One night during SB2 in Atlanta, in the hotel, the fire alarm went off. Actually, they aren’t fire alarms any more–they are “emergency” alarms. Anyway, at 3:45am it went off. 10 minutes of a klaxon followed by a barely intelligible announcement.

It was nothing.

Yesterday, during personal consultations in my hotel room, at about 9:30 am, it happened here in Philly. Again, it was nothing, but the robotic announcements continued for 10 minutes at least and made it very hard to work.

Just now, it happened again. As I was packing up my stuff to leave for the train station. Now I’m stuck as they said not to get on the elevators or anything until they make an additional announcement. This time I heard sirens on the street.

I’m not overly concerned–they are doing renovations on the hotel so it is very likely a false alarm caused by some construction stuff. Also, I have hours before my train still.

However, I am starting to think that I might be just a little cursed or something.

[just got the all clear, btw]

I have been complaining about the weather here in San Diego (and in Los Angeles last weekend). It’s been a cold winter…for here, of course…and it’s been very rainy. Our back yard has had standing water for weeks and in one of the storms there was concern that the pool would actually overflow.

And today, it was only in the 50s (yes, I know, “only” seems a terribly whiny word, but for here that is chilly), but at least the sun was out. Christopher and I decided to drive into LaJolla and take a long walk amongst the wealthy (and the tourists). During our lengthy promenade, we noticed plenty of blooming poppies and rosemary and lavender, and a small copse of dogwoods.

Okay, midwinter, even a crappy one like this year’s, doesn’t suck quite so much in San Diego.

*****
2/3/08 update
Spoke too soon…it’s been raining all day and the back yard is flooded again.

It’s not often San Diegans look at the radar and say “Yikes!” but that’s definitely the case today (click for larger image):

Yes, that’s headed our way. They are predicting several inches of rain (2 at the coast, possibly more than 7 in the mountains) and high winds–all over the next 4 days or so. The Coast Guard is saying it may be the worst storm in 30 years.

So, after walking on the beach in a tank top on New Year’s Day to battening down the hatches….

On New Year’s Eve (today) we drove, top down, to Ikea (got a new couch cover and a frame for the Joey Ramone print). Tomorrow a walk on the beach is likely. It’s supposed to be 80° or so. It’s another Santa Ana and while I loathe the dryness, it seems terribly wrong, in a good way, to wear shorts on New Year’s Day. Seems almost wrong not to walk on the beach if it’s going to be that warm.

Okay, before you get too snippy about the bragging, there are a bunch of storms headed our way and if they do what the weather bunnies think they’ll do, we should have rain from Thursday through next Monday or Tuesday. Inches of the stuff.

So, Santa Ana and a fire warning now, floods and mudslides (and snow in the mountains) in a few days.

Last night we went to another party at the home of the fabulous Rob and Jake. The boys, as usual, had wonderful guests, and food, and booze. A good time was had.

Benito has hidden opposable thumbs. Okay, we’ve never seen these hidden thumbs, but he uses them to open cabinets and closets. We know this because we’ll find doors open for no reason and he looks smug.
Occasionally, though, he gets nailed:

One of the holiday events we like to attend here in San Diego is December Nights in Balboa Park. For one weekend, the museums (almost all) are open and free, the international houses all are open and serving food, Spanish Village art colony is open and selling everything from jewelry to glass art, there are choirs and bands playing, and many thousands of people crowd the park for a holiday celebration. This year in the rain.

It wasn’t raining when we headed out, or when we parked many blocks away, though it had rained a lot that morning and a few sprinkles were still possible according tot he Weather Channel. We took out chances. The questionable weather kept the crowds down a bit so that was a bonus. It made the lines for the Polish food shorter (we got pierogis):

After being there for a while and just after getting the food, the skies opened and we missed the umbrella which was staying fry in Christopher’s car’s trunk. We ended up huddled in the doorway of the Germany house (which looks into the Israel house and I always wonder if that is deliberate) while it poured. (This was taken later, after it slowed a bit):

The rain chased off more people and the long lines for the Scotland house’s desserts were reduced to about nil, so C tried an Edinburgh Cloud:

That is a lemon meringue ball covered in raspberry sauce. He found it quite tasty.

