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Storm WarningsNovember 03, 2007 I hereby declare that we've slipped into "late fall." Not just because Samhain's been and gone, or because the calendar says November, or because there was only one short-sleeve T-shirt in my laundry last Tuesday, though that's all part of it. It's pouring down rain and supposed to continue so all day, with rising winds. Hurricane passing by, someone said, but Weather Underground doesn't have its name. Hurricanes without names? Maybe it's not a hurricane after all. A storm can be serious without having a name -- remember the "no-name northeaster" of late October 1991? We call it the "no-name northeaster." People who get their news from the best-seller lists call it "the perfect storm" from the book of that title, but I don't toss words like "perfect" around lightly. 1991 was also the year of Hurricane Bob, which did such a number on coastal New England that people started calling it "the storm of the century." Barely two and a half months later along came the no-name northeaster, and woops, they were itching to call this one "the storm of the century" too. Sorry: if two storms of the century happen in the same calendar year, what you've got on your hands isn't a storm of the century. I'd think twice before calling it a perfect storm either. I think those carpet weavers had the right idea, weaving an intentional imperfection into each carpet. Supposedly they were trying to assure God that they weren't trying to horn in on his territory. I don't know about that God, and I'm not especially superstitious, but I have noticed that human beings tend to get into big trouble when they aim for perfection. Call a big whopper storm "perfect" and the storm gods are likely to take it as a challenge to come up with a bigger whopper, and then where will we be? If we're lucky we won't be out in a boat. Keelaghan's Road has been in Uhura Mazda's CD player lately. Most of the time I think Keelaghan the Great's best song so far is "Captain Torres," which is on Road and which is the reason I've never left Road on the boombox at the barn. My barnmate and her family are all mariners, and "Captain Torres" is a mariner's worst nightmare. Or it's the worst nightmare of those onshore waiting for the mariners to come home. It's such a great song that once you live through it once you will never, ever forget it, which is why I don't play it at the barn when anyone else is around.
That's as far as I'll go. I know there are some mariners reading this, and more people who stay on shore when the mariners go to sea. Trust me, "Captain Torres" is a TSR (that's "terminate and stay resident" for the non-techies among us -- I'm a non-techie and barely grasp the computer-type meaning, but it makes one hell of a metaphor) and it'll linger in your memory till your hard drive is wiped for good. Anyway, if you're on the coast of New England or Long Island you don't want to be going to sea today. Rhodry and I are inside and dry. Through my skylights I'm watching the trees bend and sway and whip around -- rain running down the glass makes them wavery. The oaks still have most of their leaves on, and the leaves are still mostly green but they look beleaguered: curled inward, tinged with rusty brown yellow, knowing it's only a matter of time till they fall and entirely ready to go. My rain slicker is, of course, in the truck. My rain slicker, like the leaves, is ready to go -- it's ten years old and nowhere near as waterproof as it used to be, which is why I finally got around to ordering a new one yesterday. Rain slickers don't come in "barn brown," which is the color my formerly yellow one has turned over the years, so I ordered one in a medium-not-quite-navy blue. That's one way I know that late fall is here: I'm taking foul weather more seriously as an imminent prospect instead of a down-the-road possibility. Last night I plugged my Rinnai heater in and sat down with the instruction book long enough to set the time, date, and desired temperature. I also learned that I can program Rinnai to turn the heat down during particular times of day, like between 2 and 6 a.m., when I'm usually under the covers. I haven't pulled the winter box out yet, but yesterday this stablehand's thoughts did turn to long underwear and how that, too, was only a matter of time.
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