Random-o-rama

1. Joe and I celebrate our third anniversary today. (I know. Only three years,  we’ve got way more years of Godless-heathen-union under our belts that that. We just got the state sanctioned sort of married kind of late.)   Technically, while it is our anniversary, it’s not really our anniversary because I’m on one side of the continent and he’s on the other, so we’re postponing until next week, but it’s still an important day and I didn’t feel right not saying something, even though we’re not counting it. (Know what I mean?)  I just wanted to take a minute and say something about my husband.  I hear lots of people who say that their marriage is in trouble, or struggling or having trouble enduring because the person they’re with now is not the person they started out with.  They complain that the other person has changed, that things aren’t the same or that the person they’re with now isn’t "the person they married".  This is true of my husband.  He is absolutely not the same guy I married.

He’s better.  He’s grown, he’s changed, he’s learned and I like him better and love him more than I did on this day three years ago, and I don’t see that ever changing.  I’m grateful that he’s evolving, and that he’s tolerant and appreciative of the growth and change in me too.  He’s pretty awesome.

2.  I have more handspun for the jacket drying in the sun by the ocean.  Something about that makes up for the fact that I’ve been working too much to be any further along on it.

3. I love coffee. (I know, but it’s worth repeating.)

4. Last night there was a tsunami warning here at the coast.  It turns out though that even though we think of all tsunami’s as big, devastating terrible events, really, they come in all sizes but still get the same name.  Tina and I asked around (since we’re staying about 30m from the beach)  found out that the one arriving here was really not expected to be anything to worry about… and so it became more of a curiosity than a danger.
Along with a bunch of other people we staggered down to the beach around 9:00 to wait for it to arrive, thinking that it might be a really neat display of the ocean and earth’s power and might – and probably the only safe opportunity to experience anything like it.  Lucky for us, there were a couple of tv stations down there too, and one of them had a huge light shining out on the ocean to look at the waves.


This was a considerable upgrade from the view from our place, which was indeed right on the ocean, but on the ocean in the dark. 

We stood there, Tina and I, in the cold and the mist for about 2 hours, and I have to tell you… we didn’t see anything.  We’re not even sure that the waves were bigger, or that the ocean pulled in farther, or anything.  We stood there freezing our bums off, afraid to leave – convinced that the minute that we left "it" would happen.  (The thing had been downgraded so much at that point, that nobody was even sure what "it" would look like here.)  We finally gave up our surveillance and left, but not before the news guy came out of his warm and cozy van (we hadn’t seen him all evening) did a 2 minute spot for the news and claimed that the crew had been monitoring the situation all night, and would continue to do so in case things changed.

Seriously.  Tina and I were standing on the shore, watching every single wave break for 2 hours monitoring the hell out of it, and this guy in a dry windbreaker stands there for two minutes and pronounces?  Maybe it’s wrong, but I don’t think that’s the sort of monitoring that counts. That guys hair didn’t even get damp.

5.  I really want to know if the station had the nerve to call this "Tsunami Watch ’09".

6.  This made me remember why the news annoys me. There’s real danger and disaster (like the impact this had in other parts of the world) and then there’s scientific curiously and an interest in the natural world around you.  Pretending that the one is the other to make things more interesting that they’re not?  I’m judging that.

7. The guys from the other station stood on the beach with us and watched the waves, like they were really invested in their jobs and interested in what was happening.

8. That made me like them better.

9. I wondered if they were knitters.

10. Today there was a rainbow.