February 3, 2019 · 23:44

Regrowth

Back in November, our area of California (among others) burned. The fires came within a half mile of our house.

Now the next part of the cycle comes, with the winter rains and a possible El Nino year dumping higher than normal amounts of rain on California, causing mud slides, flooding, rock slides, and other problems in the burn areas as they’re no longer protected by vegetation.

But it’s amazing how quickly the hills can turn from black to green again.

The contrast can be stark and vivid. Parts of the hillsides can still be black as night, burnt, and charred, while patches or even whole mountainsides are an almost iridescent green.

These pictures, taken along the 101 Freeway between Camarillo and Woodland Hills (my son was driving, so I got to take pictures yesterday) show other damage such as this, where rock slides have caused temporary barriers to be put up and lanes closed.

I don’t know what causes this phenomenon where the new growth is in a mottled or spider-web like pattern across the blackened hillside. You can see the burnt bushes and trees everywhere, but the green undergrowth along the ground has started to be re-established.

Just a few hundred yards way, the entire hillside is iridescent green, with the black stumps of the bushes sticking up through it.

This is how the cycle continues. As green as it is now, this brush will grow up and over the summer will spend nine months turning brown and highly flammable.

This might go on for ten years or more, the brush and weeds growing thicker during the winter months, green for a few weeks, and then drying up and turning brown in April and May, finally baking itself into tinder by July.

It’s the same with all of these trees – most of them will grow back and become lush again, just waiting for the next brush fired to come through, when they’ll turning into flaming torches, their leaves and branches burning, breaking, and being blown for miles in the high winds, starting new spot fires ahead of the main fire, spreading it faster than a person can run.

That’s the cycle – burn, regrow, dry out, burn again.

Welcome to California. We don’t know what will try to kill you this year – the earthquakes, the fires, the floods, or the mudslides.

Down here in the lower elevations, it’s unlikely to be a blizzard or hurricane.

But wait for it. That could be coming soon as the climate changes unpredictably.

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Filed under Disasters, Los Angeles, Photography, Weather

February 2, 2019 · 23:40

El Nino

I don’t know if this has officially been declared an “El Nino” year by the National Weather Service (or whoever’s in charge of such things) but it sure feels that way to those of us getting drenched.

In an “El Nino” year, there’s a warm patch of Pacific Ocean water that forms around Christmas time (which has something to do with the name – google it) and the end result is an unusually wet winter in California. We get these “atmospheric rivers” that start funneling huge, wet, relatively warm storms onto the California coast, one after the other for days, one onslaught after another.

Whether official or not, this is what we get:

(I wasn’t driving, thanks!)

At this particular moment, the weather radar looked like:

(Image from Wunderground, despite their competitor’s ad, which I find somewhat hilarious and ironic and just a bit creepy.)

It’s quiet now, mostly, but there’s a lot of unstable air behind these fronts, and another couple of fronts to follow about every eighteen hours, so tomorrow and Monday look soggy as well.

While this might be beneficial in terms of alleviating our constant water shortages and drought in California and the Southwest states, it’s not so good in terms of the flash flooding and mudslides.

Welcome to California! If one thing doesn’t kill you, it’s opposite thing will!

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Filed under Los Angeles, Video, Weather

February 1, 2019 · 23:55

No Context For You – February 01st

No matter what you think this might be, it’s not. I’m pretty sure of that.

Tomorrow is Groundhog Day. While that’s one of my all-time favorite films, I don’t think there are any days in the last couple of weeks that I would want to live over and over and over. While we’ve come out the other end in pretty good shape, the journey to get here has sort of sucked.

But February’s going to be better!

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Filed under Entertainment, Family, Photography

January 31, 2019 · 23:52

In & Out

It’s not just a premium hamburger chain any more. It’s how we spent our day dealing with the hospital, starting at 04:30.

The Long-Suffering Wife is back home again tonight, and that’s a good thing. It was touch and go and she actually was re-admitted this morning, but they think they’ve got the latest issue figured out and corrected, so we’re gonna try this “sleep in our own bed” thing again.

Much better is the fact that the biopsy results are in and they show her to be CANCER FREE! We are not anticipating the need for any follow up treatments such as chemotherapy or radiation. They caught it early, they dealt with it, we have a great doctor, and despite the usual annoyances and delays that are a part of dealing with a huge, complex operation (see what I did there?) like a major hospital in a huge healthcare organization, it went just about as smoothly as could be possibly be hoped for with results that are about the best conceivable given that we’re dealing with cancer to begin with.

See, posting that “FUCK CANCER!” thing last night twice worked! (That was odd by the way – WTF is up with FaceBook with that particular issue?)

Now I really, REALLY need to get some sleep. A third of a night’s sleep combined with three weeks’ worth of adrenaline is highly contraindicated.

 

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Filed under Family, Health

January 30, 2019 · 23:41

FUCK Cancer – Again

I know it’s been said before, unfortunately even here previously (five years ago), but it’s time to say it again:

“FUCK Cancer!”

