Some bunny needs a little more patience

Our rabbit hutch project for our deserving bunny, Leo, has hit a few snags since I last mentioned it.

First - the project was stricken by extreme procrastination.

So we had an idea.. we got the materials... and then we played the Wii and watched stuff on Netflix all weekend.

Second - the project was delayed by germs.


With one weekend basically wasted and behind us - of course the next weekend was spent totally immobilized on the couch trying to remember a time when I had the luxury of breathing through my nose.

Third - the project is currently being delayed by something called a 'heat advisory' - a thing of which I have recently learned.


Thirty eight years on the Mississippi Gulf Coast and I can tell you that heat and humidity are no strangers.  However, I don't think I've ever paid much attention to the term 'heat advisory'.  I'm sure that a few thousand heat advisories have been issued here in my lifetime - but I guess I quietly dismissed them.. You know like "Uh.. right - Be advised! It's hot!"  I'm like that.

Earlier today I got a handy alert on my cell phone advising me that it is (and will continue to be) hot.  Undaunted, I slathered myself with toxic bug repellent and went into the backyard anyway.  I lasted close to 5 minutes out there.  I then came inside to find out more about these heat advisory things.

I found the current watch via NOAA's NWS:

URGENT - WEATHER MESSAGE


NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE NEW ORLEANS LA


348 PM CDT MON JUN 7 2010


...HEAT ADVISORY IN EFFECT FROM 9 AM TUESDAY TO 6 PM CDT
THURSDAY...
.HIGHS INTO THE 90S IN CONJUNCTION WITH DEW POINTS AROUND 80 WILL
BRING THE HEAT INDEX IN MOST AREAS TO ABOVE 105 DEGREES AND AS
HIGH AS 115.
Further down in the advisory we get some info on exactly what this means and what to do about it:

PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...

THE HEAT INDEX IS A MEASURE OF HOW HOT IT FEELS WHEN THE EFFECTS OF
HUMIDITY ARE COMBINED WITH THE TEMPERATURE.  A HEAT INDEX OF 105
DEGREES IS CONSIDERED THE LEVEL WHERE MANY PEOPLE BEGIN TO EXPERIENCE
EXTREME DISCOMFORT OR PHYSICAL STRESS.  THE HEAT INDEX IS MEASURED
UNDER SHADY CONDITIONS...AND DIRECT EXPOSURE TO SUNLIGHT CAN INCREASE
THE HEAT INDEX AS MUCH AS 15 DEGREES.
A HEAT ADVISORY MEANS THAT A PERIOD OF HOT TEMPERATURES IS
EXPECTED. THE COMBINATION OF HOT TEMPERATURES AND HIGH HUMIDITY
WILL COMBINE TO CREATE A SITUATION IN WHICH HEAT ILLNESSES ARE
POSSIBLE. DRINK PLENTY OF FLUIDS...STAY IN AN AIR-CONDITIONED
ROOM...STAY OUT OF THE SUN...AND CHECK UP ON RELATIVES AND
NEIGHBORS.


All of that translates to:  "You won't be building any bunny hutches until at least Friday." 

The reason I'm not outside at the moment ...

NOAA to release its forecast today for Hurricane Season 2010

NOAA to release its forecast today for Hurricane Season 2010 - WLOX-TV and WLOX.com - The News for South Mississippi: "Hurricane season starts Tuesday and today the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will release its forecast for the 2010 season. WLOX Chief Meteorologist Mike Reader said NOAA is expected to predict a more active tropical season."


Nevermind that these predictions are seldom accurate -- we all seem to get some perverse pleasure from worrying ourselves to death.

Reduce, reuse, recycle.....

For a few weeks now Dave and I have been planning something of a Freecycle event here at the house. With all of this home repair going on we have managed to stockpile lots of .. well.. stuff over the last three years. Whenever we ended up with a lot of leftover anything - I was sure to offer it on our local Freecycle group right away... and we've passed along plenty of things that way.

However - this 'stuff' was different. There was not really enough of any one thing to warrant offering it with any seriousness: a couple of 2 x 4's.... A lone piece of sheetrock.... However - all of these mismatched building supply left-overs together took up a lot of space in our house.

Thus the idea for the Freecycle event: We would gather up allllll of our leftovers and put them all out and simply let our group know that they could come by and browse at their convenience. Brilliant!

We finally scraped together some energy this morning and started stacking everything we could find in decent condition that we wouldn't be using for the house under a pop-up gazebo in our side yard. By noon we had quite an impressive offering ready to go - so I posted a message to the group letting them know it would all be available by 2pm today. There were plenty of responses right away asking for directions to our house.

At 2 pm the thunderstorm started. It has rained ever since.

Water. It's all about water. Have I mentioned I'm a water sign?

It's not a totally sad story, however... At about 5pm a couple stopped by, undaunted by the rain, and actually took home a truckload of stuff. I just hate that so much of it was wet when they took it.

