Had a weird dream last night. For whatever reason, I was living in the home I grew up in on the outskirts of Mt. Olive, Corner, that area. I remember that there was some sort of catastrophic event and somehow the house was suddenly near the sea (maybe Gulf Coast?) — things and people have an odd habit of changing places in my dreams. Something caused a flood, but it was no normal flood. It was more like a tsunami. I remember that the waves would creep up, then recede outward, then come rushing in again very quickly. I remember being inside the house and seeing the water level rising, covering the windows. (which is odd in itself because this was a two-story house!)
I distinctly remember the color and smell of the water. It was dirty, almost muddy. (think Mississippi River banks in New Orleans, pre-Katrina) In my dream, I was trapped inside the house for some reason and remember panicking when the water broke through each of the windows and started pouring into the house. I don’t remember much else, except that towards the end of the dream I was standing at the water’s edge on the shore and someone was explaining some new anti-wave barrier mechanism to me that had just been put in place. I remember telling them “it’s not enough, they will still come.”
Weird.
I’m not sure what it signifies, but it’s one of the first dreams I’ve been able to remember being that vivid since going on the Amitriptyline. Usually I’ve forgotten my dreams by the time I wake up.
I’ve thought about it off and on all day. Something that struck me was when I was watching the water cover the land in my dream, I thought about how odd that it was covering that amount of real estate so quickly! However highly unlikely that we’d ever experience this kind of event up here in B’ham, it was still kind of creepy.
I’d like to introduce you guys to someone: Ike Pigott. He’s a local blogger that I ran across on Twitter some time ago. I’ve been following his blog, Occam’s RazR, for a while now. He works for Red Cross and has an extensive background in communications.
The idea is that people in evacuation zones could “follow” the Red Cross Twitter feed from their cell phones, and find out about shelter locations and service delivery sites.
I think it’s a great idea, and I’m personally excited to be able to see first-hand the mediums that we have available to us today being put to use for such a great cause. This will be especially handy for us locally with hurricane season coming up, as well as tornado season!
If you are interested in helping out or would like more information, please contact Ike. I’m sure that he’d love to hear from you and could use any and all help sent his way!
The United States’ leading hurricane forecaster says global ocean currents, not human-produced carbon dioxide, are responsible for global warming. William Gray, a Colorado State University researcher, also said the Earth may begin to cool on its own in five to 10 years.
Speaking to a group of Republican MPs, Dr Gray had harsh words for researchers and politicians who said man-made greenhouse gases were responsible for global warming.
“They are blaming it all on humans, which is crazy,” he said. “We’re not the cause of it.”
Dr Gray said in the past 40 years the number of serious hurricanes making landfall on the US Atlantic coast had declined even though carbon dioxide levels had risen. He said increasing levels of carbon dioxide would not produce more, or stronger, hurricanes.
Dr Gray, 77, has long criticised the theory that heat-trapping gases generated by human activity are causing the world to warm.
Earlier this month, he dubbed former US vice-president and 2000 Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore “a gross alarmist” for making the Oscar-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, which helped focus media attention on global warming.
Yesterday, Dr Gray said that politics and research into global warming had created “almost an industry” that had frightened the public and overwhelmed dissenting voices.
He said research arguing that humans were causing global warming was “mush” based on unreliable computer models that could not possibly take into account the hundreds of factors that influenced the weather.
He said little-understood ocean currents were behind a decades-long warming cycle, and disputed assertions that greenhouse gases could raise global temperatures as much as some scientists predicted.
“There’s no way that doubling CO2 is going to cause that amount of warming,” he said.
Dr Gray also said warming and cooling trends could not go on indefinitely and believed temperatures were beginning to level out after a very warm year in 1998.
One of my cousins was reading an earlier blog entry here and emailed me, wanting me to check out a a link to a realtor where a friend of hers works: Cary NC Real Estate. One of my mom’s sisters lives in North Carolina, and has a house in the mountains (very swank!) so I’ve been up that way a few times before. They’ve got a few nice listings, but to be honest I’ve never considered moving out and over to “one of The Carolina’s.”
I’m not saying the listings aren’t nice … but if I were to consider moving out that way, it would have to be up in the mountains. If I wanted to live in a suburb, I could do that here (and for a lot less). And on the beach is out of the freakin’ question. (Hellooooooooo! HURRICANES!!)
Jim says I’m too picky … I just feel like I haven’t found a place yet that feels more like home than “home” does.
Welp, Monday was pretty short. Work closed early, because Katrina had not yet ‘landed’ or rather had not reached us yet. We kept Jessie out of school that day because we weren’t sure what they were going to do about the weather, and rough weather really REALLY scares her.
We had a lot of wind, some power and internet outage, and some leaves, grass, and trash flittered about but no real damage. Jessie’s school stayed closed, so Jim stayed home with her while I went to work. When I left that morning, several trees and power lines were down in the road … honestly, I was amazed that we had power! Work was pretty light, several people still didn’t have power. (neither did my parents)
Wednesday Jessie’s school was still closed so it was my turn to stay home (not that I minded, because I hadn’t slept much in two days and I was exhausted). So Jessie and I vegged out and watched old sci-fi movies all day.
Jason and the Argonauts, Clash of the Titans (my fav), White Zombie, Godzilla vs. Mothra, and a little 5th Element for humor.
Today Jess went back to school, and Jim and I stayed a full day at work. Thank God tomorrow is Friday.
Posted by Nicki on September 1st, 2005 at 10:26 pm
