Archive for September, 2005
Accupressure Keeps You Awake During Boring Sermons
Monday, September 26th, 2005The actual research used students as subjects but I extrapolated. Stimulating certain accupressure points (chinese meridian points) keeps you awake and alert while sitting and listening for a long time.
Immune System Communication
Monday, September 26th, 2005One of the biggest questions medical research fails to answer: How does your big toe know how to fight an infection that you had only ever experienced in your ear?
Turns out the immune system communicates via hidden tunnels. No, I am not kidding.
Rita Aftermath: Back to Normal in Houston
Monday, September 26th, 2005Everything is getting back to normal. I might go out shopping with the kids today. Hot as blue blazes. Whew. We are pushing toward October and it is still 100 degrees outside.
I’m going to go back to posting normal stories. While thousands still suffer without power, we’re keeping them in mind even as we get back to normal.
Rita: Funny Thing
Monday, September 26th, 2005On Saturday while breezes still blew it became obvious we dodged a bullet–all was a-ok. One thing struck me. Why weren’t people out in my neighborhood cleaning up? Debris in the form of leaves, sticks, pine needles and some branches lay on everyones’ lawns.
And then the neighbor answered for me on Sunday. Everyone (except us) has a lawn service. No one even owns lawn mowers, blowers, trimmers and weed wackers. Heh.
My friend made fun of us and called us “rich people wanna bes” ‘cuz we have no lawn service. And I’m like dude, even if we had a lawn service we’d keep our lawn equipment. Jeez. While falling short in the do-it-yourself-work by good-ole-boy standards we are not total tools.
NOLA Wants YOUR Money
Monday, September 26th, 2005“This bill boggles the mind,” said Steve Ellis, a water resources expert at Taxpayers for Common Sense. “Brazen doesn’t begin to describe it. The Louisiana delegation is using Katrina as an excuse to resurrect a laundry list of pork projects.”
Big shock here. Louisiana, and its crown jewel city New Orleans, two of the most corrupt political entities in the USA want 16x what the Army Corp of Engineers say would be required to “fix” NOLA and 10x the Army’s annual budget, $40 Billion–thats with a “B”–and that all this money should be controlled by (yup, you guessed it, the same people who sent federal money to casinos instead of shoring up the levees) New Orleans and Louisiana governments.
And so it begins.
Update: John Fund says clean up the corruption. Via Instapundit.
Another person who thinks like I do about letting NOLA go.
Natural Disasters & More National Control
Sunday, September 25th, 2005Just because Governor Blanco and Mayor Nagin are complete morons does not mean that the federal government needs more control, like President Bush suggests, in natural disaster situations. We are a representative democracy. If the dim-bulbs of Louisiana vote for a dim-bulb, they are represented by a dim-bulb.
Does being represented by a dim-bulb stink? Yes, it does. But it is their own dang fault.
Hurricane Rita at The Woodlands: What I Have Learned
Sunday, September 25th, 2005Mr. Dr. blew the yard off, cleaned the garage of canine excrement (ewwww!) and checked in with neighbors and friends while I wrestled the baby, marinated some meat and cleaned up inside. Our friends have gone to their home since they have A/C and electric now.
While puttering around I pondered what could have been done differently and better. While people belly-ache about FEMA and local governments, it is clear to me that each person must be responsible for themselves. There are simply too many people with dire needs. That is who the Government should help. I estimate the “dire needs number” at 2 percent of the population (think hospitals, elderly homes, orphans and widows). Probably 10 percent have intense needs (paycheck to paycheck, little famial support). And probably 10 percent more are just stupid (I’ll be fine, denial of the possible disaster, no planning–not for lack of resources.) All told, probably 20% really need the emergency resources.
But the rest of the 80% needs to have their collective act together. It’s called SELF-RELIANCE. It is AMERICAN. And it is ESSENTIAL in crisis. Here is what we thought of too late:
- We need a generator. With temps in the 100s it is unthinkable to be without A/C. Energy is too fickle with just regular old thunderstorms.
- We need at least one, maybe two chain saws. We are surrounded by beautiful trees. Their lovliness turns ominous with a tornado or hurricane coming. We might have enough gas, but if a tree falls and blocks us in, we’re stuck anyway.
- You can’t have too much duct tape.
- You can’t have too much plastic sheeting.
