It's okay, really!!!

http://mmegaera.livejournal.com/insert%20URL%20within%20quotes%20here

Well, except that it changes every time you click on it. The first one was positively waif-like.

from a purely aesthetic point of view

http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=1083&tstamp=200809 is one gorgeous shot of Ike.

From a purely practical point of view? That's terrifying.

I have a nephew in Houston who refused to evacuate for Rita. I don't know where he is at the moment, but I hope he got smart this time.

OTOH, I do know where my 84-year-old lives-alone mother is. Several hundred miles inland, but still right in Ike's sights in Tyler, Texas. She's on what answers for high ground in a place where the highest hills are in the cow pastures, so is unlikely to get flooded out (she'd have been flooded out years ago if it was going to happen), but Tyler's supposed to get the kind of wind we here in the Northwest associate with November gales (50-60 mph), and I'm worried her power will go off and not come back on for a long time or that something will come through a window or land on her roof. So good thoughts would be appreciated.

I do wish she'd moved to be nearer one of us after my dad died, but she's sunk taproots to China. So we worry. It's part of the job description, alas.