Category: weather

Today’s Theme Music

Theme music is often about setting the stage for what’s about to happen. It’s a familiar, establishing your expectations.

On some days, I like defiant theme music to play in my head. They’re not necessarily days when I battling conditions; these can also be days when I’m determined to complete a task or pursue a dream.

Other days find me seeking melancholy theme music for accompaniment, fun music, or dance music. Theme music that’s nostalgic to me is frequent. That’s not surprising. Nostalgia is all about trying to achieve a particular state of mind. For me, that balance was often about hopes and dreams, youth and maturity, satisfaction and eagerness to pursue life.

The weather also affects my theme music choices. Today’s song, though, hits in many areas for me. It’s pouring rain through balmy air and upset winds. So I’m reaching for a song that accompanies my mind’s drift toward nostalgia and weather but remains something that

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Contemplating the Storms

Inside, safe with coffee, I eye snow ranging between raging and swirling.

Everything is white, a cover-up to hide yesterday’s progress of melting and drying roads. It looks cold, and cold is permeating my protective window panes.

I made an espresso sized cuppa using French Roast. The staunch flavor pleases me. It’s great not needing to deal with all that extra water that goes into a larger cup. The coffee fuels thinking about the storm’s extent. The web helps track its size, what has passed and what is expected. I need something like that for the rest of my life.

The cats, of course, drift between blissful slumber and energetic bonkers. That’s when older cats are preferred; they recognize bad weather and are happier to watch through a window than the young beasts. Quinn is the rule’s exception; he enjoys the cold. We think he employs an active imagination, going out and pretending he’s Siberian. His whole demeanor reeks of of it. But this weather play has a heavy element of wind; Quinn says, “Nyet,” to wind.

Tucker indulges in several mad dashes, practicing his football jukes. Taking pity on the kitties, I visit with each and play with them. The toy of choice is the white feathers on the yellow string on the pink stick. All love this. Meep captures it, picks it up in his mouth and attempts to carry it away, tail up. His trophy pleases him. Boo, the oldest, becomes most engaged. He manages to free three more feathers. Only one feather remains on the toy. Time for a new one.

Snow surrenders to sunshine, which yields to rain. No matter; the temp has scaled thirty-eight degrees. The wind refuses to abandon its role so the cats stay in but the sun is back.

Time to move, get ready to go out and write like crazy. Breakfast, first.

It’s a good morning for pancakes.

 

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T2POIM

Writing is about learning what you like to read and then learning what you like to write and then writing what you like to read. That’s my opinion. Naturally.

So today’s Things That Probably Only Interest Me (T2POIM) is about our local temperature. Arriving home yesterday just past five in the pre-evening (or post-afternoon), I checked the temps. Thirty-seven F. Sweet.

We’ve had days of colder weather that we’re used to. I’m not bragging that ours was cold because I know my sisters were out shopping in twelve degree weather. We never went that low.

That’s the thing, however. We usually don’t go low on temps. A few times per winter finds temps in the low twenties and high teens, which is what we’ve been experiencing. As our homes aren’t built to endure that, we need to attend matters like the furnace, pipes and cats to ensure nothing freezes on us.

Thirty-seven yesterday pre-evening marked the first time that we were over freezing that late in the day. I skated through some relief with a mental cry that the worse was over. But I kept watching the temp. Six: thirty-seven. Seven: thirty-seven. Eight: thirty-seven.

Midnight: thirty-seven.

By now, I believed my weather station was kaput. But local online stations showed the same temperature. So…I went to bed.

Three: thirty-seven.

Six: thirty-seven.

Seven: thirty-seven.

Eight: thirty-seven.

I went to Southern Oregon University’s online weather station. It’s physically situated several hundred feet lower in elevation and in a field where either sun or fog often envelops it. Its temp was but one degree below our temp. Pulling up their graphs, I saw the same results I’d noticed at home: the temperature hadn’t changed since five PM yesterday.

