writing, etc.

[mmegaera]

I took the weekend off, but today I wrote 872 words. So that's not bad. Still more than on track to have the manuscript finished by the end of February, which is pretty fast for me. Unless, of course, the book turns out much longer than I think it will be.

I almost had a close encounter with a candidate for the Darwin award on Friday. In addition to the wet stuff falling from the sky, you always know when it's the beginning of the rainy season in western Washington because the news is full of car crashes because all the oils on the road from the dry summer haven't washed off yet. Considering that we hadn't had rain in 81 days when it started raining on Friday, the oils were pretty thick this year. Anyway, I was waiting at a stoplight when some idiot who didn't realize this came careening up behind me at way too fast a speed, slammed on his brakes, and swerved, slid, and squealed to a stop less than two feet behind me. My adrenaline was pumping nicely, so his must have been really squirting through his bloodstream. He stayed a very tame distance behind me at a very tame speed for the next several miles until he turned off the highway, though. Hopefully the lesson will stick.

And today I finally began the research for the new exhibit. Spent the afternoon at the Northwest Room at the Tacoma Public Library turning my fingertips black with old newspaper clippings [g]. Found some interesting stuff, though.

Comments

[filkferengi]

91 days? Are your ponds & creeks going down as badly as ours here?

[mmegaera]

81 days, and no, they weren't. We normally don't get much if any rain between the middle of July and the middle of September (the average for that time period here is less than two inches -- this year in that 81 days we got 3/100ths of an inch, and broke at least half a dozen records, not that they mean much). We had a very good snowpack in the mountains last winter, which is where our summertime water comes from.

The main problem we had this summer was with wildfires on the eastern slopes of the Cascades (and even a couple over here on this side, which is basically unheard of), which caused a lot of air quality problems on both sides of the mountains, and burned land in the square miles as well as forcing a lot of people to evacuate.

But everything's back to normal now, except for the poor people who lost their homes in the fires. It's even snowing in the mountains already.

[filkferengi]

I wish we could say the same. The ponds at Reynolds, already small, are down at least 40%. It's definitely daunting.

[mmegaera]

Yeah, quasi-drought is actually the normal state of things here in August and September. The grass (where it isn't watered) all turns brown, and the hillsides where they aren't covered with evergreens do the same thing.

It was just a bit more extreme this year. But it's over now. The rainy season switch has flipped, and we've had more rain in the last week than we've had in the last four months [g].

Here's hoping you get plenty of rain soon.