Thunder and lightning and fog, oh my!

[altivo]

I'm now a zombie, thanks to my whacked out little sheepdog Simon who gets panicky at the sound of thunder. The fireworks started about 3 am this morning and continued right up until it was time to go to work. By 4:15 or so I gave up and got out of bed to sit in a chair with my hand on the pooch to keep him calm. That works more or less, as long as I don't take my hand away. His predecessor, Mikey, was of the same breed and had the same fear of thunder.

Most of you know I'm usually an early riser but not that early. I've been half out of it all day, in spite of a substantial load of work to get done. I even had an idea over the weekend (last minute) for something to submit to ROAR for the volume 2 deadline tomorrow, but it's not going to get done in time. Oh well.

The puddles from the melting snow had pretty well subsided, but more than an inch of rain in the last 24 hours has raised the water levels and the flood watches once more. The sump pump under the house is cycling about once a minute. That's a lot of water.

Oh, and my boss this morning asked me if I'd consider doing book talks on the local radio station. Apparently they are changing formats again and want to return to more local material. I approve of that, but I told her I didn't think so. What I read and would talk about would be wasted on the potential audience. Then she wanted to know if they could broadcast my podcasts (ack!) but I don't see it happening. Those all dealt with classics, not with current best sellers. I have nothing good to say about Danielle Steel or John Grisham. James Patterson leaves me cold. And I can just imagine the local population reacting to a recommendation that they read Jack London, or maybe even Kyell Gold. ;p

Comments

[saythename.livejournal.com]

Broadcast your pods! Get your ass on in front of that
mike!

DO IT!

Or someone else will, and they might not read books.

@.@

[altivo.livejournal.com]

That's the thing. The audience doesn't read books either. ;p They'd be more interested in movie reviews I'm sure.

[saythename.livejournal.com]

Then you MAKE them interested in books!

Don't look a gift microphone in the mouth!

@.@

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Heck, I can't MAKE them interested in books even when I've got them face to face. And you think I could do it over the radio?

[gabrielhorse.livejournal.com]

I'm such an early riser that I'm usually up by 3AM... thanfully, I haven't had barking dogs wake me up in years.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Oh, he doesn't bark. He whimpers and makes other pitiful noises and paws at me and licks my face.

If you're up at 3 I hope you are asleep early too. I generally go to bed at 10, and 5 is about the earliest I can rise and not suffer consequences.

[gabrielhorse.livejournal.com]

Yeah, typically I'm in by 9:30 if I work the next day...an hour or so later if not. When I was in Pennsacola and slept under a bridge I couldn't get there under cover of dark before 10:30...imagine getting up at 4 the next morn for working on an airport runway scraping concrete O_o

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I'd rather imagine it than do it, that's for sure.

Sweaty before, during and after :P

[gabrielhorse.livejournal.com]

*walks into your library one day and hands you a pair of cheap, rough construction gloves* Come on Alt... *motions* let's go scrape all day in the sun! ^_^

Re: Sweaty before, during and after :P

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Uh, thanks, but if I'm going to do that, I'll work in my vegetable garden, or fixing fences.

Re: Sweaty before, during and after :P

[gabrielhorse.livejournal.com]

Heh... fixing fences does manage to fit the "manly" illusion that construction supposedly gives off :P That's the best dodge I've heard...probably because there's truth in it ;) *takes gloves* Does that mean I can have your lunch? :P

Re: Sweaty before, during and after :P

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yeah, if you want it. I'll steal some tomatoes and peas from the garden. ;p

Re: Sweaty before, during and after :P

[gabrielhorse.livejournal.com]

*fantasizes as he opens paper bag* I love tomatoes... I'll bet you'll miss your bolognia sandwich & dry chips, tho ^_^

Re: Sweaty before, during and after :P

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I'll admit to a weakness for chips, both the salt and the fat, neither of which is good for me of course. I'd rather pass up the bologna though. Now if the sandwich had hummus and sprouts in it, or maybe some good cheese or some egg salad...

Re: Sweaty before, during and after :P

[gabrielhorse.livejournal.com]

Heh, you can have my chips then :P I'm not partial to them...in fact, I had some chips today for the first time in months... I hear you on the egg salad sandwiches ;)

Re: Sweaty before, during and after :P

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Egg salad would hardly be the thing to carry in a brown bag and keep for several hours under hot conditions before eating it, though. Same goes for tuna salad, another of my faves. Sure way to get yourself sicker than a dog.

[saythename.livejournal.com]

I think you've got a GREAT radio voice. Throw
that in with some humor and politics, give them
red meat about how you don't like Oprah's Book
Club and the phone lines will light up!

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Heh. I don't like Oprah's book club, that's true. But I'm not into the talk radio stir up a hornet's nest stuff. In fact, I think even less of that than I do of Oprah, which is getting pretty low indeed.

[saythename.livejournal.com]

Theres an old trope in the PR biz.

ANY publicity is GOOD publicity. If you have
angry Oprah Book Club lovers showing up at the
library, dragging their friends along to yell
at you...there AT the library, and you'll get
buzz in the local news.

*knows when he's whipped and stops trying to
push you, mule like, to the microphone. Instead
he takes it himself and starts to rant, he does
for hours and hours until he realizes they've,
carefully, never connected it. DOH!*

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Nah. The ANY publicity is good notion only applies to commercial ventures (of a sort.) When you're funded by taxes, even if it's only in part (we have a private endowment here as well) then you can't afford to get taxpayers and voters too angry at you.

Mule? Now there's a thought. Instead of Altivo the Clydesdale Librarian, maybe I need an alter ego of Morris the Moron-Kicking Mule? Calls for a different fursuit so they don't know who I am, and then I can go insult Stephen King and James Patterson all I want.

[saythename.livejournal.com]

Aw, don't insult Steve, he's a nice sort.

;.;

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

Get that equine nose infront of the mic ;)
"Whuffles on the mic with Tivo" Hehe :)

I haven't had a cat yet who was scared of thunder, but I'm sure some are.

Does that pump take the water out of the basement?

[altivo.livejournal.com]

It pumps water out of "under the house" as you put it, since we have no basement. There's a "crawl space" down there with a gravel covered floor that gives access to the bottoms of the wood flooring, some of the wiring and plumbing, and the pressure tank and controls for the house well. This area has heavy ground water flow in the spring usually, but is quite dry the rest of the year. We are in the ground water season now, and that space would literally fill up with water if there were no pump in operation. The floor is graded toward one corner, where there's a depression lined with ceramic and a pump sits in there with a float that turns it on when the water in the "sump" rises to a certain level, then off when it's been pumped out. Sort of a bilge pump only for a house to prevent damage to the foundations and wiring.

This is a common arrangement for houses in wet areas of the US. Right now the pump is going off twice a minute. It makes enough sound to be heard if you are paying attention, and especially since it's right below my corner of the house and I can hear the water splasing on the rocks outside where it exits.