(no subject)

[geekchick]

Rainfall total for the entire month of May at National Airport: 2.21 inches
Unofficial rainfall total for the 24 hours ending at 7 AM this morning: 7.09 inches
At the time I started writing this, Warrenton was in the middle of another torrential downpour lasting about 20 minutes.

This morning, I'm reminded strongly of Kim Stanley Robinson's Forty Signs of Rain: at one point in the book Rock Creek floods (which isn't all that unusual, but not to the extent it does in the book) and the Potomac overflows its banks and floods the Mall and downtown because of large amounts of rainfall locally and an even larger amount upstream. We do need the rain, we were five inches below normal, but getting it all at once was...non-optimal. Two Three Four people that I know of on my f-list have flooded basements. Luckily for us, the roof repair done earlier this year seems to have held up so far.

nminusone and I got caught in last night's torrential downpour, which started right around the time we left Ikea at 8. Our dinner plans changed abruptly from "Let's stop at Busara" to "Let's go someplace that has a parking garage". It took about an hour to get from College Park to Tyson's on the Beltway, with average speed being somewhere around 25 MPH. I already have a hard time with vision when driving at night in the rain, but at night in the rain where the rain is coming down at around 2 inches an hour on average and in a new car I'm not entirely accustomed to yet is a whole honkin' lot of fun. Not as stressful as it could've been (the new car seems to have pretty good tires), but the beer at dinner sure was a welcome sight.

Other stuff from the weekend:

brian1789 is in Atlanta for his sister-in-law's funeral, if you could spare some good thoughts or prayers for him and patgreene and the rest of the family, I'm sure it would be appreciated.

Bought new car on Friday, which took about an hour longer than I expected thanks to the person in line ahead of me for the finance guy doing a sight-unseen trade-in without their current car's VIN handy. It took them a bit over an hour I think, it took me all of ten minutes since I already had my eLoan check in hand, didn't need financing and wasn't trading anything in. The finance guy bore a disturbing resemblance to a younger Christopher Walken, and got points for having a Demotivator poster on his office wall. New car is v. pretty: it's this in strato blue, with a moonroof. The color on my monitor looks much lighter than it does in person, it's a very dark, almost purple-tinted blue.

After finally getting out of the dealership, picked up nminusone and hauled butt over to the Arlington Cinema & Drafthouse for the completely-sold-out charity showing of "Serenity" with some friends. Jayne hats galore, and one woman came dressed in Inara's gold and black outfit. As other folks have said, it was fun to see it in a theater full of fans. Came >this< close to meeting jessicamelusine finally, but we all missed each other in part because our group was sitting in the very front row of the theater, down below the wall, and it was hard to see/be seen.

Comments

[firebirdgrrl.livejournal.com]

Sorry to have missed you...we'll just have to get together again!

[geekchick]

Sorry to miss you too. Based on your pictures, odds are good we walked past you on our way to our seats. (We got there kind of late-ish, our tickets were #229-232 or so out of 300.)

[chap-eye.livejournal.com]

hi i just found your journal because i'm also interested in hiking as you are :)

[geekchick]

Welcome. =)

[chap-eye.livejournal.com]

thanks :)

[also-huey.livejournal.com]

Two people that I know of on my f-list have flooded basements...

Hi!

[geekchick]

Make that three, then. Sorry to hear it. =/ A flooded basement is one of the few things I don't think we have to worry about in our current place. At least not until the polybutylene pipes burst, at any rate.

[also-huey.livejournal.com]

Eh, it ain't so bad, and we've done a bunch of landscraping to alleviate it some, so it isn't as bad as it has been in previous years. My wife is down there now with the carpet shampooer, sucking up the water, and after that's done, the dehumidifier will take care of the rest.

...if it ever goddamn stops raining, anyways.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

It's really not all that bad. Given the construction and the slope of our house, it's really only half of the basement that's prone to leaks, so we've long since made sure that the only things on that side are either waterproof or essentially disposable. Computer and music junk is all on the dry side, boxes-of-stuff are all either in seamless plastic or up on shelves far from the damp. The only things left to get ruined are the bottommost layers of the stash of old cardboard boxes kept around for shipping/packing stuff, and we've got enough of those stocked up that the occasional casualties really aren't missed.

And it's not even deep enough that I'd call it standing water -- it's squishy bits on a big old throw rug ugly enough to have been exiled to the basement, and some shallow, easily-mopped puddles on the bare concrete. I can't really bring myself to consider that a real "flood" -- there's not even enough water to ooze over the soles of my sandals. Mind you, in my time I've dealt with two burst water heaters and one burst water pipe, so anything less than gallons and gallons of water pouring out under pressure and swirling around my ankles seems kind of pissant in comparison.

[easy-living.livejournal.com]

Two people that I know of on my f-list have flooded basements...

::waves:;

Were you counting us in amongst the four? 'Cos if not, it's either five or six, depending on whether you're counting friends or basements. Sigh.

[quasigeostrophy.livejournal.com]

Don't blame the meteorologist(s). ;-)

Try to stay undrenched.