And...here we go!

1. My car may be 10 years old, but it still feels new to me.

2. The weather has been so strange recently that it's hard to tell what is coming up next.

3. Lately, things seem to pile up around me faster than I can get rid of them.

4. Telling you that a certain location is one of my favorite 'hiding' places defeats the whole purpose of having a hiding place.

5. What happened to people having basic manners and treating one another with respect?

6. I can't believe it when people tell me that conquering Mount Laundry is not impossible!

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to playing games online with my sister, tomorrow my plans include an attempt to scale Mount Laundry and Sunday, I want to enjoy the Eid celebrations with my family!

Random Thought #1

Ok, this isn't really random, but since I didn't have the chance to answer some questions that Thom asked me a couple of days ago, I figured that I would tackle them today in this post.

Why is it only during certain times? Why isn't this done every day? The "sawm" means that, and I'm only going to use drinking here, can't be done between sunup and sundown so between then you can drink? Ramadan Kareem Means? and on the photo Mubarak is for?

Actually, Thom, we can fast at anytime, but fasting during Ramadan is mandatory for everyone who is physically able. Ramadan is the month in which the Qur'an, the Muslims' holy book, was first revealed, so it's a really special and important time.

In spite of the lunacy that we see on the news from some Muslims, our religion actually cautions us to maintain a middle of the road stand and to avoid extremism of all kinds. For example, a story relates that when a man visited his brother's household, he noticed that his brother's wife appeared neglected. When Salman asked his sister-in-law what was wrong, she replied that her husband, Abu Darda, had taken up fasting every day and praying all night. As a result of his well-meaning religious zealotry, Abu Darda was neglecting his wife and family. No Muslim is allowed to go such lengths as to neglect his worldly responsibilities for religious "extra credit," so to speak. Salman convinced his brother to stop fasting every day and praying all night by reminding him that this family had rights on him that he had an obligation to fulfill. When Salman related the story to Prophet Muhammad, he approved of the way the situation had been handled by the brother and cautioned all Muslims to avoid such extremism.

To understand the no eating, drinking, etc. rule a bit better, here's a nifty link to a PDF file showing the actual fasting times for the month. The fast begins about 30 minutes before the Fajr prayer (the first prayer of the day) which, for today, was at 4:52 AM; the fast ends with the fourth prayer of the day, Maghrib, which today comes at 7:26 PM. Total fasting time for the day? Rounding up or down as needed for convenience, it looks like this: start at 4:30 AM and end at 7:30 PM for a total of 15 hours. During these 15 hours, the no food, drink, etc. rule applies. In the hours after the Maghrib prayer until 30 minutes before the next Fajr (dawn) prayer comes, we can eat, drink, and generally be merry -- oh, and sleep a little bit so that we can function the next day when we can't eat or drink again, LOL.

Random Thought #2

The pro-op visit with Dr. Oz went well, and now I am just waiting for the hospital to call and let me know what time I need to show up at the hospital on Thursday morning. I've already done my Mostly Wordless Wednesday post with most of the details, so you'll have to sit on pins and needles (lookie there -- an idiom for Jentjie!) until it launches automatically at 12:01 AM on 8-26. Ooooh, I like being mean!



Random Thought #3

Why is it that just when you express gratitude for an easy summer, the weather changes and it turns hot? This is what the Amazing Egyptian Dude calls giving myself the "evil eye." I swear, just a couple of days ago I was saying how glad I was that we had had such a pleasant summer, how the weather had been much cooler than normal, and how we had saved a considerable amount of money because I hadn't needed to run the a/c very often. And then . . .



I start hearing the lyrics to an old Elvis song:

Lord almighty,
I feel my temperature rising
Higher higher
Its burning through to my soul

[. . .]

Ooh, ooh, ooh,
I feel my temperature rising
Help me, Im flaming
I must be a hundred and nine
Burning, burning, burning
And nothing can cool me
I just might turn into smoke
But I feel fine

Except that I don't feel fine -- I feel hot! And I feel sorry for the Amazing Egyptian Dude who is fasting and hanging out in our warehouses, where it is always at least 10 degrees hotter inside than out.

