dry days

Lots of news about the tropical storm ex-hurricane that's headed towards Southern California. In a sense I'm not surprised, any more than I was about Katrina in New Orleans in 2005. I remember being quite surprised when I first learned that hurricanes in the eastern Pacific were a regular thing, because you never heard about them, as opposed to Caribbean hurricanes which made huge headlines thousands of miles away. But owing to the geography, Pacific hurricanes rarely hit land, and when they did, it was in Mexico. Racist condescension alert, Mexican weather didn't make headlines in the US. The only effect they had in the US was to bring a little unseasonable rain to southern California or Arizona as they petered out.

This one, though, looks like it's headed pretty much full force into California, centering around the Salton Sea, and headed straight north. But where I am, we aren't directly north of that area at all. Nevada is. It's Las Vegas which has to worry next. There was a few days ago a chance that we'd get a little stray rain on Monday or Tuesday, but that's disappeared from the forecast.

And what can you say about Hawaii? Geez, another entire town wiped out by a utility-caused fire that was allowed to get out of control, with several roomsful of dead. Just like Paradise. How dreadful. I fear we're in for more of these.

Meanwhile, I'm sitting at home without a car, while mine is having the dents pounded out. I'm not going outside at all except to make the per diem deposit of a bag of cat leavings in the trash can. Some days it's a bit too hot in the afternoons when the temperature hits the 90s F, but it's pleasant enough in the mornings, and by 4 or 5 pm opening up the windows and turning on window fans does the trick. It's a bit of a relaxing change from spending three weeks driving to Menlo for festival concerts almost every day. It's quiet out there and my first symphony concerts aren't till October. Dog days, except we don't have dogs, we have cats, who are demonstrating that it's dog days by the dog-like behavior of lying around in the heat spread out on the linoleum.