Tomorrow hopefully someone will drive by and pick through what's left - though it's not much. Hmm.. I hope they don't drive from too far away expecting a massive Freecycle event only to find a few scraps of shoe molding, some leftover pegboard, and a couple bags of disposable razors left. Eek. And I hope they don't get angry and damage our house in retaliation for wasted gasoline because we just gave all of our extra building supplies away.....

Er... I need to go post an update to Freecycle.

SunHerald.com : Tropical Storm Bertha forms in the Atlantic

SunHerald.com : Tropical Storm Bertha forms in the Atlantic: "It's still too early to say if or where Bertha will hit land."

Click here for your printable tracking map.

If snails could roof...

Wednesday's weather meant absolutely nothing done on the roof... But with Thursday came the completion of the smallish front right side. Today brought a sudden shower early in the morning while the guys were working on the front side of the garage roof... But they at least got that portion finished before they left for the weekend.

This leaves us with three more smallish portions... and then the very large back portion of the roof which I'm assuming will have to be completed in a marathon roofing session if we want to avoid having rain showers upstairs.

However, rain is in the forecast every day for the next 10 days again. Fine time for us to finally get our old summer weather pattern (i.e. sudden brief thunderstorm at least once per day) back.

Mother Nature uncooperative... again

92 degrees

It's hot. Really really hot. Earlier today I took a peek at the thermometer out on the back porch (yes.. in the shade) and it was reading around 92 degrees Fahrenheit. So then I started humming a song I remember from my teenage years: "Not 91 or 93 but 92 Fahrenheit degrees...."

The song referred to various research that linked ambient temperature to crime -- most studies finding that the incidence of crime (or in some cases simply the sheer violence of the crime) increased in proportion to increases in temperature. (Here's a link to the first Google result on the subject: Temperature and Crime)

Summer is just beginning... I suppose that means we're doomed.

I woke up this morning to find that the pond that we relocated from the backyard to the front porch (which I suppose makes it more of a fountain than a pond now?) was vandalized sometime last night. The irises that I was just getting started were dumped unceremoniously on the bottom of the little pool... mud everywhere... the fountainhead removed... and the pump was spitting and hissing where it hung -- mostly removed from the water. *Sigh*

When I called Mom this morning to tell her what I found she came over for a little while to try to cheer me up.... And then I spent a good chunk of the afternoon trying to rescue our six mosquito fish and one small fiddler crab from the murky depths.

When Dave came in from work he helped me remove the rest of the mud and get water back into the pond before our fish suffocated in a mixing bowl in the kitchen. The battered and broken irises are resting in a shady spot behind our front shrubs for now -- our priority was getting our little creatures back into their home... And that we did manage before nightfall. Unfortunately we did lose one fish who escaped from the mixing bowl and wasn't found until it was too late.

And from here on out - it only gets hotter.

So much for weekend plans...

Yay! Severe thunderstorms.... 58 mph winds, 3/4 inch or larger hail, OR tornadoes. Great menu selection. I'll take the winds and the smaller hail, thanks. This is exactly what our leaky roof needs. Maybe if we're lucky the 58 mph winds will take off a good portion of shingles today and save the crews the work when we (hopefully) get started on roof replacement in a few weeks.


The view from the front porch this morning:



(I probably shouldn't have watered the lawn yesterday.)

And the view from the back porch a few minutes ago:




This reminds me to add 'repair raingutters' to our to-do list. (And maybe 'buy bilge pump' for the backyard.)

Unsettling

Seeing our street flooded makes me nervous. Not the best way to start the weekend.

The street behind us didn't fair much better this morning. Drainage has been a problem for over two years now.

Still our house sits at the highest part of the neighborhood and even the street flooding doesn't reach our corner.... Unless the street flooding comes from the Gulf of Mexico....

SunHerald.com : NWS issues hazardous weather outlook for early Thursday morning

SunHerald.com : NWS issues hazardous weather outlook for early Thursday morning: "The National Weather Service in New Orleans issued a hazardous weather outlook for southeastern Louisiana and South Mississippi on Wednesday afternoon."

Tropical Storm: Tracking Map : Weather Underground

Tropical Storm: Tracking Map : Weather Underground

The Associated Press: Humberto Sneaks Up on U.S. Gulf Coast

The Associated Press: Humberto Sneaks Up on U.S. Gulf Coast: "Meteorologists were at a loss to explain the rapid, 16-hour genesis of the first hurricane to hit the U.S. since 2005. 'Before Humberto developed, you looked at the satellite imagery the day before, and there was virtually nothing there. This really spun up out of thin air, very, very quickly, said National Hurricane Center specialist James Franklin in Miami. 'We've never had any tropical cyclone go from where Humberto was to where Humberto got.'"

Hurricane HUMBERTO

Hurricane HUMBERTO

...HURRICANE HUMBERTO JUST INLAND OVER SOUTHEASTERN TEXAS...

A HURRICANE WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM EAST OF HIGH ISLAND TEXAS
TO CAMERON LOUISIANA.