By ten, our temperature had finally climbed to thirty-eight. But it struck me as astonishing, that through a winter night and past sunrise, the temperature remained the same. Of course, seeing the thick cloud cover and then the rain, I knew a warm front had moved in.

It’s interesting. I’m sure, though, seeing an unchanging temperature over fifteen hours remains a T2POIM.

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Winter Has Come

Snow has been sneaking down the surroundings mountains day by day since mid-November. I’ve tracked its progress, glancing up to see peaks and fields sporting new white blankets, setting off the barren brown and evergreens. Last night, under the night shield, the snow advanced to us.

We’re not the valley floor. That’s about two thousand feet further down, but one to three inches at our location is significant for the I-5 corridor. For just fourteen miles from us is the pass. This is where I-5 makes it through the mountain range between northern California and southern Oregon. It’s an impressive climb, in the top ten at least, of climbs I’ve driven, although way down from the scale of those encountered in the Rockies and Alps.

The pass isn’t looking bad this morning. The absent sunshine and temperatures hovering around freezing aren’t good signs for easy commutes but the roads are fairly clear. Just beware of black ice. About as far as I’m commuting is down to the coffee shop, lucky me. I’ll drive down there and then walk around downtown, stimulate the writing juices, and look for The Wall, the men of the Watch and white walkers.

 

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The Progressions

I awaken, and experience a progression of guilt.

I called Mom last week. Reaching her answering machine, I left a message that I would call again later in the week.

I didn’t call, hence the guilt. I haven’t spoken to her in several weeks. The exact date is progressing into the unremembered past.

But I’m in the writing zone. I’ve caught the big wave. Big waves are rare. I jealously guard the ride, not wanting to do anything to upset the balance. Sorry, Mom. I’ll call when the ride is over. She’ll understand.

Marking the sunshine’s progression through the blinds, I gather it’s time to leave bed. Feeding the cats take me through the next progression. I fill their bowls, and watch their behavior and motion, and then return to their bowls when they’ve walked away, to see how much they’ve consumed. Nothing triggers a worry watch.

Going through the morning’s progression of eating, cleaning up and dressing, I peruse a mental list of items. It’s a copy of a list my wife and I made the other day. We began a process of cleaning, organizing and simplifying last July, and listed what remains during breakfast last Friday. I compare the list with the weather forecast and other chores to decide what I’ll do this day.

The bathroom mirror takes me through a progression of assessments about my hair, weight, skin and body tone. I progress through disappointment and dismay to rueful chuckling acceptance.

The morning’s walk to the coffee shop takes me through more progressions. Regardless of what I saw in the mirror, I feel young, energetic and happy as I walk. Autumn has arrived and the air is progressively cooler each day, as the days are progressively shorter, with night arriving progressively earlier. The trees are proceeding through their own progressions, with the leaves changing color but not yet beginning to fall.

All the town’s schools are in session. Encountering university students, who just began classes this week, I judge from their expressions that they’re progressing from starting classes to being dazed or numb to their new adventure. High school has been in session for a month already. Their marquee announces the Homecoming Ball next month. That, and cigarette smoke clinging to other pedestrians, transport me to youthful memories of high school and smoking co-workers and friends. I progress to wondering where those friends might be now and what became of them.

Last night’s dreams return to me. I dreamed I was asked by others to drive their dilapidated bus. Their request amuses me. They seemed to think it was very important and challenging, while I took it quite lightly. I easily agreed. The subsequent drive was a dream’s blink between beginning and ending, with some short vignettes of visits with passengers asking me more about my background. Nothing untoward had happened. Being grateful for my service, they’ve prepared a gift basket and present it to me when we’re off the bus. The gift basket is a plastic storage container with a bow. Fun size candy bars have been collected and put into plastic baggies, along with other food stuffs, such as cookies, muffins and brownies, including red and green peppermint cheese pizza. I’m never had it before. There is also electronic junk and toys in the storage box. I’m touched because all of this means much to them. Telling them it’s too much, I ask them to take whatever they want. They close in and take many items. One man asks for the peppermint pizza. He explains, he has a sore throat, and the peppermint soothes it.

