Ah, the joys of living in the Pacific Northwet.

Spelling deliberate. First, for anyone watching the weather news, the hurricane-force winds are on the coast; we're two hours inland. We're getting strong winds, but not that strong. (Poor old landmark sitka spruce, though; it fell to the storm.)

What we are getting is rain. Lots and lots of rain. Some of the flooding and power outages are in places I could drive to fairly quickly. None are in places I drive normally. For those who remember that we have a creek out back of our house, it is farther down and non-existent in summer, tiny in winter. It's not going to come in and drown our house.

Scott and I, and our usual places to be, are all fine. The weather's a little dramatic, though. My radio station, during the traffic report, was mock-referring to Foster Road as Foster River. (They had something like 10-20 blocks of it closed down due to flooding that would be headlight-high on a van or mini-van. How do we know it would be headlight-high on one? Because someone tried to drive it anyway. Oops.)

The coast is having a less-than-fun time of it, however. To put it mildly. Peak gust, Bay City, 129 mph. Power outages, flooding, high winds; what else do we need? But as noted, mostly the coast.

Last week, someone I know said they wished they could be on the coast to watch the storm.

I'm just as glad I wasn't, thanks.

A new Apple video....

First, a verbal funny. Apple just now mrrrred and then walked out of where she was hiding, between the blinds and the sliding glass door to the deck. Scott, laughing: "We have growling curtains!"

This is on the longish side, at just over 2 minutes. But it's hysterical. Apple the acrobat. And a few cameos by Babe, who appears a little disgusted with the whole affair (or possibly with the attention Apple was getting). It's a pity that Apple camouflages against the beanbag so well, it was even funnier in person (and would be funnier still against a pale beanbag, I suspect). The toy is a fishing-rod type pole, very flexible, with a cord on it, the cord having a little denim rectangle tied to the end of it.

This one was on the dark side (very) so I lightened it, so if it looks a little overprocessed...well, it probably was? *meek*

Now, it's bedtime for me.

Hammacher Schlemmer, the only catalogue to make me ask....

...why would one want a pneumatic marshmallow gun?