Monday misc. and one confession

It rained 45 of the past 51 days.  Ten years ago there was extensive flooding downtown as the Wilamette river overtopped the seawalls downtown and spilled into the lower areas.  I was in the process of preparing to come back to Portland, working in Japan,  and my workmates joked that it might float away before I got there.

This year, since the start of the water year in December, we have received 18.27 inches of rain.  This week will be the longest dry spell we’ve had since last year.  It is projected that it will be sunny for the next seven days at least.  I will dust off my sunglasses.

In the 1800’s, Lewis and Clark stayed on the coast near present day Astoria.  They spent 126 days there and had only 16 dry days.  Lewis bitched daily about the rain in his diary.  Complaining about the weather here thus has a long and distinguished tradition.

*

I don’t trust my van  not to strand me (although it never has.  Yet.) so I drove the white stepvan to deliver the papers this morning.  I’ll get my check shortly and go cash it and buy money orders to pay the rent which is now due.  I’ve been cashless since Friday, so I will be able to buy some gas dryer and add it to the tank.  It’s possible that there is water in my gas.

However, I have been talking to various people, bouncing ideas and conditions off them for the van, and now wonder if perhaps there is a relay which is not functioning right….  Since the electric pump operates most of the time and only fails occaisionally, resetting in 10 or 15 minutes, I am 70% sure that there is an electrical fault.

But, I don’t Know, and willy-nilly replacing parts is sort of wasteful.  I’ll buy the $2 gas dryer and pour that in the tank, but I don’t trust my van and will most likely drive the stepvan tonight too.

It’ll be next week before I can afford to take it to the shop.

*

Meanwhile, the sun is out and not a cloud in the sky. Depression shrivels in the long-unseen sunshine.

*****

one confession.

when the earthquake happened in Kobe, the very first thing I thought of to explain the situation to myself was that we had been nuked.  I had been much into the study and use and effects of nuclear weapons, visiting sites in the US and Japan that were significant to the history I studied, and was thus set to think of that first to explain the devastation of my world.  I thought of it as I struggled to find my glasses and clothes and bankbook and passport and get the hell out of the wrecked apartment and finally convinced myself that since there had been no searingly bright flash of light, that we’d not been nuked, we’d had a very large earthquake.

So radiation wasn’t going to be a worry. Just fire, flooding, crush injuries, and shock….

Time to open those boyscout and navy drawers  and pull out those experiences and put ’em to use.