- Everyone should own a gun. After Katrina, I posted that we were going to go gun hunting. And we did have the ball partially rolling, with friends giving helpful advice and checking prices on the internet and all. But we needed one yesterday, not some time in the future. Yes, a gun is needed for protection. But if push came to shove, a gun can kill a deer for meat. We have lots of them around here–fat ones too ‘cuz they munch unmolested in our planned community.
- Buy more perishables than you think. I know this advice runs counter to Dr. Neil Frank’s advice. He says its all lost in a big storm. But my recent experience says not really. With extra people in the house, we went through milk and eggs and bread and butter at an alarming rate. Our gas stove and grill would have worked. We could have cooked for a lot longer with the food we had. We had plenty of ice to last us probably five days. We were out of milk in one day. (We had evaporated and powdered milk, too, but had to dive into that faster than I would have liked.)
- Good food keeps morale up. Eat together. Prepare it together. Clean up together. Like the military, no one should eat alone.
- There is safety in numbers. We housed friends who live in a mobile home. They felt grateful to have a more solid roof, but the benefit ran both ways. More hands to take care of things. Children to play with each other. Adults to play with each other. We played cards and watched movies together. We laughed and talked and kept one another company. We cooked for each other. It was fun. It is MUCH BETTER than worrying alone.
- Be careful who you invite! Our friends are wonderful. We get along great in good times. A sourpuss, negative nay-bob or chronic depressive kill-joy will do more damage than 100 mile an hour winds. So will a lazy leech. Working together, staying task-oriented calms the jitters and keeps energy productive instead of destructive.
- Men are good. New York City can keep their metrosexuals. When times get tough you need a real man–two or three are even better. They lift heavy things. They nail things. They do dirty work. One thing I like about Texas is that there are plenty of real men. Now, it gets annoying, too. But when times get tough, the tough get going. A side effect of divorce and single-motherhood is that so many women are left with caring for children while also having to think about protecting children. The task is almost impossible alone.
- Keep lots of bleach around. It kills germs and viri and is multi-use.
- Keep childrens meds around. My teething kid went nuts and we had no way to help. He just suffered. Our nerves suffered as a result.
- We needed more light. Had the electricity gone out, we would have been in the dark to conserve light. That would have stunk. We need some camping lights and I’m going to get some this week.
- All families should have a notion of survival methods. No joke, I was harkening back to summer camp when we were all required to go on two and three day bivouacs where we boiled roots for drinks, used shovels to make latrines, etc. While not eager to employ said methods, I could if I had too.
That’s it for right now. We did some things right. Unfortunately, we would have been caught underprepared had things gone wrong. As a single person with only myself as a responsibility that might be ok. With children, running out of food or supplies–I don’t want to think about it.
Rita: Power Outages & Miscellaneous Worries
Sunday, September 25th, 2005We have power, but our friends still don’t. This news about power restoration isn’t encouraging, but sounds alarmist to me.
My biggest concern, not that state planners are consulting me or anything: Fuel. The people who are coming back will be out of gas once they get here and I have bad news–there is hardly any stations here with gas and the word gets out quick if there is any.
Another concern: what if a hurricane, terrorist attack, earthquake in California, tornado in Kansas, and the Great Lakes flooded all at the same time? We need a National Plan says the Army. Yes we do.
Rita: NOLA The Biggest Victim?
Sunday, September 25th, 2005Update: Brendan Loy says that Rita won’t stall and it keeps moving Northeast, but that New Orleans is flooding anyway.
Has anyone considered how in the world NOLA is going to be rebuilt since it floods every time it rains? And, we are entering the rainy season. I have three words: LET HER GO. She has had a good life, longer than she should considering her inherent weaknesses. We could spend the resources in many other ways. Make the French Quarter an island. Let her go.
Via Instapundit, I just read that Hurricane Rita might hang a U-ey and travel toward….New Orleans. Unbelievable? Impossible? Maybe. Read more here.
Rita: Post Traumatic Stress Order
Saturday, September 24th, 2005No disorder here. Just relief. Some more friends over. Still have A/C. Some don’t even around here.
My solution to removed stress? Eat, of course! (It is also my solution to stress, but I digress.)
Eating spaghetti and tacos (the real, really good Mexican kind) and cupcakes. That’s a balanced meal, right?
