Fishing in the firehouse

Two feet of water in the Avalon, New Jersey, firehouse and they were FISHING in there! I am taking the lazy man's approach to storm investigation...watching it on TV. My sister and her boyfriend went out in the car to check on status of boats which were pulled into dry dock in anticipation of Hurricane Sandy. 10,000 Atlantic City Electric customers are without power in Cumberland County. 7.4 million people woke up in the dark this AM, Tuesday. Luckily, not us. I am looking out the window onto Clark's Pond which is relatively calm and drizzly. We might even see the sun tomorrow.

Worried about the beach. My worries about Sea Isle seem to have been well founded. Bridges are out or closed between Avalon and Ocean City and Avalon and Sea Isle City. That means if anyone wants to travel between the towns, they have to go inland to get on the Parkway. And all of the lovely libraries I hung out in this summer. I spent more time at the beach this year than any other summer, because I was retired and had time during the week. Between the death of a young man last week and the storm this week, I am very struck by the fragility of everything.

Have never been able to watch our Governor Christie even complete a sentence prior to now. I must admit I was glued to his every word during the crisis and he seemed to be doing a good job.

Things to do when the electric goes off

Just trying to get my lists together:
- Things to do while the electricity is on: watch DVDs, cook, enjoy the heat
- Things to do when the electricity goes off: read, eat the ice cream

Went down to my sister's to try and distract myself from Hurricane Sandy. We have been watching the approach on TV and getting ready for DAYS. If it is going to leak at home, it is going to leak and there is not much I can do about it. I'll just have to clean it up when the storm is over. I just got BORED with my home activities and thought I would come down to where there is a fireplace and they live on top of a hill. We watched a really great DVD called Page eight, a British spy caper that I missed on Masterpiece theater.

I'd like life to get back to normal, but I don't really know what normal is any more.

Dazed and confused

Life somewhat crazy lately, what with a friend from out of town around. Maybe the storm is telling me it is time to stay home for a few days? Did get to the grocery store today. I was running around doing NON-essential preparations for the storm such as going to the movies and getting a manicure. We have several days of anxiety-building news to get us all worked up about the storm. I detest rain, especially a hard rain and don't like the fact that I have no Internet at home.

I am lagging behind. Now I have a laptop but I can't live off my phone like many people and I still pay my bills the old fashioned way, by writing a check and mailing it. My friends look at me like I am a dinosaur, but they send me incomprehensible texts such as, "Matchwood is on". He meant Marshwood, which is some town in a British series called Midsomer murders. He texted me from the sun room, I was in the kitchen.
Earlier, I had texted another friend to say it was gorgeous at the beach and to ask if it was sunny. The message I got back was, "It is dark and sample". I STILL don't know what she really meant. There seems to be an awaful lot of sloppy texting about.

It appears to be the night for walking around for Trick or treat. I seem to have missed that whole scheduling, costumy experience. No one comes to my house anyway cause they can't find my door. I'm not good at costumes and only party was tonight. I am going to the Symphony instead. Killing time in Starbucks cause tired of driving all over the county for this and that.

He was far from being gruntled

I love P.G. Wodehouse. I know his politics are doubtful, but I enjoy the clever repartee between Bertram Wooster, gentleman, and his manservant, Jeeves. Just started reading "The code of the Woosters" since I am spending the night with a friend and forgot my "travel" book. Luckily, "the green room" was well supplied with books and I found a few Jeeves books in there. I laugh when I read sentences such as," He spoke with a certain what-is-it in his voice, and I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled, so I tactfully changed the subject."

My friend just handed me a cup of coffee in a cup from Bob's Bunz in Islamorado in the Floriday Keys. A reminder of a fun vaction we took in a big house on "The gold coast". It was sort of a 1950's affair, with many outbuildings, right on the Ocean. We had our own osprey, peacocks (mating), parrot and quite a few more creatures.
They really did have delicious sticky buns. Their slogan is "Bite my bunz" and you can find them at www.bobsbunz.com. We "won" this house at an auction to benefit something or other. A delightful excuse to investigate yet another part of Florida.

