tropical storm BETA, voting, and my dying iMac

Sunday and Monday...days spent helping my sister at her old house doing the final repairs, touch-ups, and cleaning now that the estate sale is done and the unsold stuff hauled away to become someone else's problem or delight. Now our attention shifts to the outdoors and the last of the yard stuff and plants still to be dug up, the shed to be tidied but not til it dries out some from...

Tropical Storm Beta made landfall Monday night at Matagorda. Matagorda is a straight shot hour drive down Hwy 60 from Wharton. It rained for a couple of hours Monday afternoon and when it stopped we did our storm prep getting in the yard furniture and taking down all the wind chimes and yard art. It started up again early evening and did not stop on top of the 2 1/2” we got on Sunday. The only saving grace was that it was not torrential though sometimes heavy. Still the low spot on the west side back by the slab continued to accumulate water which slowly expanded into the low spot on the north side but I wasn't worried about that because that's the part of the house on pier and beam. As I checked out the window on the west side about every 15 minutes I was glad to see that, so far, the water had not gotten high enough to breach the dirt I had been mounding up along the slab. One last check after dark with the lights before I went to bed telling myself that I WAS NOT going to check during the night no matter how many times I woke up since there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it anyway except just deal with it and every time I did wake up it was still raining. It had stopped though by the time I woke up Tuesday morning to a little standing water in the low spot. I checked my rain gauge which tops out at 7” and it was full so I texted my neighbor at the other end of the street to see what their bigger rain gauge showed which was 6.1” so I'm thinking maybe my rain gauge isn't all that accurate except that I checked the markings on the side with a ruler and they are accurate. Guess I'll have to get a second one for a different part of the yard and see how they compare.

Tuesday was mostly without rain but some drizzle off and on so as it turned out TS Beta sort of fizzled out with no high wind here at all though a big dead branch did fall out of one of the oak trees yesterday late morning.

it has impaled the ground so solidly that it doesn't even wobble

here's the rest of it

flowers of a different sort

About the only thing I accomplished yesterday was going to the grocery store where the idiots were out, at least more than usual. I saw one guy without a mask at all (required in the grocery store) selfishly possibly spreading virus as he went and more than the usual number of shoppers with the mask below their noses. Go ahead on, I grumbled to myself, the virus loves your nose way more than it loves your mouth. I give those people a wide berth. The only other thing I accomplished was getting to the vet and getting flea treatment for the dog and cat.

I've been dithering about getting a mail-in ballot since I'm in the age group where it's allowed for voting as opposed to in person. There's a chat group on FB for Wharton so I posted a query if anyone knew if there would be a drop box for mail-in ballots. The chiropractor here I've gone to a couple of times just lost a client after he posted a snarky reply...yeah, Nov. 3 at your polling place. Well, thanks Mr. Obvious. What is it with Republicans? Are they all assholes or just the ones that comment on posts cause I'm seeing a trend here. Someone else commented that mail-in ballots had to be postmarked so I looked up election rules here in Texas. So, yeah, no drop boxes allowed in Texas but you can hand your ballot in in person to the county election office where you have to show a valid ID and sign off that you voted. That office is here in Wharton since this is the county seat. 

The news is so bad that I can't even look at it, can't even read Heather Cox Richardson's newsletters. We're all counting on the election to save this country while Trump, Barr, and McConnell are doing everything they can to suppress the vote and stack the Supreme Court to contest and declare the election null and void and install Trump again. I'm really scared.

Well, I think my iMac is in the last stages of it's long life. It's at least a decade old, older I think but don't remember exactly what year we bought it and for some time now it will get really hot to the touch in the upper left corner and yesterday and today as well it wouldn't even come on until I unplugged it and then plugged it back in (the magic cure for everything computer related it seems) and yesterday it spontaneously quit twice. Not a good sign.

Wet and soggy today. Think I'll start on a new drawing.

PS. I still hate the new blogger.