Three mayors in two weeks, seven candidates and other stuff

This post is a little bit link-heavy (four is a lot for me) but they all go to the website of the Akron Beacon Journal, and I've never had problems with their site.

First up, after our 27-year mayor resigned, so did our 7-day mayor.  The latter's time in office was 10 days.  Then when another City Council president stepped up to be mayor, there was a "discussion" in council (involving him) that led to the cops being called.

We now have seven candidates for mayor, and one of them I know to chat with and one I know of as the boss of my smoke break buddies from the Clerk's Office.  Mr. Horrigan has my vote, at lease at the moment.

In non-political Akron stuff, we're getting some new public artwork featuring Devo.

And for all that the courthouse was packed with reporters on Friday afternoon, I guess Judge's Croce's announcement that she wants to learn everything she can before deciding if a man convicted of murder 20 years ago should get a new trial just wasn't exciting enough.  I had to search to find the story rather than seeing it on the front page of any websites.

In the last week, I've seen two vanity plates that stuck with me.  HAMSTAR is intriguing, because it could refer to shortwave radio, pigs or something else.  HMMRH3, especially on a Hummer, just reeks of insecurity.  Yes, dude, we know your penis substitute is expensive.  ::yawn::

And finally, Akron had thunderstorms hit at exactly four o'clock two days in a row, and both of them were fierce!  I got so soaked on Thursday that I stopped at Payless on the way home to get a pair of sandals I needed anyway and put my tennies and socks in the bag and wore the sandals home.  Friday had the same ferocity but a little less volume, so I could jump my way across the street without getting my feet drenched.  Both days, by the time I hit Cuyahoga Falls, the rain had stopped.  Global weirding, ladies and gentlemen!

More alarums, more excursions

After driving out to Casa de Senior Jammies and getting a brush, the ozone generator and a squeegie, I came back and worked all day just clearing the garage.  I found at least one dead mouse and a ton of styrofoam peanuts.

Then it flooded again.

Then the basement flooded.

So here I am, taking another vacation day, using every rag in the house to try to mop up the water in the basement, bleaching the garage floor and thanking my lucky stars that I met a scrap metal dealer at court last week who is coming by to pick up all the metal I found whilst cleaning out the garage.  Goodbye, old lawnmower blades, rabbit ears and plant holders.

Now I just have to get the icky, sodden, dog-destroyed armchair out of the basement and wash another load of rags.

Alarums and excursions!

Yesterday was a fairly ordinary work day, even a pretty good work day.  I woke up early enough to be ready in time to leave the house and make a quick stop on the way in for Lemonheads and Raisinettes for my two co-workers who just finished school for the semester, and the day went pretty quickly.  I was pottering around at home last night when Little Miss Piggie Pie started whimpering a bit and then the city tornado sirens went off.

I was just debating whether or not to head for the basement when my dad called.  After asking me how I was, he asked if I was aware of the weather, and then proceeded to read me the entire text of the warning.  I promised him I would keep an eye on the dog and on the radar and went about my evening.  He told me to call him if a tornado was headed for Hudson because he was going to take a nap.  Typical Scary Bear, nothing gets in the way of a nap.

LMPP calmed down and went to sleep, so I went back to working on spreadsheets for Mom while outside it was storming to beat the band.  I took a break when the hail started.  It was so loud I knew what popcorn sounds like from the inside of the popper.  Then the hail stopped and the rain started again, and when I went to look at the lightning, I realized there was standing water in the driveway.

So at 9:30, I was outside in flip-flops and a rain poncho, wading through ankle-deep cold water trying to clear the grate on the driveway drain.  I succeeded, but too late to prevent the garage from flooding.  I came back inside, saw that the tornado warning was over and there was a flash flood warning, washed my feet, set up the coffee and went to bed.

This morning, the garage had a layer of mud and yuck all over the floor, lots of things moved around from the water and was in a general state of disarray.  Unfortunately, because today was call day, I had to go in.  I'll need to be, at minimum, in the hospital before I call off on call day--it's just too hard with only two people in the accounts department.

