I have too much to rant on and too little energy to do it. Let me get some tea in me and maybe I’ll try again in a bit …
I am awake. That’s my rant.
Why can’t I stay asleep?
California has become a too-hot state and is a swirling inferno of fires.
Yeah, real original, I know. But my state is burning up, goddamit.
And the smoke is coming this way…air quality sucks!
It really is. It’s horrifying. My mom and I took a road trip to San Jose two years ago and came back through the Clear Lake area and visited a friend there. She’s had to evacuate and it’s so strange looking at the fire maps and seeing that the roads we were on have fires on both sides of them. Another friend lives in Palo Cedro and has horses. She’s been lucky so far, but geez, a change in wind and the Carr fire could be on her.
I love your state and this is heartbreaking.
When I first saw a news segment about this, it was never printed onscreen, just mentioned, so here I’m wondering - ok, there’s crazy wildfires all over, but no signs of cars ablaze. What - was there a really gigantic car fire somewhere, or? I half-assedly googled Carr to see if it was a town or something and couldn’t really find out much.
So apparently it’s so hot it’s creating its own weather system.
Every summer, from now on, will be like this, I’m glumly predicting.
Where I live, there used to be maybe four or five rainy days a month in July and August. Over the last ten or so years, almost nary a drop in those months.
Anyway hopefully shit will get contained sooner than later.
At the Whataburger drive-through this morning:
Employee: “Did you have a Bob and a coffee?”
Me: “Um, er, excuse me?”
“Did you order a Bob and a coffee?”
confused, deer-in-headlights look
“Uh, I ordered a Number 21…”
“Yes, A Breakfast On a Bun.”
light slowly dawns
Arrgh, non-standard terminology early in the morning! Stop that!
Just give me my coffee and leave my private life out of it, ok?
At least you weren’t being offered a Battery Operated Boyfriend. 
I prefer coin operated boys, myself.
I’m very original, I’m afraid: it’s too hot. 33C already when I was driving to the garage this morning (yearly checkup, car is fine). I don’t even wanna look at how hot it is right now but I’m sure it counts as too that hot.
There are already areas in the world that, during the summer, have become so hot that they may become unlivable in the not too distant future.
**113.9 degrees Fahrenheit - IN MARCH **
** Combining the data sets from NOAA and NASA finds:**
The five warmest years in the global record have all come in the 2010s
The 10 warmest years on record have all come since 1998
This^^^
Yesterday, two fires broke out in El Dorado County. One of them (China Hill/Bumber fire) way too close to my mother’s property. Thankfully, while she was still preparing for evacuation, the fire was contained and orders were lifted. She’s 72 and lives alone (with her dog and cat) on 5 acres. It’s her choice, but I would be really happy if she moved into town.
I bought my house in 2007, in July. A few weeks later I called my mother: “hey, you know how when we saw snowflakes on the weather map in the summer and the weatherpeople said ‘snow in the Pyrenees above 400m’ we thought it was some kind of in-joke? I just took a pic of my car with snow on top! On August 4th!”
Snow in summer was a common occurrence. It would happen once, twice, every summer. The snow had usually melted by 10-ish; people went to the pool like every other day and worried we might “cross 30”, like every other day. We’d never broken 30, until two years ago.
Last two years we broke 36. Last three years there’s been no snow all summer. No snow this summer so far, and this week we’ve broken 36 again.
But no, there’s nothing to worry about, nothing to see here folks. No reason to use the a/c a bit more carefully, or to open the windows when the weather outside is nice.
My young teenage cousin was evacuated from his summer camp, on foot, with only his instrument and the clothes he was wearing- that was from the fire that they know was set by an arsonist.
My grandmother died about 48 hours after my brother finally set foot on this side of the Atlantic. So he turned around and went back. Why he even got on the plane when they knew they’d started withholding water on hospice care is beyond me. Why my asshole uncle only suddenly decided that hospice care that meant withholding water was the only answer about 24 hours before my brother was due to fly is also beyond me.
My mother has lived with her parents for many years now. Said asshole uncle wants the house cleared and sold (my mother had the controlling share of the house) so any time she runs to the shop or goes to check on my grandad at the care home, he has been driving to the dump with some of her stuff. Meanwhile, his own wife’s dead mother’s things are still in the garage of their (second!) house, ten years after her mother died. My other uncle is pretending nothing is happening.
Oh, and I ‘slept’ on the couch with the baby because she had a fever and my partner ‘needs his sleep’. After all, I just look after the kids all day.
Why oh why do people get stupid when someone dies. I have seen and heard some horror stories. I am proud of how we sibs acted when my Daddy died. I had one SIL who tried to get stupid but we shut her down quick-like. I hope things ease up for your Moms sake.
China, China, China. Tell me what it is with you and bathrooms and kitchens. In this burg, it’s hotter than the Hinges of Hades in August and in January the winter weather is colder than an Antarctic winter. This cannot come as a surprise to a culture that has occupied this town for centuries. Yet homes, schools, and basically all other buildings are built with no air conditioning for loos and kitchens. Yesterday, I had to strip to my shorts while in the loo at my school because I didn’t want my clothing to be soaked with sweat for the whole day.
p.s. to Post #16: Don’t worry. 1-no students were in the building (they began their holiday last week), and 2-I was in a stall.
Background: I live in a flat, there’s 6 in the building. As seen from the street, the entrance is at the back, where the parking spaces are. We have a narrow pathway down the side of the building, with a gate across it, which is normally kept locked with a code lock. The people in the housing estate behind were using it as a short-cut, which, as it was right next to the ground floor flat’s bedroom and they were often loud, was a bit annoying. I only normally go that way on the rare occasion I get the bus.
Anyway, I just went out to go check the water meter, which is street side. Someone has changed the lock, which is fair enough, the old one was getting stiff, but the total arse has changed the damn code as well. To get to the front of my own sodding residence, to reach a water meter which is visible from my window, I had to walk all the way round the bloody block, because some git’s decided to change the code on the communal gate and not tell the other building residents.
I’m extremely tempted to go back down there and put a second padlock on.
I’ve encountered bathrooms without A/C in New England…I find this baffling, especially when there isn’t some kind of window or even a decent exhaust fan. Or maybe I’m just accustomed to stepping out of my lukewarm shower and toweling off under a cascade of cool, refreshing air?
I feel for you. California is my favorite beautiful state and it’s had a plague of wildfires over recent years. Right now there are also fires in BC and northern Ontario. One of those fires, tragically, is near Killarney Provincial Park, an area of such breathtaking natural beauty that it inspired a series of landscape paintings by a group of artists who became known as the Group of Seven.