The food is a big selling point. There are Indian Tacos (I think those were actually Native American tacos as their booth was near one of the local tribe’s booth):

And the workers in the House of Palestine’s booth were dancing:

And in the House of Peru’s booth you could get an interesting beverage:

The rain never really stopped completely after it started, so we ducked into one of the museums that didn’t have a line. This was the Automotive Museum. Many very cool cars (including 3 generations of the Miata exhibit) but one of my favorites was this one:

By that time we were cold, damp, and decided to make it a night, hoofing it back to the car. Hopefully next year it won’t be wet for the event (it rained worse the first night!).

We started our day with a walk on the LaJolla Shores beach where we saw tons of surfers, mostly older than us. Nice way to start the holiday, I should think–surfing. It wasn’t a bad way to start even if we were just walking on the beach.

Here’s a pic C took with his iPhone:

Later we went to C’s brother’s house for the family dinner. A mass of Dell’Acquas at table:

Lots of good food and a pleasant enough evening for the most part, but a bit of a scare when Lynn (mother) took a nasty fall after dinner when she missed a step outside. Bad bump on the knee and an ugly scrape on her arm. Luckily, nothing broken (she got xrays the next day). Now if she actually uses the cane she’s been told to use…

Beating out (some of) the hoards and probably denying some kid his much-wished-for-under-the-tree item, C and I gifted ourselves yesterday. There’s only one word for it: Wii!!!!!

We got the sports game with the console and it is so much fun (and very odd)! The cordless remote vibrates in your hand at times like when you make “contact” with a ball. You bowl by doing the underhand bowling motion (it also recognizes when you put spin on the ball), golf by holding the remote like a club and swinging (you can hook/slice), tennis recognizes forehand and backhand, and baseball pitches overhand and you swing the remote like a bat to hit. I haven’t tried boxing yet, but for that you use two remotes which are connected to each other.

Spooky fun how it works.

Here is C playing baseball:

While I’m swamped at work today, I’m playing hooky next week. Guess what I’ll be doing.

Move to SoCal and you learn a new vocabulary. Some may have made it back east before, especially in films (”Don’t hork it down” or “We mac’ed out on those chips” or any of the billion “dude” quotes), but lots haven’t…until now.

Extreme fire behavior was used by the fire fighters to refer to just how bad the fires were. I think it makes the fires sound like unruly kids rather than a firestorm.

Containment percentage, as in “The fire is only 10% contained,” is the term for the amount of fire edge restricted and controlled by the fire fighters. It is NOT the same as controlling a fire in the fire fighters’ terms. Control means, essentially, putting the fire out. So, a contained fire is in control and a controlled fire is extinguished. Go fig. Here’s an example from one of the recent press releases about the Witch Fire, in the north/northeast part of the county:
The Witch Fire is 197,990 acres and 60% contained. Full containment is expected on October 31st and full control on November 5th.

Santa Anas may have been heard of in the past, but now the debate about their name is better known–some say they are named for the mountains they go through and others say they were the winds of Santana…in English, Satan. I vote for the latter.

The marine layer made national news as the fires receded. That is, essentially, the fog bank that lives off-shore most of the time but moves in when the winds are right.

That leads us to on-shore and off-shore winds. The winds are usually on-shore (from ocean to land) in May and June (May Grey, June Gloom) but not so much in the Fall (the Santa Anas are off-shore winds, meaning they blow from inland out to sea). The famous San Francisco fog is really just the marine layer moving in at night, when the wind shifts to on-shore.

Red Flag Warnings are not some warning about giant cloths attacking. Coming from the land of tornado and severe thunderstorm warnings meaning tornadoes/severe storms were in the area, this one seems oddly named. Red Flag Warnings are issued from the Weather Service when the humidity will be below 20% for 24 hours or more and winds (sustained) at 15+ mph. Oh, and the vegetation needs to be dry already, but it always is here so that’s pretty much assumed. They should be called bone sucking dry warnings, I think, or skin peel alerts or spontaneous combustion warnings. But what do I know.

By the way, the first few days of the fires had humidities at 6-9% and dew points of less than zero. Sustained winds were over 40 in many places, close to hurricane force in some places, and with gusts close to 100.

I feel like a friggin’ raisin still.