My drive in was complicated by a detour that meant I had to use the high-traffic route and included the sight of a whole bunch of downed trees and washed-out shoulders.  Lake Morley was full of water, with more dripping from the pipes.  I told my colleagues what had happened, explained that I'd like to take Wednesday off and got permission from the chief clerk to do so.  I then had to tell one of my fellow auditors that yes, I washed my feet after wading in dog-knows-what. :P

Call day was interesting.  For the first time in my experience, we had two people admit, albeit reluctantly, that they weren't just behind in their paperwork, they'd done things they shouldn't have with money that wasn't theirs.  Thankfully, the judge is more interested in helping them fix things than punishing them.

When I got home, the garage had started to stink (it was 90º F today!) and I called dad to make sure he and his couch weren't buried in the remains of my childhood home and to see if I could borrow a floor squeegie and the ionizer.  He was alive and well and said he'd leave everything where I can find it tomorrow morning without waking him.

A big thank you to all of the G+ friends who held my paw last night and sent me dry thoughts. <3 all="" nbsp="" ou="" p="" rock.="">

Random factoids

Yes, another list, because I lack the brainpower for narrative structure.

1.  I have my first chest cold in quite a number of years, and it's as horrible as I remember.  I left work early on Thursday, called off on Friday, and had a holiday today, so a long rough weekend.

2.  Little Miss Piggie Pie had her annual pincushion appointment this morning, and had to be muzzled for snapping at Dr. Bob despite a handful of Bil-Jac treats.  The good news is she's finally gained some weight, and he thinks she's perfect at 54 pounds.  She got more treats when we stopped at Pet Supplies Plus to get dog food--I hope she doesn't think that kind of treatment is going to last! ;-)

3.  On the way home today, I passed by the repair shop owned by the guy who bought my Saturn.  Norm is a 17 year-old Saturn SW1, with no luxury options and 118,000 miles, and the guy who paid me $600 is asking $3195.  Good luck, Mr. Lotsaballs!

4.  My taxes are done and I am getting a teensy refund, which will go straight to the Cleveland Clinic to pay my portion of the bill for my MRI.

5.  There is a blizzard going on outside right now, and even with a racking cough and lizard-rough dry skin from taking a zillion hot showers, it's nice to look at it.  I do like snow, and I'm trying to store up some cold for when I'm miserable in August.

Dad's Road Trip

2 a.m.: Go to bed

4 a.m.: Get up, eat ice cream

4:30 a.m.: Go back to bed

6 a.m.: Get up, drink coffee, surf the web, chain-smoke

6:30 a.m.: Panic!  Load the car.  Repeatedly call your wife out to the garage to help you, only to let her stand there for 10 minutes before you say you're not ready for her.

7:30 a.m.: Ask for pillows, a blanket, sandwiches, coffee and snacks.  Get them because your wife is awesome and did everything but the coffee last night.

7:50 a.m.: Leave 

10:30 a.m.: Take first nap

12:00 p.m.: Call home, joke that the food Mom packed means he's travelling the Trans-Fat Highway.

12:30 p.m.:  Take second nap

Arrive somewhere around 4 p.m.

On Saturday, Dad and his friend were driving back from somewhere when Dad's phone rang.  It was his friend D, whose family has known our family since the late '60s.  D was in New Jersey too, helping out his daughter who lives there, and he knew Dad was in NJ because Jeeves posted it on Facebook.

Dad thinks it's funny, Mom thinks it's an invasion of privacy, and I think the world just gets smaller and smaller. :)

Another hero (although this one's not soggy)

An old friend of my uncle's lives in New Jersey, and is without power.  Because my father is smart and caring and thoughtful, he purchased a generator today, and tomorrow morning he is driving to New Jersey to get it hooked up.  He just says that it's something he knows how to do and something he has the time to do, but I'm pretty damn impressed.

A damp hero

Last night was mostly a typical Monday night at Casa de Jammies.  Work sucked on toast, it was cold, raining and horrendously windy, and I was glad to get home, shuck out of my work clothes and settle down to read a nice, spooky, vampire apocalypse novel.  The Twelve, by Justin Cronin, if you're curious.   The dogs were both fairly needy, thanks to the wind, and after the third time Little Miss Piggie Pie tried to climb into my lap, I gave up on reading and headed for the computer.

