I don’t know what it is about impending natural disaster that makes me want to cook — because I really don’t like to. This morning, I made Crab Benedict for breakfast. For dinner tonight, spaghetti and meatballs. Maybe because they might be the only normal meals I have for a while…
Category: My So-Called Life
Odds and ends
Today I’m doing laundry (because damn it, if I’m going to be without power for a week, at least I’ll have clean sheets!), and cooking what I can of what’s in my freezer. One friend told me to make sure to loosen the strings on my guitars, because the humidity may warp the necks. (Thanks, Steve!)
All these supplies… so much more canned food than I’m used to having in the house. And crunchy things, like taco chips. What is there about stress that makes us want to really chew something?
I really, really hate these LED lights; they hurt my eyes. I think if I have to read by these for an entire week, I’ll go mad.
Preparation
At 7:30 this morning, the supermarket was packed. I felt bad for an elderly man who had a huge stack of frozen dinners – “They were on sale,” he told the cashier.
“What if your power goes out?” I said.
“Ah, I’ll be fine.”
Then I went to the Home Depot, which was a lot less crowded, but still pretty crowded for early Sunday morning. There, I had the happy task of buying a 5-gallon bucket with lid, as I was instructed by a friend who’d been through extended power outages. For what? Don’t ask.
Last night, I bought a few bags of ice at the local convenience store. “If this runs out tomorrow, are you getting more Monday?” I asked.
“Oh yeah, we’ll get more. I don’t know why everybody’s buying so much ice.”
“Because of the big storm. We’re going to have power outages,” I told her.
“But only for a day, right?”
“They’re saying to prepare for at least a week,” I said.
Her eyes got big. “But I have a baby on an apnea monitor,” she said.
I didn’t know what to say; she was doing shift work at a convenience store, I knew she couldn’t afford a backup generator.
“The hospitals always have power,” I told her. “If you have a problem, call them.” I didn’t know what else to say. In a visceral way, I really got it: The working-poor folks who went through Katrina were too busy holding their lives together to deal with a hurricane. Who has time to watch the news?
The calm before the storm
I’m starting to realize just how stressful it is, being hypervigilant. This morning, they’re saying the models are starting to indicate Sandy will be coming ashore in the vicinity of the Delmarva peninsula (where I live) and along the I-95 corridor (I live a few blocks from I-95), just as the “longshot” European model has said all along. They also make a point of saying it doesn’t much matter where the storm makes landfall, it’s still going to have a massive impact. Still thinking about storm surge and flooding ALL. THE. TIME. It would be hard not to, when NOAA is predicting coastal waves of 15-36 feet. (Thanks, petroleum lobbyists!)
The thing is, it’s also really dangerous to travel when there’s so much flooding. So I’m probably going to stay put until the storm passes, and then if the power’s out, I’ll go stay with friends.
Sandy was downgraded to a tropical storm last night, but NOAA is reporting hurricane-force winds again this morning. They’ve said all along not to be fooled by a downgrade, that the closer it gets, the more powerful it will become as it passes over the abnormally warm Atlantic ocean.
With a major storm headed my way really my neuroses are in full bloom!
The Mid-Atlantic and Northeast coasts should be prepared for a storm surge no matter their exact location. A large portion of the coast will feel the impact of up to 60 mph winds and heavy rain. According to the most recent H*Wind analysis from the Hurricane Research Division is that storm surge has a destructive potential of 4.8 out of 6.0, which is a slight increase from previous analyses. Wind damage potential is holding steady around 2.3 out of 6.0. NOAA’s HPC is forecasting rainfall totals of 5 to 10 inches in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, and possibly more in coastal locations close to the core of the storm. Widespread power outages from Maine south to Virginia are likely, due to the combination of long-lived gale-force winds, leaves on trees, and rain that will moisten the soil and possibly increase the chances of falling trees. Snow in the Appalachians is also possible as the intense moisture meets the cold air being pulled south by the mid-latitude trough.
During September 2012, ocean temperatures off the mid-Atlantic coast in the 5×10° latitude-longitude box between 35 – 40°N, 65 – 75° W were 2.3°F (1.3°C) above average, according to the UK Met Office. This is the 2nd greatest departure from average for ocean temperatures in this region since reliable ocean temperature measurements began over a century ago (all-time record: 2.0°C above average in September 1947.) These unusually warm waters have persisted into October, and will enable Sandy to pull more energy from the ocean than a typical October hurricane. The warm waters will also help increase Sandy’s rains, since more water vapor will evaporate into the air from a warm ocean. I expect Sandy will dump the heaviest October rains on record over a large swath of the mid-Atlantic and New England.