Lesson learned on this one? Keep my big mouth shut and avoid those evil eyes!

The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others’ comments. It’s easy, and fun!

With the recent announcement that 2009-2010 will be an official El Niño year, I decided to compile a list of things to know about the El Niño weather system.

1. El Niño events occur when the see-saw effect of the water movement in the western and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean reverse. When this happens, the tradewinds weaken and the surface water temperature in the eastern tropical Pacific rises.

2. The name, El Niño, comes from the Spanish for "the boy." It alludes to the birth of Jesus because the weather pattern is first noticed off the coast of South America in the month of December.

3. There are written records of El Niño’s effects in Peru at least as far back as 1525, and researchers have found geologic evidence of El Niños in Peruvian coastal communities from at least 13,000 years ago.

4. El Niño is known to have had an effect on the Incas. They often sacrificed people during El Niño events based on their belief that the excessive rain from El Niño was a punishment from the gods. To appease the gods and stop the rain, they sacrificed more people.


5. An El Niño event typically occurs every 3 to 5 years and lasts for 1 to 2 years. The most recent El Niño system occurred in 2006, and the worst in recent history occurred in 1997 when abnormally high rainfall triggered flooding and mudslides in the western portion of the United States and Mexico as well as Eastern Europe. While these places were flooding, a severe drought was going on in Australia and Indonesia.

6. El Niños have produced devastating storminess in California and Central and South America and disrupt marine life on the West Coast. In 1997, California experienced some of the heaviest flooding and mudslides that I ever remember. The photo below was taken in Laguna Beach during the 1997 El Niño system.


7. When El Niño is in effect, California receives the most rain from March to May.



8. El Niño reduces the number of hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico. Just because the number of hurricanes is reduced, though, doesn't mean that the Gulf States are out of the woods because El Niño likes to drop lots of rain there.

9. Hawaii's most powerful hurricanes hit during El Niño years. Another danger is the lack of rainfall during El Niño years.

10. El Niño's effect on weather has a profound impact on health. Heavy rainfall creates puddles that become the perfect breeding grounds for mosquitoes. Incidents of malaria, dengue, and Rift Valley fever increase in El Niño years, as do cases of cholera. Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS) - a lung infection which causes eye pain, haemorrhaging in the lungs and other side effects - first appeared in the USA in 1993 after the 1991/2 El Niño; 14 cases were reported between January and August 1998 which scientists at the University of New Mexico think are linked to the El Niño of 1997/98.


11. The 1997-98 El Niño marked the first time in human history that climate scientists were able to predict abnormal flooding and droughts months in advance, allowing time for threatened populations to prepare.

12. The development of the TAO (tropical atmosphere/ocean) array of 70 moored buoys that span the equatorial Pacific help scientists to predict an El Niño year. Completed in 1994, the TAO buoys are now the world’s premier early-warning system for change in the tropical ocean. They monitor water temperature from the surface down to 1,600 feet [500 meters], as well as winds, air temperature, and relative humidity.

13. El Niño/Southern Oscillation involves only one-fifth of the circumference of the planet, but it transforms weather around the globe.

Jientje from Heaven Is in Belgium, the creator of this meme, writes: "As long as people have been around, they have tried to communicate with each other. As a means of getting the message across as clearly as possible, idioms and sayings have found their way into our language. Now, because "a picture paints a thousand words", I thought it would be nice to make this a new photo challenge. The idea is to choose an idiom, or a saying, ( even slang is allowed) and illustrate it with a picture. Each week we'll cover two letters of the alphabet, okay? "To play along, click here.

Q is for quiet as a mouse.
Something that is very quiet is said to be "quiet as a mouse."

Dolly used to be quiet as a mouse, but she recently discovered her voice and talks quite often now.

