Friday, September 5, 2008

friday: storms on the way

Gustav comes to New Orleans
Storm flood water nears the roof line. Seeing a stop sign about to be 
swallowed up by waters from Gustav was very alarming. 
Andserson Cooper

In Brookland the wires for electricity, telephone and cable TV are all up in the air suspended by those old fashioned oily brown poles that once were fine trees. That means anytime the storm clouds form and the winds pick up, we are in danger of loosing power.  This past weekend we watched a lot of the storm coverage between the political party conventions on cable TV. I enjoyed watching Anderson Cooper on CNN standing in New Orleans' deserted French quarter. Just after Keith went to bed I thought to myself "what about trying a snapshot of the TV screen?" Our new flat TV allows me to get a decent, if not perfect, screen image with my digital camera and now remembering the storm is easier with these photos.  Anderson Cooper the celebrity news man from CNN is very handsome and kind of funky. He got his national TV start on the overnight news ABC tired a few years ago. There acting and talking kind of goofy worked for the extreme late night viewers and eventually the whole industry turned to his style with entertainment news. Now Anderson is a little more serious and always in dramatic situations when he can be. I think  it is fun to watch him and wonder if he has a boyfriend who it might be. Rumor says he is gay and I wonder about the another handsome man on CNN Rob who does weather; they have done several Hurricane live shots together.  Also on late night CNN last weekend was the guy I hope will be president in a few months: Barak Obama, I caught one shot of him before I turned it all off and went to bed. They showed and warned of several storms that are training across the Atlantic ocean from Africa where they begin as thunderstorms toward the Americas. Next is on the way up northeast coast to Washington, DC area and in the five years I have lived here we have only had one Tropical Storm come to DC. It blew down trees and branches and upset everything but our power didn't go out that time. Now with tropical storm Hanna on the way I am trying to think what I could do to prepare our garden and our house for a black out. There are no easy answers. Maybe I should be contacting friends and asking them to make room in their freezers for our extra bison steaks in case the juice gets knocked out. Gustav missed New Orleans mostly now Hanna comes north, Ike may crash into Florida early next week and there is one more way out there called Josephine still trying to get a tropical storm rating. We are having a busy storm season and cable TV doesn't know what to put at the top of the news entertainment menu disaster, debauchery or government corruption so many exciting things to cover. 
Meanwhile between storms we had a good week, Keith was happy with his birthday gifts, dinner and cake. Mom and I had fun shopping and buying him some vintage ceramics and a Blue Mason Jar of his own to match mine. He loves books and got a couple from me and a gift card for more from Jenny and Frank and he danced around the room when he opened that gift.  We need an extra library to store all our books in case you are trying to think of a nice holiday gift for us both. Wink wink... but really it is fun to have fine books. I have a bunch to make of my own this month so I better shut down this computer and start working! The storms are on the way and that could really make book binding difficult.

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