Monday morning... and a little Sunday night...
As usual, Tiger The Cat, aka the furry alarm clock, woke me up at 4:30 by treading all over my stomach and headbutting me, her subtle way of telling me that I need to get up and feed her NOW... While she was eating and I was making coffee, I put on The Weather Channel to see if anything was left of New Orleans. The immediate feeling I got was that the WC folks scattered about the area, in the blue windbreakers, were almost apologetic in their reporting that all they were getting was a bunch of rain and a good hard blow. Not that fifty or sixty mile an hour winds are anything to be trite about, but all week I've been hearing about how this was going to be so much worse than Katrina, they were even calling it the "storm of the century" yesterday. The hurricane expert on TWC was calling for potential storm surges in the twenty to thirty foot range, as I'm writing this they just announced one of nine feet, like it was something to be proud of. Videos of a few palm fronds flying around and a few broken windows. I think there's going to be a bunch of pissed of folks who left Dodge in a hurry and will feel they did it for nothing. After Katrina, all we heard was how the US Government wasn't prepared for what happened, now they'll be wailing about how the Government misled them into leaving for what turned out to be mild in comparison. It's lose/lose. I'm happy they didn't get nailed like last time, but the loudmouths will be bitching and complaining, none the less. Oh, well.
About Sunday night, we got home from a barbecue around 1:30 this morning, so I guess this really more about Monday morning, sorry. Anyway, I was in the bathroom and somewhere in the back of the property, I heard what I believe was the call of a barred owl... almost a hissing sound. I slowly crept outside in the dark and tried to locate it, but to no avail. I think it heard me trying to be quiet and took off. Owls are a treat around here anymore, it's so built up. We used to have Great Horned Owls that would hang out in our spruce trees in the front yard at night, calling to their friends and responding to their calls with their booming hoots. They would actually wake me up from a sound sleep, they seemed to be in the trees right outside the upstairs bedroom windows. I gave up on the owl hunt, and spent a few minutes lying on my back in the dewy grass, looking up at the stars, which were more numerous and still than usual, it being unusually dark for some reason, and within a few minutes saw two long, bright meteors cross the sky, one from the Northeast, one from the South. I was telling my brother in law, Pete, earlier in the evening that I was disappointed in the sky this summer, I hadn't seen but a few meteors, even during the peak showers and it was funny that within a few minutes I saw two. Maybe I just need to stop trying so hard and just let things happen. Like just standing in the bathroom, listening to an owl in the distance, instead of trying to track it down, or just lying on my back looking up and let the meteors come to me, rather than go out and look for them.

UPDATE: just found out that the name, Gustav, is Swedish for "staff of the Goths". HA!


wander with me...