Too Much Weather
Last year's New Year's Eve was probably the worst ever-our house had burned, we were staying in a hotel, and I'd spent hours in the house's toxic environment trying to remove everything valuable and portable before thieves got the chance. I was tired and disoriented, and I don't know if I was even aware it was New Year's Eve until it got late and fireworks started going off. None of it seemed real.
This year, I spent the evening with our meager supply of flashlights and a single Dollar Tree candle, listening to the storm raging outside our rental house and hoping the power wouldn't go out. Our house was lucky that night, but the experience provided a dry run for the following weekend (a week ago), which featured flickering lights, and ferocious winds screaming over the roof so loudly that I was Googling "inland hurricane" just as we lost power. I have only ever heard that kind of wind during hurricane scenes in movies and TV shows! Scary. We don't have any large trees near this rental house, though there are quite a few next to our actual house. I find myself thinking about these kinds of things more and more often, as weather all over the world grows more extreme.
The power was out for 10 hours overnight, which was not the worst time of day except that without the electric blanket, it was too cold to sleep. The rain and wind were especially brutal here around Sacramento, so losing power wasn't surprising. We had a 17-hour outage in 2021, also due to a storm, and that was a wake-up call. Our municipal power company is really good and conscientious, so prior to 2021, if we lost power it was usually restored within a few hours. The intensity and frequency of these winter storms has changed all that, and now we need to think about it more seriously.
My sister who lives near Portland goes through this every year, and they're still not prepared. But one thing they DO have, which HalfshellHusband wants to remove when we rebuild our own house, is a wood-burning fireplace. They spent a WEEK huddled around it during an outage a few years back, a total godsend since outside temps were near or below freezing. We will have a gas-fueled fireplace going forward, which I can't see ever being useful in troublesome conditions.
This is what life has come to now. People living in the mountains or other remote areas often have wood stoves for heat, which is exactly what you'd want during a prolonged outage. Without power, your furnace and space heaters (and even pellet stove) won't run, and your range and microwave won't work. Wood stoves help with both problems, which just... we imagine we're living in a modern age, and then Mother Nature smites us for our hubris. \o? :(
Our storms have dumped a LOT of rain on California, endlessly. By the time it (hopefully?) clears up for a few days, I will have biked outside ONE TIME in the last 4 weeks. Ugh. Biking on a track stand in the garage is better than nothing, but when it goes on this long, I lose a lot of conditioning. This is also true during long heat spells in the summer. But it means that I watched a lot of great streaming TV this year, all on Netflix:
The Sinner - Season 3 (with guess star Matt Bomer) still haunts me, and Season 4 was very good. The show is a perfect vehicle for Bill Pullman.
The Walking Dead - I finally returned to watching this, after giving up for several years because of the Negan character arc. The writing is rarely dull, and I've loved so many of the show's characters, even though the recurring story lines about humans being evil to other humans (when the world has already gone to hell) causes me grief and stress. I've made it up to the end of S10, holding off on the final season.
Bloodlines - A multi-generational story of love, hate, resentment, and dysfunction. Season 1 was terrific, utterly gripping, and it also brought back childhood memories of us kids being called on the carpet for wrongdoing and my youngest sister deciding that what the situation REALLY called for was sass, and lots of it. Sure, let's just dig that hole deeper! Season 2 was slower-paced, and Season 3 (condensed due to the show's imminent cancellation) really put the WTF in everything. Still worth it, though.
Squid Games - captivating, colorful, and strange. So much Yes!
Bodyguard, Treason, Pieces of Her, Clickbait - Tense and full of plot twists.
Behind Her Eyes - Loved the cast, and the ending broke me. Plus, the eye-catching interior design for a wealthy character's house is a fascinating mashup of modern and 60s Mod.
Devil In Ohio - a creepy, fascinating train wreck of a situation.
Echoes was good (with Michelle Monaghan as twins), and The Watcher was \o? But Margo Martindale is in it, and the private detective is marvelous.
Hit And Run - I'm just finishing this miniseries thriller, which takes place in Israel and where at least 50% of the language is Hebrew. I really like the cast for this.