We then enter a city square of faded, low brick buildings. The community is poor and the town is sparsely populated. I join others at one cafe. Its decor amounts to an eclectic assortment of bare tables and chairs and robin’s egg blue walls. They’re eager to please me. Their eagerness and obsequiousness embarrasses me. I work hard to make us all feel at ease. A small but pleasant party begins as we relax. They pour ale into a jar for me. There is nothing more I remember from that dream.

My progress is tracked through landmarks. I’ve passed the one mile mark. One mile remains until I reach the coffee shop. My thoughts progress through my writing plans of where I was, what I dislike and like, and what I need to change and how I might change it. I progress from that back to other plans. Friends are meeting for beers at 4:30. It’s downtown, a two and a half mile walk from my house. I calculate what time I’d need to leave, and how much time I have for yard work after walking home after my writing session. The timing will be compressed but it is doable, if I’m disciplined.

I reflect upon the differences in energy requirements between having a beer with friends and chatting with my mother. It’s like accounting and budgeting, in that these energies come from different buckets. I begin writing this post in my mind.

I progress to an acceptance of being disciplined about the timing, and then I’ve arrived at the coffee shop. Business is light. Madi saw me coming down the street so she has my quad shot mocha prepared. We chat about her college classes. She’s majoring in poli-sci and history, and plans to be a lawyer and prosecutor. Naturally, we discuss the presidential debates.

Then I’m at my table, at my laptop, with my coffee, opening the document, embracing the moment. I compose this post. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

I’m making progress.

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‘Phooon Party

Okay, first for the schmaltz alert. This post will get schmaltzy.

Like many, Gene Wilder’s demise dredged up memories. I associate specific music, movies, actors and events with epochal life moments. Gene Wilder is a large swatch of the moments because his rising fame coincided with VCRs rising and my long term assignment to Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, Japan.

Arriving in May of 1981, base housing wasn’t immediately available. We put ourselves on the wait list and then found an off-base residence in Kadena City. The apartment building was a fort-like three story cement structure with minimal windows and external doors. The owner/managers lived in a bottom residence, and American service personnel and their dependents occupied the ten apartments spread throughout the rest. Keeping with the local way, none of these domiciles were large, but they were well built. A water cistern was on the roof. With it and the stout walls, the building was great for enduring earthquakes, typhoons and droughts.

Typhoon watching was almost a sport. Armed Forces Radio and Television Services provided us with our news and entertainment, and we tracked the storms across the Pacific and through the various seas. Which base was it going to hit? Hickam in Hawaii, Anderson on Guam, Clark in the PI? Or was it heading our way in Japan, or north to Korea?

Whichever place it struck was a cause for intense business on the base. If it was heading for us, we scrambled to launch the aircraft out of the typhoon’s path while securing the base. If you were on duty when the typhoon struck, you were on for the duration. Otherwise, you stocked up on food, water and things to do, and settled in at home.

This all took planning. Lines grew everywhere, but especially at the Commissary where we bought our food, and the USO where we rented our movies.

That’s where Gene Wilder enters. As AFRTS didn’t offer exciting programming options and often went off the air during a ‘phoon, we bought a VHS player. A huge, toploading Magnavox unit, it cost a grand, weighed over fifty pounds and took up the top of our twenty-five inch console television. But with it, we could rent movies from the USO. Thus we could sign out ‘Blazing Saddles’, ‘The Producers’, ‘Young Frankenstein’, ‘Silverstreak’, and ‘Stir Crazy’, along with movies like ‘Blues Brothers’. ‘Absence of Malice’. ‘Body Heat’. ‘Pennies from Heaven’. ‘Eye of the Needle’. The offerings were not broad, and it was serving the entire base population stalking entertainment, so you grabbed what you could, and then traded with others in the building, watching movie after movie and trying to catch some sleep as rain deluged the island and the wind hurled items through the charcoal skies.

