Natasha Alexander » weather

Toilet paper and beer

Natasha — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 14:03:48 +0000

Yikes. Not only is Hurricane Irene projected to become a Category 3 or 4, at this point it’s projected to make landfall along the southeastern North Carolina coast on Saturday.

Uh.

That’s where I live, folks. Of course, during Irene’s touch-down I’m supposed to be on Cape Cod at my college girlfriends’ reunion, which has been in the works for two years.

Should I stay or should I go?

Good question, and I probably won’t know the answer until my flight takes off Friday morning and I’m either on it or not. I’m pretty sure I don’t want to leave The Man and the pets to fend for themselves if and when the roof blows off. Or when they’re stuck on the Interstate trying to get the hell out of Dodge ahead of 135 mph winds.

At the very least, I ought to hit the grocery store while they still have these Southern hurricane staples in stock.

Stay tuned. And, Goodnight, Irene.

The bridge, the Falls, The Hunger Games and me

Natasha — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 17:15:09 +0000

Oh, good – We’ve been hearing thunder for hours now and Polly is cowering and shaking under my desk.

That’s perfect mood music to finally finish this blog post from our June road trip, which included hiking in North Carolina’s DuPont State Forest.

Note the bridge; you’ll see it again later.

What’s three times better than a single waterfall? As soon as we climbed over the guardrail and onto on the Triple Falls trail we saw large plants, roots wrapped in burlap, lining the trail near the highway. Hmm…

We hiked to the crest of Triple Falls, and it was lovely. It was also devoid of other people, because all the sane ones had already headed back down the trail. The sky had turned black and thunder rumbled closer and closer.

When The Man finally finished taking pictures, we started back down the trail in the rain, dragging 60 pounds of terrified dog. By the time we got to the road, lightning was crashing all around us. This was not the smartest time to cross a bridge.

So we climbed down under the bridge to ride out the storm. Pretty soon a couple of ATVs pulled up under the bridge next to us and two guys started grabbing the plants by their root balls and loading them on the ATVs.

Turns out The Hunger Games was being filmed in the DuPont State Forest and apparently Mother Nature hadn’t put out quite enough greenery for the movie’s post-apocalyptic vision (I haven’t read The Hunger Games yet so I might be misrepresenting the scenario here.) The woods looked just fine to me: lovely, dark and deep – but I’m a writer, not a cinematographer, so maybe Lionsgate really did need those extra rhododendrons.

Eventually half a dozen other guys showed up under the bridge. They were part of the film crew rather than the landscape crew and the pecking order was clear. The head guy was wearing probably a thousand bucks worth of Patagonia and North Face gear. The other younger, scruffier guys shuffled around trying to impress him, nodding and chuckling whenever he said anything.

But the day’s filming schedule was shot and, expensive gear or not, everyone was soaked to the bone. Head guy pointed, his crew nodded in unison and followed him like sheep back out into the rain.

The rain came down like crazy for about an hour. Can you tell how wet it was? These individual rivulets were gushing out of the bridge drainage holes. Oh, yeah, and we had hail, too.

When we got home from our trip, I found this on YouTube and realized that if we’d tried to hike to Triple Falls a day earlier, we would have been stuck in traffic like everyone else and out of luck.

…not in Kansas anymore…

Natasha — Sun, 17 Apr 2011 14:18:27 +0000

Wow, busy Saturday here in Paradise. Polly and I started the day at the annual ALS Walk, where she entertained/irritated/pissed off the crowd with her rendition of the Star Spangled Banner, which she sang with great gusto. I’ll bet the guy with the microphone who was trying to lead the song wished he could do as well – and wag his tail at the same time.

ALS – Lou Gehrig’s disease – is a horrible, devastating disease so if you are looking for a charitable cause to support, research into finding a cure is well worth it.

Spent the afternoon at the Pleasure Island Chowder Cook-Off, where local restaurants served up their best chow-dah efforts to the public and then we voted for our favorites. It was a nice change to get to vote for something I actually liked (Surfhouse! The best!) rather than the-least-offensive-candidate, my usual stance when I get in a voting booth. Plus, live music, people watching, fried pickles (really – I’ve never had one, so I can’t say). What’s not to like?

Carolina Beach Lake is about 500 feet from the ocean and windy even on calm days. After the Cook-Off we headed for home since alarming tornado reports were coming in from Raleigh and the winds were blowing mightily. The sky turned green.

By 9 PM, the tornado warning was lifted and the storm headed out to sea.

Turn your speakers up all the way, hit full screen, and enjoy some fireworks, compliments of Mother Nature. (The houses/buildings on the far side of the lake are oceanfront, to give you an idea of how narrow that strip of land is and how close the lake and ocean are to each other.)