R is for rain or shine. When I make plans to go somewhere, I keep them, come rain or come shine -- regardless of what the weather is like.

If you look in front of the big blue truck, you will see the sign for Angels Stadium, home to the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim baseball team. I still can't figure out why the team changed its name; Los Angeles is both a city and a county about 30 miles away from the city of Anaheim (also home to Disneyland) in Orange County. Stupid move in my opinion!

Post about 5 favorite things from the past week. It can be anything that tickled your fancy: favorite quotes, posts, happenings, scriptures, recipes, pictures, great internet finds, etc., etc. Be as detailed as you like, the more detail the more fun for those of us visiting. Susanne, the hostess, just asks that it be kept family friendly. Click here to play along with us.

1. My week is best summed up by this quotation from Franklin D. Roosevelt: "When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on."

2. A friend sent me this funny photo:



3. My brother-in-law sent me this joke:

Did you ever wonder why there are no dead penguins on the ice in Antarctica - where do they go?

Wonder no more!!!

It is a known fact that the penguin is a very ritualistic bird which lives an extremely ordered and complex life.

The penguin is very committed to its family and will mate for life, as well as maintaining a form of compassionate contact with its offspring throughout its life.

If a penguin is found dead on the ice surface, other members of the family and social circle have been known to dig holes in the ice, using their vestigial wings and beaks, until the hole is deep enough for the dead bird to be rolled into and buried.

The male penguins then gather in a circle around the fresh grave and sing: "Freeze a jolly good fellow."

Then they kick him in the ice-hole!

4. Our weather is still pleasantly not-too-hot, especially considering the time of year. I can live with summertime temps in the low 80's with no problems!

5. The grape harvesting has begun! Over the next couple of weeks, we'll have so many green seedless grapes that we could probably open a fruit stand and do a brisk business with them. Instead, we'll just share them with family, friends, and neighbors.

Hope everyone had a good week!

I think that. . .

• I will survive today's class without falling asleep again. Why? Because I'll have my laptop with me and can do my own work. If I have to work, I have to stay awake, right?
• Camry might not forgive me for getting her spayed. I'll know for sure in a few more days as her incision heals. Although she still wants to sleep with me, she is doing a really good job of ignoring me the rest of the day.
• I could get used to the June gloom that has brought wonderful summertime temperatures to Southern California for the past three weeks. Usually by this time, I'm running the a/c whenever I am at home; however, open windows and doors, supplemented by a ceiling and floor fan, has been adequate to keep the whole house cool.
• I'm going to splurge and get a blog template specially made for me. I'm still thinking on this one but at the moment, I'm leaning much more to the go for it side.

Our very strange weather continues. . .but we haven't had an earthquake, yet.




Ok, so click the play button on the YouTube video and then look at these photos I took today. These were taken shortly after 9 this morning as I was heading from our home to our business:

Most everyone who has lived in California for a while has heard of earthquake weather. I've lived in Southern California all my life and am very much aware of and in tune with the phenomena. Basically, when the weather makes dramatic, short-term changes from cool to hot to cool or hot to cool to hot, we can expect an earthquake. It's not science, I know, but the two have gone hand-in-hand often enough that it has become predictable.

Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday were uncharacteristically hot for April in Southern California. We had a mini heatwave that increased our temperature from the norm in the 70s to upwards of 90 degrees. When the heatwave ended, we went from 93 in the daytime to a nighttime low of 54! Now that's a dramatic fluctuation in the temperature and the hallmark of "earthquake weather." Whether it's intuition or experience, I can't say, but through the years, I've become pretty doggone good at recognizing the weather patterns that portend a temblor and am seldom off when I predict a quake. In fact, family and friends have been known to ask me whether or not we're having "earthquake weather."

It was not a major surprise then, for me at least, that we had two quakes yesterday.