Yesterday attended a very sad funeral for a 19 year old. One of two unrelated adopted Brazilian boys, he and his brother had many wonderful opportunities growing up. Hundreds of students were there dressed in black and weeping. He was taken, suddenly, tragicly, in a motorcycle accident on his way to college. He was an adventurous, happy, energetic, daredevil, smiling, friendly, lovely, old soul, according to his dads and many other friends. I knew him hardly at all, but it was one of those services where you get to know him, love him and miss him all in one day.

So many books, so little time

Starting to collect more papers about books I would like to read. I was forced to clean up my office a few months ago and I had to let go of four Princeton file boxes full of papers and one big box piled full of paper....more books than anyone could POSSIBLY read in ONE lifetime. And those were all books which were available in the library where I was working. I threw them all away and went to a list system, losing most of them in the process. Ran across a good quote about reading this AM, will try to paste it in here: Norman Rush (1933- ) wrote, "The main effort of arranging your life should be to progressively reduce the amount of time required to decently maintain yourself so that you can have all the time you want for reading."

Finshed State of wonder, by Ann Patchett. It was an ebook I borrowed from the library on the Overdrive program, so it has just vanished into thin air. Usually I keep the hard copy of the item to remind myself to write a "review". Maybe I didn't quite yet finish it. Perhaps 6 pages to go. I liked it, but it was weird. A lot of physical discomforts, like bugs, snakes, malaria, etc. About medical research in the far off Amazon with strange tribes and rituals. Her new book has been recommended to me.

Must return my other book to a library about an hour away from me. I would like to go through it page by page, cause it is full of gems. I probably mentioned it already, Blogging for creatives : how designers, artists, crafters, and writers can blog to make contacts, win business, and build success, by Robin Houghton. Evan Williams had something to do with the founding of Twitter and also Blogger. In an interview with the author of my book in 2001, he said, "To me, the blog concept is about three things: Frequency, Brevity and Personality". Well, I've got the first two...not sure about the third.

A mistress of the sedentary arts

I just breathe a sigh of relief when it is time to SIT DOWN...and use the computer, drive the car, watch a play, read, etc. OK, I guess I am just lazy...but I have a lot of pain and discomfort moving around, climbing stairs, lugging all of my stuff around. I really should carve out a comfortable space at home and get the Internet, but then maybe I would never leave!

My calendar for 2013 is getting out of hand. Feeling the yearly anxiety...what kind of calendar should I get for the upcoming year? Of course, this decision should have been made in JULY but I am a procrastinator of the first degree. Shall I go electronic, get a bigger paper one or a smaller paper one, go back to the one-page-a-day or the two-page-a-day. I have a lot of things to record...all the possible events, things I should do, things I accomplished, good and bad things that happened to me.

Yesterday I came across a lot of people trying to apply for jobs online. They all looked frustrated as hell. One young woman had been having trouble with the phone giving her all these choices, none of them the appropriate one. Someone had told her she had to go online to apply for a job up at Carll's Corner for Bank of America but wherever she went online, she just went around in circles. Another woman I overheard at the library said, "When I ask for a job near Vineland, New Jersey, they give me jobs in Pennsylvania". The guy to the right of me was being quiet about it, but I could see from the red sentences on his application form that he was having trouble advancing to the next page. The new online application process is just nature's way of weeding out 90% of the people.

I admire your ability to nap

I don't get it. How can people fall asleep at the drop of a hat? I hear them snoring in yoga during the relaxation (which I don't know how to spell), I see them looking oh-so-comfortable on airplanes, I am watching a DVD with someone and he falls right off. I have been retired for almost four months and I haven't taken a nap yet.

I'm tired of getting home after dark. Tonight again, but I won't be so far away. It befuddles me at times remembering how to get home! Just spending too much time ON THE ROAD. Drove over an hour Saturday AND Sunday for my various excursions. Think I need to go back to my alternate-day-stay-near-home plan. It is a gas-saving plan and a sanity-saving plan.

Course now there are GUYS working on my house, so am maybe not so anxious to be home. I came out this morning and one of them said to me, "La casa es muy vieja!" (the house is very old)

Finished up a book, which was a bit of a disappointment. I keep wanting to read memoirs. Well, they are SHORT, which is one good thing. Memoirs by funny people are not always so funny. This one I read is of the genre, "non-famous people with diseases". It just irritated me, more than anything. It is called Monkey mind : a memoir of aneity, by Daniel Smith. It has some positive things said about it on the back and it apparently was a New York Times bestseller, but it didn't do much for me.