Tonight I brought The Long Suffering Wife home from the hospital, having once again had a major surgery for cancer. We are hopeful that it was caught early (we won’t know exactly for a few more days when the biopsy reports come in) and she’s an Olympic gold medalist in quick healing. It helps a lot that the procedure was done laparoscopically, and it helps a lot that she had a truly outstanding surgeon. Still, they were telling us to expect at least four to five days in the hospital, possibly even twice that, and she’s home in half of that.

So now it’s time for recovery again, a slow climb back to a new “normal.”

It also should explain the tone of many posts in the last couple of months. Let’s hope that the tone can improve along with the situation.

(Interesting – FaceBook in their infinite prudery won’t allow me to post a link that has “fuck” in the name? Let’s see if this alternative URL name will work…)

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Filed under Family, Health

January 30, 2019 · 23:38

FUCK Cancer – Again

I know it’s been said before, unfortunately even here previously (five years ago), but it’s time to say it again:

“FUCK Cancer!”

Tonight I brought The Long Suffering Wife home from the hospital, having once again had a major surgery for cancer. We are hopeful that it was caught early (we won’t know exactly for a few more days when the biopsy reports come in) and she’s an Olympic gold medalist in quick healing. It helps a lot that the procedure was done laparoscopically, and it helps a lot that she had a truly outstanding surgeon. Still, they were telling us to expect at least four to five days in the hospital, possibly even twice that, and she’s home in half of that.

So now it’s time for recovery again, a slow climb back to a new “normal.”

It also should explain the tone of many posts in the last couple of months. Let’s hope that the tone can improve along with the situation.

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Filed under Family, Health

January 29, 2019 · 23:16

The One That Got Away

This is the view from the Kaiser Permanente Woodland Hills Hospital parking lot about 5:45 this evening as I arrived. There are storms coming and it was an interesting view.

It’s an okay view. But it’s the one that got away, the sunset that was FREAKING SPECTACULAR about a half hour earlier.

I don’t have any pictures of it to share.

It was enough so that even in our office it was like being in a giant neon tube. Oranges, reds, pinks, like some sort of Technicolor acid trip from the 1960’s.

But I was on deadline and had to get things done so I could get a FedEx package off and get out on time to get here, so there aren’t any pictures.

Possibly a poor choice of priorities. My apologies.

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Filed under Los Angeles, Panorama, Photography, Weather

January 28, 2019 · 23:59

Discombobulated

Like many of us, I like to think that in a crisis or time of stress I will remain relatively calm, level headed, and able to keep my wits about me. I can function even when there’s chaos.

However, as was demonstrated again today, while that might be true to a large extent, it’s also critical to not take it for granted. I can’t simply say, “Oh, yeah, this is stressful, but I’m good when the shit’s incoming to the fan, so let’s just carry on.” No, the lesson I believe is to recognize the stressful situation for what it is and realize that, while I might do better than average or have had some training for how to prioritize and stay more or less functional in the face of chaos, in such a situation it is critical to be extra careful and aware that I might be on thin ice.

We had an appointment at 10:45. All of a sudden it was moved up to 10:15. There’s a significant amount of stress associated with the whole thing. No worries. I’m cool. Cucumbers name their children after me.

Until I got to the appointment and realized that I didn’t have my phone. Or my glasses. I was out of touch and blind as a bat inside arm’s length distances.

No worries! I have my backup pair of glasses that I ALWAYS carry in my briefcase. Except that they weren’t there. They had gotten moved to my backpack for the Seattle & Kansas City trip and never put back.

A little more flustered, a little less confident, I went for the backup backup pair of glasses – they’re in the backpack too.

The pair that I keep in the van I’m normally driving? I’m sure they’re there, but we were driving Hissy today.

I can live without the phone, right? I had my iPad, after all. Except that the day’s events needed me to be available by phone all day.

So once we got the preliminary events out of the way and I had a break where I needed to just wait for an hour, I instead boogied home (fortunately we were only twenty minutes from our house) and solved the problem.

That part at least felt satisfying. But I’m well aware that it’s a problem that I caused with my own carelessness and stupidity.

Stress can’t be avoided.

Dealing and coping with stress can be learned.

But it doesn’t make you Superman.

If you’re smart, it teaches you to recognize the sound of the ice cracking under your feet and makes you be very, very careful.

Today I wasn’t smart. I was discombobulated.

But I recognized it before it was ultimately too late, and I corrected the problem.

Next time I need to avoid it to begin with.

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Filed under Deep Thoughts, Paul

January 27, 2019 · 23:23

50,000th Tweet

Recently I had been wondering what milestone would be coming up next. Tonight we have an answer and it comes just we’re about to embark on another Nantucket sleigh ride. Which got me to thinking and writing out a big thing on Twitter.

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Filed under Deep Thoughts, Paul

January 26, 2019 · 22:58

That Time Of Year Again

Apollo 1 (January 27th)

Challenger (January 28th)

Columbia (February 1st)

I’ll never forget where I was and what I was doing when I heard of any of them.

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