And there's so much more in my Netflix list to possibly try out during the upcoming months of continued garage-biking. Which I hope will not be a thing, but let's not kid ourselves. :O
This year, I spent the evening with our meager supply of flashlights and a single Dollar Tree candle, listening to the storm raging outside our rental house and hoping the power wouldn't go out. Our house was lucky that night, but the experience provided a dry run for the following weekend (a week ago), which featured flickering lights, and ferocious winds screaming over the roof so loudly that I was Googling "inland hurricane" just as we lost power. I have only ever heard that kind of wind during hurricane scenes in movies and TV shows! Scary. We don't have any large trees near this rental house, though there are quite a few next to our actual house. I find myself thinking about these kinds of things more and more often, as weather all over the world grows more extreme.
The power was out for 10 hours overnight, which was not the worst time of day except that without the electric blanket, it was too cold to sleep. The rain and wind were especially brutal here around Sacramento, so losing power wasn't surprising. We had a 17-hour outage in 2021, also due to a storm, and that was a wake-up call. Our municipal power company is really good and conscientious, so prior to 2021, if we lost power it was usually restored within a few hours. The intensity and frequency of these winter storms has changed all that, and now we need to think about it more seriously.
My sister who lives near Portland goes through this every year, and they're still not prepared. But one thing they DO have, which HalfshellHusband wants to remove when we rebuild our own house, is a wood-burning fireplace. They spent a WEEK huddled around it during an outage a few years back, a total godsend since outside temps were near or below freezing. We will have a gas-fueled fireplace going forward, which I can't see ever being useful in troublesome conditions.
This is what life has come to now. People living in the mountains or other remote areas often have wood stoves for heat, which is exactly what you'd want during a prolonged outage. Without power, your furnace and space heaters (and even pellet stove) won't run, and your range and microwave won't work. Wood stoves help with both problems, which just... we imagine we're living in a modern age, and then Mother Nature smites us for our hubris. \o? :(
Our storms have dumped a LOT of rain on California, endlessly. By the time it (hopefully?) clears up for a few days, I will have biked outside ONE TIME in the last 4 weeks. Ugh. Biking on a track stand in the garage is better than nothing, but when it goes on this long, I lose a lot of conditioning. This is also true during long heat spells in the summer. But it means that I watched a lot of great streaming TV this year, all on Netflix:
The Sinner - Season 3 (with guess star Matt Bomer) still haunts me, and Season 4 was very good. The show is a perfect vehicle for Bill Pullman.
The Walking Dead - I finally returned to watching this, after giving up for several years because of the Negan character arc. The writing is rarely dull, and I've loved so many of the show's characters, even though the recurring story lines about humans being evil to other humans (when the world has already gone to hell) causes me grief and stress. I've made it up to the end of S10, holding off on the final season.
Bloodlines - A multi-generational story of love, hate, resentment, and dysfunction. Season 1 was terrific, utterly gripping, and it also brought back childhood memories of us kids being called on the carpet for wrongdoing and my youngest sister deciding that what the situation REALLY called for was sass, and lots of it. Sure, let's just dig that hole deeper! Season 2 was slower-paced, and Season 3 (condensed due to the show's imminent cancellation) really put the WTF in everything. Still worth it, though.
Squid Games - captivating, colorful, and strange. So much Yes!
Bodyguard, Treason, Pieces of Her, Clickbait - Tense and full of plot twists.
Behind Her Eyes - Loved the cast, and the ending broke me. Plus, the eye-catching interior design for a wealthy character's house is a fascinating mashup of modern and 60s Mod.
Devil In Ohio - a creepy, fascinating train wreck of a situation.
Echoes was good (with Michelle Monaghan as twins), and The Watcher was \o? But Margo Martindale is in it, and the private detective is marvelous.
Hit And Run - I'm just finishing this miniseries thriller, which takes place in Israel and where at least 50% of the language is Hebrew. I really like the cast for this.
And there's so much more in my Netflix list to possibly try out during the upcoming months of continued garage-biking. Which I hope will not be a thing, but let's not kid ourselves. :O