Situation Normal

Sunrise - not volcano glow

Good morning! Well, the coffee's hot and good, but I had to warm it with propane instead of molten rock running alongside the yurt. And it also seems that all of those hours of childhood training, playing "The Carpet is Lava" in the living room, have thus far amounted to little more than wasted time.  I had planned on getting up this morning, making a nice pot of coffee, relaxing in the hammock while I had a cup or two, and then running for my life.  Instead I'll have to settle on making a nice pot of coffee, relaxing in the hammock over a cup or two, and then running the mower or weed whacker.  But on the brighter side, I do like coffee, and I have some amount of affection for living, so all in all it's a good morning. 

Turns out they call these quick successions of earthquakes "swarms."  A dumb name, if you ask me, but then again you didn't, so I won't go into it.  

If you'd like to read more about the volcano and it's current grumpiness, here's a person who by all rights should know more than me.

The Hills Are Alive

"... with the sound of something...."

Hello everyone!

First off, FYI, I'm 100% A-OK.  Nothing going on here apart from one little tremble that didn't even come from the mountain.

What am I talking about, you may ask?  Well, if you don't know, that's good news.  That means my blogging has worked, and nothing serious has happened (which was probably going to be the case whether I posted about it or not). But in case you have heard something, and are checking here for an update, everything's fine.

What's happening is this: Mauna Kea is acting a bit fussy.  A little after 2:00 pm local time,  the USGS recorded a magnitude 4.5 quake on the northwest slope.  Two minutes later there was another measured at 3.6.  Since then, at the time of this writing (five hours later), there have been 27 other smaller earthquakes in that same place.  If you wanna check out a regularly updated list, go here.  If you click on the cluster on the north end of the island, that'll give you all the info for the most recent quakes.  If you check out the south end, near Pu'u O'o, then you'll see the 3.5 magnitude quake that I felt just before writing this.

Even with all of these quakes, I haven't felt any of them other than the one by Pu'u O'o (pronounced poo-oo oh-oh).  In fact, I had no idea anything was going on until my good friend TheMatt sent me a text asking how things were going.  He's a news photog for KOMO in Seattle, and saw something about it come over the wire. 

Why is this happening?  Who knows?  All I know is that I nearly failed geology in college.  I just can't get excited about rocks and schist. *rimshot*  But what I do know is that I'm happy it's a lot of little quakes instead of one big one.  I've always heard that's a good thing.  And if there's one thing I've learned, it's always believe what you hear as long as it makes your current situation of potential volcanic eruption appear better.

One theory though, posed by Des (who likes cooking), is that I'm not preventing anything by writing, but instead manifesting a potential natural disaster just so I have something to blather on about.  Perhaps. You can form your own opinion about that.

In the meantime, I'm going to post this, cook some soup, wrap the dogs' feet in tinfoil (just in case), and watch Dante's Peak before bed.

Oh, and I'll also be drinking beer.  There's no way I'm letting the volcano take my beer.  To paraphrase Charlton Heston, that volcano can have my beer when it pries it from my hot, melted hands.

I'm Back! (But I Might Be Leaving Again Soon)

Always know where your rake is.

I was going to write a post about this, but the further I get away from the moment, the less funny it sounds.  Now, with perspective, I realize I really just wanted to make a picture of ALF holding a potato rake in space.

Anyway, here's the article that inspired it.

http://www.virgingalactic.com/news/item/sir-richard-branson-and-new-mexico-governor-susana-martinez-dedicate-the-virgin-galactic-gateway-/

That said, it seems to me that opening a space port with no working spacecraft is kinda like me saying I'm opening a brewery because I have a lot of empty bottles.

Or something.


On the upside, I'm working on converting the yurt into a space ship.

Still Not Back Yet....

....but in honor of the Kaiwiki Lebowski Fest (what we call it when anyone in the neighborhood besides me watches The Big Lebowski) I found some great visuals.

And of course they must be shared.

"Turn to the power of the Dark Side, you human paraquat!"

(bonus points if you get the reference just I made to yet a third flick)

found here

 A Lebowski Anime-style?

found here

(some weird stuff there - you've been warned)

Screw you guys, I'm going bowling.

found here

Lastly,

You must ask yourself (and then do the opposite):

I'm Not Back to Blogging...

...but this is totally worth sharing.

If you like cute women, drunk women, cute drunk women, funny women, cute funny women, cute funny drunk women, women who cook, cute women who cook, cute funny drunk women who cook, women who occasionally curse, drunk women who occasionally curse, cute drunk funny women who cook and occasionally curse, OR cheese, then this is the video blog for you.

(you've been warned, there's cursing)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vq7G-Q9ZwC0

While this is the first episode, and it isn't the best, I think it's good to start at the beginning.  And if you watch in order, when you get to Episode 8 (the ice cream one) if you're not laughing, you're dead inside.  Better go see someone about that.