WLOX-TV - The News for South Mississippi: Violent Storms Down Trees, Damage Homes, Flood Streets Across Mississippi

WLOX-TV - The News for South Mississippi: Violent Storms Down Trees, Damage Homes, Flood Streets Across Mississippi: "A line of severe thunderstorms pushed through parts of Mississippi on Tuesday, damaging homes and businesses, knocking down power lines and trees, and flooding roads."

TC Gonu

weather.com - Hurricane Central: "Tropical Cyclone Gonu continues to move towards the Gulf of Oman, packing winds of 145 mph (as of 5 am Tuesday Eastern time). Gonu is forecast to stay just off shore of the northern coast of Oman, then approach the coast of southeastern Iran Wednesday afternoon or evening (Eastern time) with winds around 105 mph, making it a category 2 storm on the Saffir-Simpson scale."

WLOX-TV - The News for South Mississippi: Atlantic's First Named Storm Of 2007 Forms Early, 3 Weeks Before Season's Official Start

WLOX-TV - The News for South Mississippi: Atlantic's First Named Storm Of 2007 Forms Early, 3 Weeks Before Season's Official Start: "Typically about one subtropical storm forms each year, but they often turn into tropical storms. That doesn't appear to be the case with Andrea, senior hurricane specialist Jack Beven said. It only has a small area of warmer water to draw energy from and is also facing dry winds.

He said it wasn't unusual for the storm to form in May, outside the hurricane season that starts June 1 and end Nov. 30.

'What we call the hurricane season is a totally manmade creation. Nature doesn't always pay attention to that,' Beven said.

Eighteen tropical storms and four hurricanes have been recorded in that month since 1851, and none of the hurricanes made landfall in the U.S. The earliest hurricane to strike the U.S. was Alma in northwest Florida on June 9, 1966."

Right. That's pretty common right there. Well... Here we go again.

SunHerald.com : Flood watch in effect through Friday afternoon

SunHerald.com : Flood watch in effect through Friday afternoon: "GULFPORT --
The National Weather Service in New Orleans has issued a flood watch for most of South Mississippi beginning this afternoon through Friday.

An upper level disturbance is expected to move through the area tonight and could cause 1 to 2 inches of rain per hour and could reach three to six inches within a six-hour period.

The watch is for Harrison, Hancock, Jackson and Pearl River counties."

WLOX-TV - The News for South Mississippi: Louisiana Man Killed, Eight Injured In Mississippi As Severe Storms Cross The South

WLOX-TV - The News for South Mississippi: Louisiana Man Killed, Eight Injured In Mississippi As Severe Storms Cross The South: "Lines of powerful thunderstorms packing possible tornadoes and heavy rain raced across parts of the South early Wednesday, injuring at least eight people in Mississippi and killing one man in Louisiana. More injuries were reported in Arkansas, where the wind toppled at least five tractor-trailer rigs along Interstate 40 and damaged a hotel."

It's a windy and dreary day today and we're surrounded by Tornado watches issued by the National Weather Service. The weather is changing as fall approaches. We spent some time this weekend putting up some Halloween decorations although Halloween is still up in the air this year. We still aren't sure if the neighborhood is planning it's traditional Halloween event this year (it was cancelled last year for obvious reasons) or if we'll be taking the kids to a Trunk or Treat again.

Here we are in limbo again. I'm not sure why I feel that way since if I really think about it we haven't gotten out of limbo for the last 14 months. Maybe it's all of the times we have felt so very close to escaping...

But this morning when I woke up and looked around it hit me that we haven't actually made any progress since January -- and then it hit me just how long ago January happened. All we can do is wait for this pie-in-the-sky grant check and try super hard not to think about anything beyond the grant check. I don't want to think about the difficulties of obtaining contractors... or keeping contractors... or not getting price-gouged out of a fair price for fair work... I don't want to think about the things that we will inevitably encounter once we begin real repairs -- the unexpected repairs and the unexpected costs. I don't want to think about the very real possibility that the grant check won't cover those costs.

It's torture to think about such things... especially when there's a fairy tale grant check to think about instead.

I had a dream last night about war. There was a fair in town - I remember the ferris wheel... And I spent the night ducking and hiding my children behind whirly-gigs and merry-go-rounds as helicopters flew over - so close to the ground that our hair moved in the downdraft. And we ran and ran with no idea where we were running to or who we were running from until we came to the shore. There beyond the beach were half a dozen warships with guns trained on the coastline. All around us were the signs of previous shellings -- bombed out houses and disabled cars... displaced personal items and the occasional dead body that you just know is there but you try not to stare too long and pretend it will go away. Then we saw the living people - important type people wearing suits.. they were shuffling groups of battered regular folks in this direction and that. I was so relieved that help had come - I was so sure they had a plan. But as we got closer we saw that these suit-types were actually herding the people onto a huge gangway.. and onto the warships.. into the hands of the enemy.. and apparently to save their own skins. There would be no rescue and there would be no defense. That's when I woke up.

Have I mentioned lately that the mental health crisis still looms?