Hurricanes are expected to dump 20% more rain in their cores by the year 2100, according to modeling studies (Knutson et al., 2010). This occurs since a warmer atmosphere holds more water vapor, which can then condense into heavier rains. Furthermore, the condensation process releases heat energy (latent heat), which invigorates the storm, making its updrafts stronger and creating even more rain. We may already be seeing an increase in rainfall from hurricanes due to a warmer atmosphere. A 2010 study by Kunkel et al. “Recent increases in U.S. heavy precipitation associated with tropical cyclones”, found that although there is no evidence for a long-term increase in North American mainland land-falling tropical cyclones (which include both hurricanes and tropical storms), the number of heavy precipitation events, defined as 1-in-5-year events, more than doubled between 1994 – 2008, compared to the long-term average from 1895 – 2008. As I discussed in a 2011 post “Tropical Storm Lee’s flood in Binghamton: was global warming the final straw?”, an increase in heavy precipitation events in the 21st Century due to climate change is going to be a big problem for a flood control system designed for the 20th Century’s climate.
For those of you have never lived in hurricane country, the approach of a major storm is always accompanied by several days of ominious overcast skies, the outer cloud band that covers hundreds of miles. We haven’t seen much of the sun for the past week.
Today I need to get my plants and patio furniture out of the way, and get my cooler out of the garage, since it would be nice to have some real food through this ordeal.
Ugh
So I left the doctor’s (I had to schedule an endoscopy for my esophagus), stopped at the store to pick up more propane and candles, brought everything upstairs, and then I felt something go pop! in my knee. The last time I had something like this happen, a ligament in my ankle ruptured. Bad time to happen, because I still have to put a bunch of yard stuff away before the storm and now I can hardly walk.
WTF, universe?
This week for Libra
Hmm:
The ideal job is to have no job at all. That doesn’t mean sitting around all day smoking pot or eating sugar. It means having something to do that fills you with pleasure and dedication just to be privileged enough to be doing it, knowing that people benefit and enjoy the fruits of your labors. It’s the service aspect of what you are doing that can be so rewarding. You may not be raking in the big money right away as you’d like, but there is a fortune to be made in the blend of skill, talent and business acumen. Don’t rush it, though and don’t give up before you start.
The silly dilemma of Sunday night TV
Let me start off by saying yes, first world problem. Agreed.
But I love TV. I keep it on in the background while I work, and it’s a pleasant diversion from the stress of my daily routine. But now it’s just adding to the stress, because so many of the shows I watch are now on the same night: Once Upon A Time, The Good Wife, The Walking Dead, Homeland, Dexter, Treme, Boardwalk Empire, and Call The Midwife. Are these network programming heads sadists?
And no, I do not have a DVR. And yes, I know this is not a serious problem. It’s just annoying.
Pain injections
So my doctor wants me to get injections in my cervical spine for the pain in my upper arms, and I’m a little wary. “This would be a really good time to get them,” enthuses my nurse in-law. “They’re going to be watching those companies really closely now.”
I thought of trying to explain that it’s the states who have jurisdiction over compound pharmacies, and that they’ve all slashed their budgets, so it’s highly unlikely that they have enough inspectors. But it just seemed like it would be so much work, and I was having fun seeing all my family, so I just smiled and said nothing.
Which is unusual.
But I still have to decide about the injections.
Taped up
I don’t think I’ve mentioned how much I lean on kinesio tape to stay functional. You probably have seen the multicolored strips on professional athletes — I had no idea how popular it was until I saw commercials for the Olympics.
Hard to describe, but it’s kind of like an Ace bandage that stays on your skin. If you hurt something, the kinesio tape takes the pressure away from the inflamed area, lessens the pain and allows you to heal faster. The shit is like gold to me – and you can leave it on for days. When my arms and hands are really bad, taping is the only way I can type.
Anyway, as I mentioned, I sprained my knee a couple of weeks ago. Thanks to the tape, though, I stayed much more functional and had turned the corner to where it was more of a minor ache. I was meeting someone the other night; I’d taken a shower and decided to quickly change the tape before I went out, since it was four days old and losing some stretch.
Well, I didn’t really pay attention. And within a half hour or so, my entire leg started to hurt. Within an hour, I was limping. By the time I went to bed, my entire leg was in a deep spasm and hurt so bad, I could hardly sleep.
Fortunately, I had a physiatrist appointment the next morning, and as I was getting dressed, I noticed that the kinesio tape looked… off. I’d put the tape off on the side of my knee instead of across my quads. Hmm.
When I limped into his office, my doctor said, “What did you do now?” I told him either my Bakers cyst has returned, or I’d taped myself into this mess. He examined me and said, “Yep, I think it was the tape. It’s as if all your muscles were pulled to one side. But of course, it can’t be the tape because I just heard a talk by two top orthopedists and they said it didn’t do anything, it was all a placebo effect. So this pain is all in your head.”
After some rather painful acupuncture to break the spasm, I’m about 50 percent better today. From now on, I won’t ever tape-and-run!
If you have chronic pain (arthritis, etc.), I strongly recommend this stuff. YouTube has lots of videos explaining how to do it. (If only I’d listened.)
Shutting down
This is one of the reasons I was depressed that I couldn’t afford a vacation this year. When I go away, I pretty much do nothing. I read, I sit by the water, I watch movies. It’s the only time I get to deaccelerate my brain, and this year, I didn’t get to do it. Maybe next year!