Back on base, working in the Command Post, it wasn’t so good. We were pretty limited to what was available to watch. Scrambling aircraft and dealing with the emergencies, nobody raced out to rent movies. Then once that was done, the phones and radios went still as our status changed to monitoring the passing storm and waiting for it to clear. We watched what was on hand. How many times did I see ‘Silverstreak’, ‘Young Frankenstein’, ‘Blazing Saddles’ and ‘Stir Crazy’? Enough that we would start going stir crazy. Enough that I remember the characters and who played them, and whole scenes of dialogue.

Yet, now, watching scenes from these movies as I remember Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor, and the others, I laugh and laugh, again. Remembering these things last night with my beer buddies, we just had to mention a character or a line from his movies to trigger laughter.

Thanks, Gene Wilder. It was a memorable stint with you through the many, many typhoons.

 

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Oh, The Heat

It’s hot and I am compelled by Internet Law to write about this heat.

This heat, what, 105, 107? It’s just ruining things. Look what it’s doing to my electric bill when I run my air-conditioning. And the water bill when I water the lawn and plants. Yikes, you should see, you really should. It’s unbelievable.

It’s too hot to do anything but sit. It even affects my Internet connection, can you believe it? I’m serious, when the heat gets over 97, the Internet connection becomes spotty, don’t ask me why, but it really makes it so hard to post anything or find out who’s doing anything. THANK GOD for my iPhone!

It’s so hot, I can barely move. Even when I don’t move, I’m sweating. Look, I’m sweating now, and this is inside, in the shade. We’ve put up awnings and umbrellas on the porches and patios, and there is the pool for a cool dip but even these reliefs are so momentary because you wouldn’t believe the breeze, it’s like fresh out of a pizza oven. Speaking of which, we wanted to grill pizzas tonight but I told them, it’s just too hot for us to do that. Let’s go to a fun restaurant with air conditioning and spoil ourselves with fine food and drinks.

Otherwise, I’m just going to have to sit inside and read in the air conditioning today, and what fun is that? That’s hardly living. We should go away somewhere until this heat wave ends. Like Vegas! You check for some flights and I’ll look for a room. The Bellagio! I love it there!

Road trip! I am literally so excited. I can’t wait until this heat wave ends.

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Familiars of our Past

A carpet of fog was rolled in with majesty in the afternoon’s middle, and that was it. Sunset decided not to show and sunrise didn’t get up. Twenty miles an hour sea breezes stretched the Stars and Stripes into a snapping fabric panel and tortured our hair into brambly messes.

We were in Bandon.

The fishy fresh smell from tides, ocean and piers hooked its fingers up our nostrils and jerked us in – again and again, often eliciting, “Whoa, I’d forgotten that smell,” that sort of primitive and unfiltered smell associated with small coast towns we’d lived in and visited. Sea sprays blended with mists to coat us with salt and sand.

Bandon was a step away from our first world existence of dry and hot Ashland, but it was further than we expected in technological miles. While the hotel room had a flat screen tv, coffee maker, frig and nuker, the things required and expected for the modern American urban traveler, the wireless connections were spotty and phones never acquired a signal. Your experience may vary.

Sunshine heralded our arrival, so we were absurdly hopeful about how the visit would go. We used that time on the first afternoon to stroll the beaches past Facerock while the tides were out. Imagination easily informed us, we are the first, we have discovered a new territory and ocean, thinking about what it must have been like for the first humans to travel that way and look out on the powerful sea.

Returning to Bandon’s Oldtown, we wandered the windy streets, unchanged from two years past, save businesses had closed or moved away. Menus were perused. Food offerings were the same as before, basic pub grub and seafood offerings. Without knowing the reasons for it of season, month, weather or day of week, the streets were usually free of other souls. Waiting to eat was only encountered for breakfast on the second day, as one eatery was closed for repairs and the other was closed for good, reducing where to eat breakfast by almost fifty percent.

