HELLO IRENE

Well, we made it all the way to late August without a hurricane our first year.
Now it's late August, and Irene is going to sweep by. She'll probably miss us, but we'll feel her draft.

In fact, she brushed by me this morning. Grover and I went to the beach at 7am to see if I could get any good pics. I'm not sure I can say whether I did. But in less than thirty seconds the beach morphed from a clear sky with offshore clouds (pic) to a full-on drenching rain. Thirty seconds. Fifteen seconds of sudden wind, and fifteen seconds of light drizzle. And you just KNOW I had both my camera and my new phone out there!
Of course Grover freaked out. Are you kidding? He pulled and lurched and twisted around my ankles as I tried to shield my camera and phone under a soggy t-shirt. And the runners and walkers on the beach made a bee-line for the ramp to exit, which of course made him more anxious than he'd already been.
The storm looks large, even from space (pic.) I'm sure that wherever she lands she'll make an impression. I'll keep my fingers crossed that nobody gets hurt or killed.
Something going on, though. We all hear the conservative loudspeakers pooh-poohing global warming. Then we hear how "vicious" Mother Nature is: our historic Florida wildfires, Virginia's bizarre earthquake. Even Lincoln had an event: a propane tanker on fire and a large evacuation. What's next? Can it be mitigated? Probably not, people.
BTW: For all you sympathetic to asking questions, I suggest you watch the documentary on the death of Pat Tillman, The Pat Tillman Story. I'm not a big football fan, nor a war-hero fan, and I still like the personality I saw. Unsettling as the story is, even more unsettling for me was its lack of closure... I'd say it makes you think, but I'm already thinking.