Thunderstorms

We had some massive thunderstorms roll through Austin early this morning. Thunderstorms here in the hill country sneak through in the wee hours of the morning when all but the night owls are asleep. We wake to flashes of lightening and rumbling, rolling thunder. Hidden by darkness, the clouds can only be seen in the random flashing of lightening which gives a too brief tantalizing glimpse of the storm.

So different from the town where I was raised. Thunderstorms are the only things I miss from there. The area around the city was so flat that you could watch the storms build all day. In the spring, wisps of cloud in the distance would slowly puff up throughout the day until late afternoon when they would surge to new heights and flatten out in the stratosphere creating the classic anvil shape of massive thunderheads. As a kid, I would lie on my back in the park and watch the clouds … seeing shapes and then by the evening, the clouds would be mushrooms with flashing lightening highlighting the shapes.

In later years, my friends and I would gather in the coffee shop to talk, read or just be. Sooner or later someone would speculate as to how far away the thunderstorm was and the debate would be on. Many times this culminated with all of us piling into a car and driving off to see who was right … knowing full well that it would have moved from the time we started the discussion and left and finally got into the rain, but that didn’t matter. Storm chasing is not for the faint of heart, but it is for the foolhardy! I’ve experienced, first hand, hail stones the size of golf balls and been glad we weren’t in MY car. My heart has raced as I’ve seen the rotation of a cloud start to funnel down into a tornado skipping along the cotton fields. The awesome power of nature never ceases to amaze me.

At least twice, my husband and I, already packed for a planned weekend trip, changed our route and drove instead toward the storm, letting it lead us on an adventure down back roads until it played out. Then we stopped for the night and explored that area of the state for the next couple of days. Road trip - itinerary courtesy of Mother Nature. We did enjoy the journey.

Movie - Our Daily Bread

My husband and I had a chance to view this really interesting movie earlier this week. It is titled Our Daily Bread. The movie, produced in Germany, had no sound track and no narrator. It let the sounds of the food production speak for itself: the whirs and clicks of the machines moving food along conveyor belts and the soft murmur of the workers as they go about their daily jobs. It was a very interesting look at industrial food production and high-tech farming. So high-tech that the some vegetables were never “subjected” to rain or other outside elements. The vegetables were raised in green houses, sprayed frequently with pesticides and fertilizer and who knows what else. The magnitude of scale of the green houses only became apparent as the camera, focused on a person outside a green house, zoomed out repeatedly until the person could no longer be seen.

There was far less blood and gore than I expected. I knew the movie dealt not only with vegetables, but also with the meat that is processed so I expected, and braced myself for it. I, and other Americans, may have become immune to the sight of such things because of television. But I have to wonder if my conception of slaughter houses has been twisted by the word “slaughter”.

Interesting scenes:

• Two men chat as they descend down, down, down, down deep into the earth and then drive underground for a long way. Anticipation grew. What were they going down to process, I tried to guess? Mushrooms? No, salt. Deep in the earth they were in a huge salt mine. The producers again did the zoom out trick. You think you are looking at a small pile of rock salt until the camera zooms out and you see this massive machine scoping up the rock.
• Funniest scene – watching workers shake an olive tree to knock the olives off.
• Saddest scene – really, any that had to do with chickens. Beginning when they are just chicks being scooped up, sorted and placed on conveyor belts to move them along and then later when they are full grown watching them being scooped or vacuumed up and deposited in crates. The workers did not appear to be unnecessarily rough but the birds were treated as objects rather than living things.
• Most disturbing scene – a meat handler moving meat along and then taking out his cell phone to answer a call. Yuck, yuck and double yuck!

Stop the glorification

While I have great sympathy for the loved ones and the survivors of the recent shootings in Virgina, I cannot help but wonder if all of the media attention is priming the next off-balance individual. We'll never know what pushed this person to do this horrible thing, if we did, I can only hope that we, as a society, would do everything we could to keep it from happening ever again.

I remember John Hinkley who shot then President Reagan in the hopes of getting the attention of Jodie Foster. I remember Mark David Chapman who shot John Lennon. And I wish I did not.

The Media, then and now, is bombarding all of us with constant images of the twisted individuals who do these things and their victims, while at the same time dissecting and rehashing over and over the event. Its enough to make me and other normal people cringe. I cannot help but wonder if it pushes some people who are near the edge over completely.

I just wish the media would stop for a moment and think of the survivors, think of the viewers and think, most of all, of the people they could be influencing with their glorification and exploitation of this incident.

Too cute not to share

Those of you who know me know that I'm an avid cat lover. Both of my current cats are rescue animals and are just as loveable as can be. One of the cats has, for the last week or so, developed a habit that is just too cute not to share. Ok, some of you that don't like cats may be grossed out, but here goes.

She waits on the bath mat for me as I'm taking a shower. When I step out and start to towel off, she circles my legs doing figure 8's and brushing her sides up against me. In effect, she is "helping" to dry me off. Then when she's done, she jumps up on the bed and proceeds to lick the water off that she just wiped off me. Sometimes she just plops down in the bathroom and starts licking. It's almost as if she has decided that if I'm bathing, it must be time for her to bathe also!

The orange cat doesn't do it. But he does sleep in odd, non-cat like positions which is equally endearing.

To keep or not to keep?

That's the question. For a number of years I've held the rights to the domain name harmonicsynergy.com. But I've never developed it. I just really like the name. The name captures what I hope to accomplish in my life. Keeping things in harmony and using the strengths in others to become stronger myself.

