Monday Morning

It's a lovely rainy day today here in the land o' EG. I love the rain. But I would also be content with a beautiful sunny morning, too.

The weekend is over. I'm still flirting with this half-assed cold thing. It's there just to raise my annoyance levels, but not powerful enough to call in sick. Rats, and yet, yay!

My cats were pretty cute this morning. When a cat is still veiled in sleep and his paws are pointing to the north, he is awfully adorable. Max was in his normal ball of sleep. I think the little weasel was trying to groom my face and suck on my ears last night. I have this vague memory of batting off a cat. The little freak.

I hope everyone has a great day!

Mupdate

I could swear I had some interesting details to file away. Ah! There it is.

As your friendly neighborhood recovering Insurance Agent, I will now recount my Flood Insurance experience.
Background: when i bought my house, I was in a low risk zone, so I wasn't required to get flood insurance, and I didn't. Fast forward six years later and I still don't have flood insurance. Then I watch the good folk in Vacaville, not in a flood plain, get flooded. Now it would suck to loose my real estate nest egg, so I looked into more information.

Go to www.floodsmart.gov, FEMA's site on flood insurance, and find out what your risk level is. I'm low risk. I have a less than 1 percent chance to get flooded each year. Over the life of my mortgage, though, the likelihood increases. 25% of flood claims are made by people in low risk areas, apparently. So, I bit the bullet and bought the coverage. Since I'm a low risk, I'm only paying $296 per year, but it will take a long time for my insurance premiums to exceed my home value, so it's worth it to me.

Also, is anyone else noticing funky stuff with Amazon? I made a post of some music cds I purchased from them a few weeks back, and they still haven't shipped. All of them were "usually ships after 24 hours", too. While I have free super saver shipping on the order, I also just placed an order last night, but with books and a food processor. I requested super saver shipping on that, and for whatever reason, they shipped one item off right away. I wonder if it's in a different warehouse?

Very odd. I looked at the order and didn't see any problems, so I'll have to follow up with them.

The cold is still being kept at bay, but I notice if I talk a lot, I sound like Peter Brady in his puberty years.

Flight of the Vehicylries

Just as I signed up for flood insurance, certain parts of California go under flood watch.

I took my friend C out to dinner for her birthday. We went to Lucca, which was delicious. The drive home was neither savory nor sweet. The winds were eating umbrellas for breakfast followed by rain-soaked citizenry for dessert. As I fled into the safety of my automobile, I knew I was in for a treat.

The drive home was a white knuckle ride. Thousands of gallons of water were orbiting the earth through Sacramento at altitudes of about 10 feet. Or, if that analogy was not sufficient, perhaps the phrase "horizontal horse piss" will convey the experience, if not tickle your alliterative bones.

Visibility was lacking and therefore craved.

I tried to take a photo to capture the moment, and this was the best I could muster.


I could tell other drivers were experiencing the sort of discomfort that could only be carried on the ample wings of impending doom. In storms like this, windshield wipers serve more of a decorative purpose, accentuating the futility of person versus storm.

As for myself, I thankfully remained unscathed. Except my face is sore, mostly from being frozen in this configuration while driving home:


And now I'm safely huddled in bed, very glad to be alive.

Setting Suns Watch

My copies of Setting Suns have not arrived yet. I lament this fact.

Saint du Jour

As this wicked, rainy day winds to a close, it is time to reflect upon the life of Saint Leander, born in Adalusia in 535, died around 596. He appears to be the younger brother of a handful of saints: Saint Florentina, Saint Isadore, Saint Fulgentius. When he became a monk, he brandished a crucifix at the elders of the monastery and threatened to beat the Holy Ghost out of them if they gave him a name remotely resembling "Fulgentius". They settled on "Leander". Leander of the Holy Fields. Okay, the previous two sentences were fibs. Lies. Whatever.

He was made Bishop of Seville in 579. Apparently this was the time when rules of Spain had names like Recared, Leovigild, and Hermengild. Suddenly, Fulgentius was a step up. Of those three rules, two were brothers and son to the third. Leovigild wasn't hip to the Catholic ways, but his sons came around. It was apparently through Leander's work that Spain became so enamored of Catholicism.

Leander was known to engage in warm and frequent correspondence with Gregory the Great. Both had gout and commiserated over their fates, as well as exchanged ideas on how they could expiate their sins with common monastery-hold products. There is some speculation on whether or not they tried to determine if having gout was like extra credit towards sin expiation. Well, at least I speculate that.

Sources are vague as to how frequently Leander visited the local barber.

You can read additional, less silly information here.