Around nine o'clock, I was sitting at my desk with four programs running on my desktop computer when the power went out.  I waited a minute until I was sure that the power wasn't coming back on immediately, and then I reached over and turned off the power bar for the computer and peripherals before pushing back my chair.  Because the study is at the back of the house, there was very little light coming into the room.  When my eyes adjusted, the first thing I saw was six glowing spots to my right.  After a blink or two, I realized it was my glow-in-the-dark nail polishes!

If you've never tried to navigate a pitch-black house with dogs pressed to your legs, I can't give you any advice, because once I got past the study door to the hallway, I could see the light from the streetlamps.  All the lights were on at the sub-station across the street, so I lit some candles and called my folks to request a wake-up call in the morning in case the power wasn't back on by 6.

Okay, technically, I called my mother, because the only time my dad sees 6 a.m. is from the wrong side.

Then I picked up my knitting and did four rows on The Scarf That Will Take Forever.

At about twenty to ten, Little Miss Piggie Pie started going crazy, running back and forth from the living room window to the breezeway door, barking her head off.  I tried telling her that nobody would be walking or bicycling past her turf on a night like this, but she persisted.  I finished my row, set the knitting aside and walked out to the breezeway and looked out the door.

There was in fact someone out there, a dark shape on foot, with a flashlight.  After a minute or so, I realized that it was the poor city electrical worker who was on call last night, walking between the substation building and the cage full of, um, transformers?  about a house lot away.  And he stayed out there, going back and forth between the two, for the rest of the evening.  Granted, by the time I went to bed at 11:30, he was no longer on foot but taking his truck back and forth, but he was still working to get my power back on.

I read a few more chapters in my scary book, thanks to the LED book light Sherri gave me, then set up the coffee, set the alarm on my cell phone, and went to bed.  When I woke up at 5:30, the power was on, but I thought it was only 3:30, so it's a good thing Mom called at 6.

So tonight I am raising my glass to all of the gas and electric workers, the damp heroes out there getting the power back on and keeping people warm and safe and well-lit.  Thank you all.

A great big MESS

Last Tuesday, NE Ohio was hit with big storms--hail, rain, thunder, lightning, high winds, tornado watches, etc. I was trying to get the local radio station's streaming audio to work on my computer so I'd know if I had to grab the dog and head for the basement when I heard a huge CRACK! Since nothing hit the house and I didn't hear anything else, I figured a tree had come down in the back yard and didn't worry about it.

For reference, this is how my backyard looks in the summer:



This is what I saw when I looked outside on Wednesday morning:



When I got home from work and went to take a closer look, this is what I saw:




Forty to fifty feet of tree, in my estimation. Snoopy came out, said it was 90 feet, to which I said "Men think this *thumb and forefinger about three inches apart* is nine inches, so I don't trust your estimation." He hemmed and hawed a bit, then promised me he would do the work for the wood, as long as I wasn't in a hurry. Okay, I'd like the big tree out of my back yard, but I can't afford a professional remover, so yeah, thanks.

When I got home on Friday night, my feckless young neighbor was out back, cutting the tree apart with his chainsaw. While the cynical part of me suspected that he was planning to sell the wood and not tell me about it, I went out and thanked him for the favor, and explained that the friend who mows my lawn was going to take care of it, but he was welcome to the wood he cut.

When I told Snoopy about it, he was furious. Apparently, he thought he could sell the entire tree to someone and give me half the money. After I had repeated that I didn't ask NeighborBoy to cut up the tree, Snoopy gave up being mad at me and just pouted. I did tell him that even if I'd been home, I probably wouldn't have stopped him, because Snoopy hadn't told me about his plans for the tree. He rather lamely told me that it was supposed to be a surprise and he thought he had time to get the tree buyer out to my house.

While some money would be nice, I'm not so in need of it that I'm bothered by not getting any from either NeighborBoy or Snoopy's tree guy. I am irritated by the fact that neither of them elected to consult ME in their plans.

Men. Pffft.