets for a minute.

As it is though, I think we’ve gotten through a pretty major storm without too much bother — Just a little snow yesterday, a ton of rain today, and nothing special in the wind department. I ould chalk it up to PSE taking last year’s debacle to heart, but I think the island just didn’t bear the brunt of it. This storm really nailed the rest of Washington, record flooding already (with rain still falling), 45′ swells off the coast, 120mph winds on the coast, and the mainland shutting down all over.

Throwing caution to the wind, I updated the MacBook with 10.4.11 as soon as I saw it in the Software updates today. No troubles here, and the new Safari 3 is nice. I’ve been using the Webkit nightlies on and off for a while, but now my default browser gets that nice speed boost. As an added bonus, most/all text area items are now drag resizeable with a little handle in the lower right corner.

The wind’s picking up, and by tomorrow, we should be seeing 50-70 mph winds in the area. I’d say a good likelihood of power outages, given the history. We’re prepared though.

– We’ve got 2 cords of wood. So heat is covered. (So’s the wood, so that’s good too.)
– We’ve got a generator. And gas for the generator. We should be good for something like 10-20 hours of runtime at 1/2 power, enough for a little internet, the freezer and the fridge.
– We’ve got food and drink. The well’s on a generator as well.

*Update*
Power was down from between 6 and 7am to about 10:15. Total for the season – about 6 hours.

So, I’m working on drywall in the new office in the new house, and the little club house thingy around the corner is hosting a wedding reception. So far, I’ve heard Girls Just Want to Have Fun and Love Shack. It’s that kind of wedding DJ. The sort that we didn’t have.

I’m betting Wang Chung before 10:30.

So , the house closed today, we’ve got the keys, and the seller has left the building. I think that we’re finally at the point where we’re sure that this thing is going through.

This has been a nerve wracking time to be in the home buying process — daily news of some segment of the mortgage industry imploding in on itself tends to make one think that your lender may actually be a black hole if you look closely enough. But, it did fund. Our lender is still in business. And now that we do have the house, we just bought into a very uncertain market.

On the other hand, we could very well be in this house for a long long time. It’s got character, land, and an office. And blackberries and a pond. And a pretty spacious kitchen. And. And. And. And squirrel portraits on the walls.

Rebecca Blood is trying to eat cheap and organic for a month. So far, she’s posted about a week and a half worth, and she’s doing far better than we ever do. We’d be happy to hold the food budget to twice what she’s doing. Admittedly, that’s for 4 people, but one of them doesn’t eat much yet.

Given that the current score is Mother Nature 5, PSE 1, I’ve added a little bit of a box score in the sidebar. It should give the current power condition at the home and cumulative uptime for the month.

As we sit here, we’re looking at the fabled 2 8’s for this month, and 1 nine for the previous two.