Both of the quakes were centered in Yorba Linda, hometown of Richard M. Nixon, about 2 miles from our business in Fullerton which is where I was when the first quake hit. From someone who has experienced several major and memorable California quakes, including

• 6.6 Sylmar (San Fernando) Quake on 2-9-71 -- This one cracked the foundation of our home, some 30 miles away from the epicenter!
• 5.9 Whittier Narrows Quake on 10-1-87
• 5.0 Pasadena Quake on 12-3-88
• 5.4 Upland Quake on 2-28-90
• 6.1 Joshua Tree Quake on 4-22-92
• 7.3 Landers Quake at 4:57 AM on 6-28-92 -- This was the most frightening earthquake I have ever experienced, mostly because it was followed by several very strong aftershocks; it caused so much shaking that the water from our swimming pool overflowed from the deck into our living room! Some amazing photos, including a few that show the crack (total length is about 53 miles!) in the earth's surface that resulted from this quake, are available here.
  
• 6.4 Big Bear Quake at 8:05 AM on 6-28-92 -- Technically, this one was an aftershock from the Landers Quake -- the biggest of the aftershocks the followed it -- but it occurred on a completely different fault than Landers
• 5.7 Mojave Quake on 7-11-92
• 6.7 Northridge Quake at 4:30 AM on 1-17-94 -- Although not as strong on the seismograph as the Landers quake, this one shook longer and harder. Because the epicenter was directly beneath a heavily populated city, this quake collapsed several sections of a major freeway, toppled the crown of a landmark artdeco skyscraper in Hollywood, and triggered the collapse of several buildings. You can see some amazing photos of the damage here.
• 5.4 Ridgecrest Quake on 8-17-95 -- Not big as far as earthquakes go, but this one is rememberable for the more than 2,500 aftershocks that followed, some of which measured in at 6.0!
• 7.1 Hector Mine Quake on 10-16-99 -- This quake happened so far out in the desert that although it was really strong, it didn't cause much damage beyond a surface split and lots of rattled nerves.

I can honestly say that yesterday's temblors weren't very impressive. Both were short in terms of time (barely 2-3 seconds long) and shaking. Actually, there wasn't any shake to these quakes -- they were snapping motions. The aftershocks and microquakes continue, with the last one happening about an hour ago (it is currently 4:43 AM PDT). It will be interesting to see what, if anything, develops over the next few days. We live on the San Andreas Fault, one of the most active fault lines in the state. Since it's been a while since we had a big one, I suppose now would be a really good time to give the old earthquake survival supplies box a quick once over.

My least favorite time of year is clearly approaching. Whatever happened to April showers bringing May flowers? We're not going to get much rain here in the draught-ridden southern part of the Golden State with the 90+ degrees temperatures we've had for the past three days, that's for sure!

I've never been a fan of the summer months. Sunburn, heat rash, and sweat just aren't on my list of things to enjoy. Even as a kid, the only part of the summer months that I actually enjoyed were the weeks that we made the family road trip to the east coast. When summer came, I hid away in my bedroom with a pile of books and didn't emerge until time to return to school in September.

The older I get, the harder it is to tolerate summer. Of course the problem isn't helped by the fact that one of my medications elevates the body temperature so that while everyone around me is feeling comfortable, I am hot and miserable. Honestly, I can tell when the temperature in my house increases by a single degree!

At least in adulthood I have the benefit of a home with central air. And during the months of June, July, August, and September, the electric company loves me!

A very unfriendly weather condition has come to visit Southern California. The Santa Ana winds pay us a visit every year, usually in the fall, and wreak havoc on sinuses, eyes, temperatures, and dry brush. They herald the start of our fire season and have been responsible for some of the worst wildfires we've ever experienced. Santa Ana winds are not fun, no matter how you look at them. The name of this awful weather condition comes from Spanish and means "devil winds." Take it from one who lives through the huffing and puffing every year, that Satan dude is full of hot air!

