Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Weather With You

I am much happier today, my laptop is now functioning as it should be. Yippeee! Although I am happier, I am not feeling well today. I feel as if I have a hangover, but I haven't had anything to drink since Saturday, so it can't be that, and I had plenty of sleep last night, so its not lack of sleep either.

I have been reading a couple of blogs the past few days from people who have either been impacted by Hurricane Ike. This is the first hurricane that I've really been anywhere close too. As mentioned in an earlier post I was in Austin Texas the week that Ike was making its way inland. I left of course before Ike hit Texas. As I was checking out of my hotel, there were several families trying to get checked into the hotel. Austin was an evacuation point, so many people were leaving there homes in Houston to go to Austin. I was pleased to be giving my room up to someone who needed it.

Well since then I have been paying attention to what has happened since. Normally I don't really follow the news, I find it too depressing and normally too biased. This really is no exception, as I don't get my information from the news, but through real people (journalists in my mind are not real people). I understand that there is still some bias there, as we all tell stories from our own point of view, but to me its a different type of bias, its not as pre-calculated and not meant to manipulate the publics opinion on a mass scale.

Growing up in the UK we don't really worry about severe weather such as hurricanes or tornados nor do we worry about earthquakes. Even flooding normally happens over long periods of time, we have occasionally had flash floods in certain areas, but nothing the extent that you see in other parts of the world. Even in Oregon, there's not really that much to be worried about, well other than the volcano's exploding of course, that would give me cause for concern.

When I was back in the UK last month there was very little sunshine. There was lots of grey clouds however. In fact there's been so much rain that the local resivor was overflowing. I haven't seen the resivor overflow like that before, and seemingly the weekend after I left, it rained even more, and instead of trickling over the side, it was gushing. My mum also took me to another spot, and the water level had risen about 6ft in 2 months. In fact the water had risen so much that a sign warning about deep water, and staying off the wall was surrounded by water, and the said wall, was 6 ft under.

The opposite weather has been showing itself in Oregon with forest fires here there and everywhere, also while I was gone, 2 houses in my neighbourhood had fires.
It's all a bit of a mess.

4 comments:

  1. I am glad your laptop is working. I wasn't so lucky.

    When I read you were in Texas, I was worried you might be in danger. I am happy to hear you were not.

    I'm off to take a shower.

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  2. was it all the talk of rain that made you want a shower?

    I bet I am even more glad than you that my laptop is working :)

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  3. No. What you said you do when you drink too much. Just a joke.

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  4. oh, doh! I am a bit slow on the uptake today...

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