There wasn’t even a Starbucks, Dutch Bros, or Seattle’s Best, for heaven’s sake.

No, those places are not my first choice when traveling but their ubiquitous availability has become a meter for how far from the norm we’ve gone. It’s odd to find a place in America without these places. Nor were there fast food places, except for Subway. Other than a Dollar Tree, the chains have not found Bandon. That would have been wonderful, if Bandon exuded more charm. It was like visiting an aged movie star who no longer knows who they are.

A wallet of money and credit cards were found on the First Street sidewalk the second day, requiring a visit to the police station and foisting worries about the person who lost it on us. Hopefully they’ll be re-united with their wallet. Then we drove up coast to Coos Bay. Heading back down, we missed a turn and ended up in a state park, which was cool. A coyote trotting down the road was encountered. We stopped and gawked. He gave us a glance and veered away, disappearing into the forest. But there he was again on our way out, giving us a longer, more appaising gaze as he traversed the forest along the road. Being romantics, we thought encountering him was significant. Some precious web time that evening was spent trying to determine what his appearance meant to us, and which of us it was meant for. I believe he was a messenger telling us to let go of the past and pad into the future.

Those are the highlights. Bandon, we decided, needs a new tide, a new wind. Despite the sea breezes, the town is in the doldrums. Perhaps it’s as they wish, a nostalgic visit to a fading past. It did recharge our batteries, sooth our anxieties and blow out our stresses, as was our desire. Visits to the oceans do that for us, though, and there are other coast towns to visit.

It’ll be a while before we return to Bandon.

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Intentions

Today is a sunny, drizzly, wintry late spring summer day, a rich day for meditating and harvesting nostalgia.

Such weather induces silence. The cats huddle for warmth, seeking places to stay dry and out-wait this weather. Children and adults find indoor activities. Less people prowl the neighborhood in cars, bikes and motorcycles. Nobody is cutting their lawn or trimming their trees and bushes. Few walkers and hikers pass the house. The birds become dormant on branches, indulging in their own weather meditation.Even the crows and jays aren’t saying anything.

With this quiet, I think of faded intentions and plans. I’m almost 60 now, and can pause and look back on what I thought would happen and what I planned, and compare it to what transpired. More, I remember insights that I planned to act upon and never did, words that I meant to say to people, feelings and emotions that were to be spoken, but never touched my lips. Time is an avalanche, and buries these moments. They may be our intentions but they’re subject to everyone’s timetable and existence.

Some people say this is summer, despite the calendar and the official start. Summer begins with some when Memorial Day passes, or June begins, or the schools let out. Whichever way you consider the season, as late spring, or summer, today’s air carries wintry odors and chills. It reminds me of Okinawa winters. Our tiny apartment, made of cinder blocks and lacking insulation, didn’t have any heater. We’d purchased a small electric heating tower to keep us warm.  Our family was me, my wife, and the cats. The cats were Crystal and Jade, felines that others surrendered for different reasons, that we took in. For a time, the family included Jade’s three kittens, too, but we found them homes.

Jade, a terribly smart and willful tabby cat, loved the heat and despised cold. She planted herself in front of the heater about six inches away. If you tried sharing her space, she’d bite your ankles until you moved out of her way. Mess with the heat and get the teeth. She’d make her displeasure known through her biting without moving anything except her head and mouth. The rest stayed huddled, keeping warm.

Such memories flooded me as I gathered my laptop and gear and packed it away to ‘go write’. We were in the snug, the small room where we do most of our living. The house is about 1850 square feet but we can usually be found within the snug’s hundred and twenty four square feet, reading books, on our computers, watching television, cats on the desk and laps. A small electric heater was on to combat the chilliness. The room’s thermometer claimed it was 69 in there but it didn’t feel that warm. It felt like an Okinawa winter. So the small electric heater was on because its more energy efficient than running the entire gas system.

We’re spoiled, I think, remembering back to those days of Okinawa. But sometimes it’s good to be spoiled.

I wish everyone was.

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