Today, our temperature peaked at 83 degrees and although it is currently 11 PM, it has dropped to only 78 degrees. As if I don't have enough sleeping issues already, trying to fall asleep in such warm weather is difficult at best. We've got central air in the house, but I find it really hard to justify cranking up the AC in January! I started up the fan that I keep in the bedroom instead, but it was only cool enough to give me a nap.

Santa Ana conditions are extremely dry so add an unusually high temperature to the dry air, and you've got an easy to make recipe for discomfort. Mix in some pollen, dust, dirt, and various other microscopic gunk that the winds kick up, and you've got watery eyes, runny noses, dry throats, chapped lips, and itchy skin. Best of all, we'll have another outbreak of colds and flu within a week after the winds die down.

I suppose that I should be grateful that the winds are howling at under 30 MPH at the moment and that they haven't ignited any major wildfires, yet. The winds will be here for the remainder of the week and although we did have a couple of really big fires in the fall, the long-term drought we've experienced has left the canyons full of chaparral to burn.

The atmospheric disturbances are really doing a number on my head! I swear that whatever is going on with the weather is having an adverse effect on my epilepsy because I keep having seizures when I shouldn't. The seizures themselves aren't so bad, it's that each one requires me to sleep afterward. Getting anything done at times when seizures come in clusters is virtually impossible. My brain doesn't really wake up, while my body is naturally drawn to a comfortable place to crash for a couple of hours. Thankfully, I don't have to return to school until Wednesday when I give the first of two final exams for the semester. The second exam is on Thursday.

Our storm finally arrived last night. As usual, I was up and down all night and that meant that I was able to see it come in and watch it drop all its wet glory on us. The rain that began last night hasn't subsided yet, and there's not a single patch of blue in the sky anywhere. The temperature is hovering around 47 degrees which, for Southern California, is pretty cold. The winds that arrived ahead of the rain have moved on to greener pastures, so that's one less weather related issue to deal with.

It will be frantic at the business today, as all outstanding orders have to be shipped today in order to be delivered in time for Christmas. That puts a lot of pressure on everyone, but we'll muddle through it just like we do every year.

I see a bad moon rising.
I see trouble on the way.
I see earthquakes and lightnin'.
I see bad times today.

Don't go around tonight,
Well it's bound to take your life,
There's a bad moon on the rise.

I hear hurricanes a blowin',
I know the end is coming soon.
I fear rivers overflowin'.
I hear the voice of rage and ruin.

Don't go around tonight,
Well it's bound to take your life,
There's a bad moon on the rise.

Hope you got your things together.
Hope you are quite prepared to die.
Looks like we're in for nasty weather.
One eye is taken for an eye.

Don't go around tonight,
Well it's bound to take your life,
There's a bad moon on the rise.

We've got a strong winter storm heading our way. According to the latest weather reports, it should hit today and last until Wednesday. When this bad moon rises, it will bring with it wind, rain, and cold. Oh, I'm not complaining -- I love the rain! Besides, we need all the precipitation we can get to help ease the drought. But, as much as I enjoy the rain, it couldn't be coming at a worse time!

Getting laundry done since I've been sick has been really, really low on my list of priorities; we're running out of clothes and towels, so I had planned to spend this weekend catching up. Problem? The washer and dryer are outside, and the laundry area has been under construction for months. The majority of the roof has been removed and since Ali hasn't had time to replace it yet, the front portion of the washer and dryer will be exposed to the rain. What that means for me is a total drenching with each load. I think not!

Maybe the impending bad weather is stirring up electrical activity in the atmosphere that is causing increased electric activity in my brain, because yesterday I had a particularly nasty seizure. They don't usually knock me down, in a literal sense, but this one did. Thankfully, I landed on a rug and not the tile floor and didn't hit anything on the way down. I didn't faint; it was more like a drop attack accompanied by a seizure. It took quite a while for it to end and for me to clear the cobwebs out of my head; however, it did give me a chance to catch up on some much needed sleep, LOL!

I'm ready for the bad moon and all that it brings. I just hope that I'm inside when all hell breaks loose. . .