Gryphoemia

Wow, I finally found a word that describes precisely what living here is all about. Courtesy of The Henna Page:

Gryphoemia

A morbid affliction of one's patience. Outbreaks tend to be caused by too much time spent dealing with the stupid. Symptoms of a Gryphoemia outbreak can include increased heart rate, heavy breathing, severe headache, blurred vision and a driving urge to injure someone -- anyone. The most serious outbreaks have been known to cause smoke to rise from a person's ears. Henna artists are particularly prone to Gryphoemia when they've had to be enormously gracious to very irritating people under difficult conditions. Gryphomia can never be cured, but outbreaks can be suppressed by indulging in something you're NOT supposed to do ... like eating junk food, shopping, consuming or imbibing "attitude adjusting substances", and ..... whatever your favorite naughtiness happens to be.

(Definition by The Fabulous Gwyn)

Gwyn, I've never met you.....but thanks!

Interesting....

Check out Dilbert's Ultimate House!!!

Hey, I'd live there. Wouldn't you?

Spared again!

Well, South Florida got lucky...again. Hurricane Jeanne essentially followed the same path as Hurricane Frances, skipping lightly over us and slamming areas to the north. While many Broward residents lost power temporarily, and there were some nasty storm squalls throughout the weekend, overall we are okay.

I stocked up on canned food, water, dry milk, and other non-perishables late last week, and Michael and I rode out the storm at my place. Libraries and businesses were closed for at least Saturday, some into Sunday, and people were told by the County mayor's office to do their preparations, get inside, and stay there. We spent most of Saturday, especially Saturday night, tracking the hurricane on TV, watching reports as it made landfall up in Stuart and Melbourne. A pretty surreal experience, actually, as the weather was eerily calm in my neighborhood while they were getting hit. We emerged midafternoon Sunday, went to check Michael's apartment (which is much closer to the ocean than mine), and spent most of the rest of the afternoon hanging out at Starbucks with his new roommate.

Seeing the weather--and the damage--inflicted on other areas just drives home how incredibly fortunate this place has been. Florida has never had four storms make landfall in one season. The only other time it's happened in the U.S. period was in the 19th century! Just about every other area of the state has incurred major damage and flooding--some areas more than once--and the estimate for insured losses is in the billions. I didn't even have any power outages this time, and my neighbors told me that they only lost power for a couple hours total with Frances. I think we're all feeling pretty grateful right now even as we empathise with people up north.

In other news...

I hear Kerry is losing ground with younger, married women. This is apparently because this demographic, of which I am nearly a part, is looking for a "big strong protector man" in a president, and Bush is seen as better fulfilling this role. At least, that's what all the old white men newsanchors tell me. Excuse me....I suddenly got this strange foul taste in my mouth....

Mendhi!

My friend Diana came over and did some mendhi on my left hand last night. Here's some pictures she took after she applied the henna paste:

lovely, no? we wrapped my hand so I could wear it overnight. I scraped it off this morning, after it had been on about 12 hours. It's in the process of turning a nice deep brown :)

The weather finally turned nice enough that I could turn off my A/C last night and open the window. So I got to sleep in fresh air last night.

Other than that not much going on. I am battling some of the same old same old at work...mundane petty power struggles that really get me down. The worst of the latest seems to be over but I'm not convinced more crap won't start floating around at any minute. Fortunately both Michael and I have the entire weekend off, so hopefully we can relax, let go of work worries, and have a little fun.

Pretty much says it all...

Ivan the terrible

Well, we're back after a great Ottawa vacation. I got my new passport and visa with minimal problems, so I'm set for another year. My aunt and Jacque's apartment is really well situated in an interesting part of downtown Ottawa, within walking distance of Bytown Market, and we did a lot of sightseeing while we were there. We went into the Gatineaus, one of the area's spectaular parks, a couple of times, and we spent one late afternoon and evening in a small town called Merrickville for dinner and shopping. We took a trip to Upper Canada Village, which recreates an early settlers' farm and town with recovered and restored buildings, reinactors, and working shops and mills. Michael and I bought a handmade broom in the shop there to use in our ceremony next summer. We also spent an afternoon sunning on the beach at Meech Lake, and took a day trip to Montreal to tour the harbor and the historic area of Old Montreal. Our last day was devoted to walking around the market, taking a tour of the Parliament buildings, having lunch at Darcy McGee's (of course!), and some shopping. Michael found a book about Ottawa from Michael Horn's, a great local bookstore, and he saw a wedding band he really liked at Birks Jewelers.

Now we are back in Florida, only to find that although we missed Frances, we are right on time for Ivan, whose path gets closer and closer to Broward County with every renewed forecast. Someone must have decided that Florida was getting too complacent/forgetful of Hurricane Andrew, I guess--but three direct hits in a month seems a little much! County government was closed a few days last week because of Frances; looks like they may shut things down for a few days again until Ivan blows over. Guess I'd better get in line at the grocery store for nonperishable food and more gallons of drinking water and be prepared to hole up in my apartment for a few days with possible loss of power and phone. If not worse! One of the big worries is that there is still so much detrius on the ground from the last storm--tree branches etc.--that more high winds could lift it up again and do major damage. And of course the ground is so saturated right now that flooding is bound to be bad. Cross your fingers and hope that we survive this one relatively intact....

Evacuation time

Boy, did we choose a good time to leave town. Michael and I are sitting in Ottawa, tracking a storm the size of Texas as it slowly closes in on Florida. Experts still aren't certain on where it will land, but over a million people have been told to evacuate. This is the first time in 50 years or more that 2 storms like this will hit Florida at the same time. Frances is already a category 4 creeping up close to 5... just as fierce as Andrew was but over twice as big! Broward has been put into a state of emergency...county agencies, including the libraries, have been shut down. Guess this means they owe me a couple more days vacation :)

It's weird watching it from so far away. On the one hand, you're kind of divorced from the whole thing. On the other, you're on edge hoping that your home won't be destroyed while you're away. I'm pretty far inland; Michael's apartment, however, is on the main floor and only 4 miles away from the evacuation line. Makes me very, very glad we could travel together this year! On top of this, given the state of emergency and possible hit from the storm, we're wondering if we will even be able to get back when we planned to, or whether the airports will be closed! Not exactly the way that I'd choose to get an extended vacation.

As to our Ottawa trip, it's been nice and relaxing so far. We've been walking around downtown Ottawa, the embassies and Parliament. We also took a drive this afternoon into the Gatineau Park and saw William Lyon Mackenzie King's estate. Tomorrow I go to pick up my passport, and we may drive into Montreal on Saturday.