It also reminds me of the importance of balance in one's life ... a lesson my first car taught me. I kept the car a long time and eventually had the engine rebuilt. It kept running roughly, the timing belt would slip and I could not figure out why. Finally, I crawled under a friend's car (of the same make/model) and noticed that his engine had a bolt mine did not have. Turns out the mechanic who had rebuilt my engine forgot to put in the harmonic balancing bolt. The harmonic balancing bolt is very important to the health of the engine as it balances the vibrations and keeps the timing belt where it should be. Once I installed a new bolt, the car purred like a well-petted kitten. Sometimes I feel like I'm missing my harmonic balancing bolt and need to ground myself.

It is time to renew my hold on the domain. My dilemma is do I keep it or not? Will I ever get around to developing a web page for it?

Good customer service

Recently I contacted Kensington customer service (www.kensington.com) to get assistance with a laptop lock. I use Kensington laptop locks to secure my personal and work computer at home and on the road. Somehow the combo lock on my personal laptop had reset itself to a different combination than I had set. This had caused a great amount of stress and distress for me because it meant that the laptop could not be removed. Inconvenient because this meant that I could not take it to the patio or anywhere else to work or surf or blog or .... Freaking me out because in an emergency, if we had to evacuate, the laptop would have to stay. Evacuation is not out of the question as we live within blocks of a couple of really old pipelines that carry petroleum products. But I digress.

The customer support at Kensington was very responsive and offered suggestions on how to determine the combination. Most importantly, the representative offered to send a replacement (a newer, better model) without my even asking! Now that is good customer service!

I'm not THAT old

I got "ma'am"ed today at a local coffee shop. I was going out as this 20 something was going in and she held the door for me. I thanked her and she said "you're welcome, ma'am"! EEK!

I know she was just being polite and respectful and her parents certainly raised her right... BUT still ...

About 32 hours to get home

Into every road warrior's (and other travelers) life delays must come. My number came up for a monumental delay. I arrived at the Palm Springs airport at 12:30 pm on Thursday for my flight home. Thankfully, I had upgraded to first class. First my flight was delayed an hour waiting for the plane. Then once everyone was boarded, I noticed that there wasn't the usual movement of the flight attendants up and down the aisle. Instead, they were talking to the captain.

Nice man, Captain Veser, kept us informed for the next 3 hours as we sat at the gate. He let us know that there was severe weather in Dallas and did not close the cabin door and push back. Now to some who read this blog, this doesn't mean much, but for those who travel extensively, it was significant. It meant that he thought it would be a long delay and did not want us shut up getting antsy. An open door means fresh air and for those that are a little anxious in closed spaces, it means less anxiety. Finally, he told us that they were cancelling all flights to Dallas for the day.

The station manager told us to deplane, collect our bags from baggage claim and go to the ticket counter to get rebooked. Here's a tip, when they tell you to get your bags and THEN go to the ticket counter, ignore them, go to the ticket counter first. The baggage people have to unload the bags from the plane and load them on the conveyor belt ... that takes time and if you are waiting for your bags ... someone else is getting your seat. Fortunately for us, the airline decided to move our flight in toto to 8:00 am the next morning. Unfortunately, whoever put the new flight in the system neglected to put that it was already full. It just showed up as another flight. So on Friday, 50 people from San Diego who thought they had confirmed seats on the plane showed up only to be told they would have to fly standby!

Because I'm an elite member of several hotel frequent sleeper clubs, I was able to get a room without any difficulty in a hotel very near where I was staying before and very near the airport. As I walked to downtown, I remember that a local person had told me it was too bad that I wasn't going to be in town on Thursday because every Thursday they have a street fair. What luck! So my extended stay in Palm Springs was actually not so bad as people watching is a favorite pass time of mine. Jugglers, musicians, artists, and people with their dogs. Simply wonderful.

On Friday I was up at 5:30 and at the airport early because I knew there would be a long line to check bags and to get through security. I really feel for those poor TSA workers sometimes. I wonder how many times a day they have to tell people they cannot carry liquids in more than 3.4 oz through security?

On the plane. Again delays. The storms are still moving through Dallas. Finally 2 hours late, we are wheels up! About an hour out of Dallas, I notice that we have gone into a holding pattern. Subtle, but after the 3rd right turn, that's a holding pattern. We landed an hour late ... not bad.

My flight from Dallas to Austin was also delayed but DFW kept me busy by first sending me to one gate, then another, then back to gate 1, then to the gate that we finally used. Here is a photo of a really neat artsy thing in terminal C. You stand in the middle and there are instructions on how to move around the maze and then end up back in the middle and it will play a melody for you. Very cool.

Wheels up 3 hours late. Finally landing in Austin, I knew I was home when I saw the bluebonnets and other wild flowers in the green area along the runway. Palm Springs was nice, but there is no place like home.

Palm Springs Update (after the fact)

I started this blog entry while in Palm Springs, but never got around to posting it. I'm a bad blogger!

Palm Springs is a really neat place. The down town is alive and thriving. So many people! The view from my hotel is amazing. Mountains and palm trees and in the morning I can see the wind farm in the distance.
Until Tuesday, I thought Palm Springs would be a wonderful place to live ... at least in the fall, winter and spring (temps in the summer can reach 127!). This is a picture taken outside a restaurant. The bougainvilleas was in full bloom. Walking to the downtown area from my hotel took about 15 minutes, but was along a very nice flower lined street. I often saw hummingbirds feeding as I walked. Alas, no good pictures of those flitty little birds.

Then, on Tuesday, a cold front moved through and I got a taste of the legendary Santa Anna winds. Three of us were walking back from dinner and it was relatively calm. Then, I hear this sound that is kind of hard to describe, but I knew it was the wind whipping up. I told the other two to brace themselves because the wind was coming. It hit with such force that one of the women with me was pushed out into the street. Here is a picture I took from my balcony on Wednesday after the cold front blew through. There is snow on the mountain that wasn't there the weekend before.