That Guy

Natasha — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 01:07:45 +0000

Remember being at a party or a bar or in a class when you saw That Guy across the room — and he was looking at you, too? And how, all of a sudden, the day got just special, kinda exciting? And your heart started beating just a little bit faster?

Maybe he inched toward you, maybe you inched toward him — can’t remember exactly who moved first, but pretty soon there you were and there he was, standing right next to you. Your heart was pounding so’s that’s all you could hear. You were too giddy to speak, hoping he’d go first.

You held your breath; he opened his mouth and –

Nothing. He had nothing, really, to say. He was bland. He was boring. He wasn’t That Guy, after all.

Ladies and gentlemen — meet Earl.

Not the bad boy Earl we’ve been obsessing over for days, but a kinder, gentler Earl who merely grazes our southern fingertips with his lips instead of moving in for a whirlwind deep kiss before leaving us, broken and powerless.

And it’s okay. Yes, it is. We saw waves this afternoon, and they were plenty big enough for me.

Maybe we’ll get some rain. We’ll probably get some wind, but it’s still pretty wimpy out there. Honestly, I will be happier without tree limbs crashing down. And with the electricity staying on. I’m still a little spacy from the root canal I had this morning so I’ll probably go to bed early. A little bland and boring myself…

But I fully intend to be on the beach first thing in the morning to survey whatever Earl has left behind.

Oh, look. Isn’t that Gaston in the corner there, by the punch bowl? I wonder if he could be That Guy?

The calm before the storm…

Natasha — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 17:05:52 +0000

Sure doesn’t look like a Category Four hurricane is headed directly toward us, does it? And yet…. as with any good story, you just don’t know what’s going to happen before it does, even though the clues and warning signs and tingle on the back of your neck tell you that — something — is getting ready to hit. As John Irving put it: “Beware of the undertoad.”

I noticed on the way to the beach that some of the Mom and Pop motels have No Vacancy signs up, even though traffic, cars and people are pretty sparse. Do the old-timers know something that NOAA doesn’t? Are they getting ready to head off-island for the storm? The bridge closes when winds hit 40 mph, and category 4 winds fly at, oh good lord, 133 to 155 mph.

But the beach itself was calm, beautiful, soothing. Polly swam; I walked.

And, of course, talked. There aren’t that many folks on the beach at 8 AM, and I try to talk with all of them — whether they want to or not. Hey, it’s called research, people.

So here are a couple of exchanges from yesterday and today. Any one of these threads could go somewhere, really, if someone were interested:

Yesterday morning there was only one other person on the beach. He was just a speck far ahead of me, and every so often he stopped to light a cigarette, an acquired skill set in salt spray and wind. When he turned and headed back toward the parking lot, he stopped to pet Polly.

“Be careful up ahead. Someone busted a beer bottle and left the broken end pointed up. I buried it as best I could.” He shook his head. “Some people.” His hair was longer than mine and it blew across his face.

“Yeah, some people are kinda weird.”

He looked at me maybe a second too long and said, “You got that right. Weird. Really weird.” Then we both walked on.

He looked oddly familiar to me, but it wasn’t until a couple of minutes later that I put it together.

Charles Manson. The guy looked just like Charles Manson, only no beard. It was the eyes.

Later I found the broken bottle in the sand. He hadn’t done such a great job covering it up after all.

**
This morning I saw a guy walking four shih tzu’s. Our shih tzu died in January so of course I had to talk to him and pet the dogs, who were panting in the heat. The four dogs all dug a collective hole in the sand while we were talking and climbed in to get cool. He told me that the first time he saw them do that at the beach, he turned part of his yard into a big sand pit for the dogs. And they love it. But I can’t help wondering — how do the neighbors feel about looking out their window and seeing a big sand pit next door? Filled with little dogs?

He also said he’d worked with a lot of the local dog rescues but eventually stopped because they were “too political.”

Now he works exclusively with cat rescue. I’m still wrestling with this one. I’m a cat person, too, but I’m trying to figure out why dogs would be political and cats not? Maybe I should talk with the Superior Court Judge candidate about politics?

**
A middle aged couple and a younger man, probably their son, had just set up chairs and fishing gear when I walked by. They were from away, were here for a week, and worried that they might have to evacuate before the storm hit. The young man and Polly hit it off great while I talked with the older man about weather possibilities.

About a half hour later we walked back past them. This time I noticed that the young man had considerable physical limitations and a bunch of adaptive and walking aids. I asked if they’d caught any fish yet, and the older man nodded and said that the young man had caught one, a small fish.

It took the young man a good 30 seconds to raise both hands, spread them apart about 6 inches, and say, barely audibly, “This big.”

The grin across his face was just as big when he said it.

Made. My. Day.