Last night we had a majorly WICKED storm. I was watching the strobe-light like lightning surrounding my part of town as I zipped home on the freeway trying to beat the storm and get safely inside my little place. It rained for hours, thunder, lightning, the whole bit.
Powerful thunderstorms ripped across the Valley Thursday night, bringing heavy rain and winds reaching 100 mph that broke the windows of a condominium, shutdown two runways at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport and downed hundreds of trees, that seriously hurt at least one child.
Thousands of residents remain without power Friday morning as utility crews try to get electricity restored.
Central Phoenix and Tempe seemed to have been hit the hardest, with parts of the Phoenix receiving almost 2 inches of rain. Scattered debris forced the closure of Sky Harbor north and central runways.
Now the news says we may get more of the same, but maybe only 50 mph winds, later this afternoon. This had better not delay my flight!
*shakes fist at Nature's fury*
What are your plans for the three day weekend?
Thanks, Vox, for providing me the launching point for what I was going to post anyway!
I'm on a plane this afternoon to San Francisco, one of my favorite cities in the world. Brother Steve will meet me there. It's good for him to get out. He's a bachelor farmer and needs to explore worlds beyond the hinterland more often.
Highlights:
Michigan State v. Cal tomorrow night. Yay, college football!
Alcatraz Tour with the LT family. Yay, peeps!
Lunch with Electric Firefly. Yay, a peep I haven't met yet!
Maybe we'll catch up with the Lauowolf family as well, as they are winging their way back from across the pond today or tomorrow.
Other than that - sightseeing, being tourists, eating, drinking beer - maybe we'll hit the Anchor Steam Brewery. The LT's will join us for dinner after Alcatraz at the Irish pub near the hotel.
It's going to be a fun time. Maybe not as bizarre a time as last year's Labor Trip to SFO, but I'll try to come up with some stories for all y'all.
Last night I observed history.
I've pretty much made it through this week by counting down to Friday lunch and it's getting closer.
The rest of the week has been tedious paperwork, more queries, another rejection--ugh--and trying to beat some sense into the new GTA's. And don't even get me started on how stupid all the professors are. It makes me think of Wall-E and all the fat little people being scooted around on their hover chairs, helpless and ignorant.
We have a new professor this year, a freshly minted PhD, and she seems perfectly competent and willing to solve problems on her own. Once she gets tenure, however, she will meet the same fate as the other tenured professors: her arms and legs will turn into useless vestigial limbs and the parts of her brain not occupied by academic papers will atrophy like a raisin.
Oh, Friday lunch, you're only an hour and a half away. I'll be there soon.
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That’s it: the Foreign Minister-outside-Cabinet, Winston Peters, has stepped down temporarily while the Serious Fraud Office investigates whether funds donated to his political party, New Zealand First, were used as intended.
The pressure has mounted for weeks on Peters, and on PM Helen Clark to suspend him.
It is a rare slip-up for the former National politician-turned-Labour ally who has relied on skilful media manipulation for most of his career.
Images of Peters holding up a ‘No’ sign some months ago in denying journalists’ allegations of his receiving and failing to declare political-party donations from businessman Owen Glenn may haunt him.
The Glenn matter is under a separate parliamentary privileges’ investigation.
It was reported in the Australian-owned Fairfax Press, which owns The Dominion Post newspaper: ‘[Peters] said unnamed groups were organising a plot against him and that the SFO was part of it.
‘He said if the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) had talked to him he would have convinced them in five minutes that he was not breaking the law.
‘He told Radio New Zealand that The Dominion Post was part of the “malevolent planning strategy” and he would not stand down in the face of a “kangaroo court of public opinion, organised by the media in this country and others.”’
There are agenda at certain publications, but the numerous assaults on Peters this year will be the hardest for him to fight.
Another question is whether opposition parties can capitalize from the fiasco. National so far has failed to criticize Peters more strongly than Rodney Hide, the leader of the minor right-wing party, ACT.
Free-to-air coverage of the DNC in New Zealand is delayed till our late-night viewing hours, so I haven’t seen Sen. Barack Obama’s speech yet. And I was quite busy at work today so I didn’t tune in to the web.
What I do know I have heard from bits on the radio. As I understand it, Sen. Obama gave a rousing speech. When Sen. Clinton gave hers, the crowd audibly yelled, ‘Hil-la-ry! Hil-la-ry!’ But when Sen. Obama gave his, the cry was, ‘Eight is enough! Eight is enough!’
This is incredible. Dick van Patten didn’t lift a finger and the Democrats want him to represent them for the presidential election.
In other news, I understand Sen. John McCain said that Mr van Patten was too young and lacked experience.
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