Current location:	Home (Cave Manse 1)
Current mood:	relaxed
Current music:	Rogers Sisters - Fantasies Are Nice

Saitin cometh. Srsly
So, like, the Santa Ana winds are picking up again; No big surprise, as this is the traditional time of year that God once again tries to wipe the Blight-That-Is the Northridge/Chatsworth urban sprawl off the map. Driving in from Pasadena early this morning (probably around 5:00 AM or so) the gale-force winds (39-45mph) attempted to dislodge my trusty Saturn from the road with such strident effort that on multiple occasions my bespectacled co-pilot, the ever interminable el_pinko_grande exclaimed through a cloud of pomade, "We're in a tight bind!" White knuckled at the helm of my precious Old Girl, a 2005 Saturn Ion Redline with all the trimmings, I calmly intoned through gritted teeth, "There's a good boy, El Libertario, no mere low pressure zone will down two explorers as intrepid as we. Now keep your attention focused on the Nav Markers, lest we follow these satanic gusts... Into Hell!" A solitary bead of cold sweat trailed down my brow, the only indication that I too was not completely secure in the safety of the Old Girls' vacuum gaskets.

Despite a few tense moments when the Old Girl drifted into oncoming traffic
we made it to Cave Manse 1 with little drama to speak of.


Cut to this morning. I'm out and about doing all the cosmopolitan things I do before I'm fully awake on the weekends and I see not one... Not two... But three trees uprooted, their dirty fingers of water-finding aimed naughtily towards traffic in a tawdry display of their inability to keep themselves decently ensconced within the Earth. Actually, one of the uprooted trees on Tampa looked to have snapped at the base, and was taking up both lanes of the side of the street it inhabited with it's death throws.

In the parking lot of the Winnetka 20 a lamp post had fallen over, staving in the lights on one side and spraying the parking lot around the impact with a half-moon of broken glass and sundered metal. The most impressive part of this lamps final moments was not the destruction it caused to itself in it's fall (although that was pretty impressive) but the speed with which it was cleaned up. Not a half hour after I witnessed the 40' pole's point of collapse, it was all cleaned up except for some warning tape and some remaining shards of powdered glass debris.

I only hope my own death will leave as little impact.

Except I'm fairly sure the three tons of TNT I'm saving up will at least leave a crater. My will states my death has to be posted to Youtube, so I'll make sure someone posts it here.


Cut to Tonight. It was dusk, and the sun was completely obscured by the mountains ringing the San Fernando Valley as I drove down the 118 to the Urban Sprawl that is Porter Ranch. It was that happy point between dusk and night when there's still enough light to see by but everything is suffused in a quiet blue glow that seems to calm everything.

Everything except the angry dark strip of sky hanging immediately over the Northridge/Porter Ranch area, roiling and grasping like the very hand of God trying to claw his way out of a meat-hell and get back to the heavens. It was spectacular. In the few minutes of clear visibility I could actually watch the Santa Anas dragging the collected sediment of the summer months out of the Santa Ana pass and drag it through the San Fernando Valley towards Los Angeles. I imagine it looks something like this:


If you have allergies and will be anywhere near the San Fernando Valley in the next few days, I pity you. I really do. Godspeed.

Oh, and this is apparently what happens when you drive a big-rig in the kind of weather we've been having: