Be gone, you!

 Idalia came and went for us in SWFL. Word on the street is she will hit Bermuda as a post tropical cyclone. 

But the devastation left in North Florida as a category 3, looks like what Ian left us as a category 5. The Big Bend area has lots of flooding and loss of power. Homes are gone. 

This is a first for that area, the news was saying, as there are spots where they've not seen anything past a category 1. Which makes this storm highly unusual...  some reports have said. 

In Lee County, we got a lot of rain Tuesday, where it got super dark a few times while I was at work. There was even a tornado whirling around the area at one point. Any problems we were going to see from the storm was during the night, and when I woke up Wednesday, you would think nothing happened. Even as I made my way across town to work, the wind was blowing, for sure, but none of the roads were flooded that I needed to drive on. 

That's not to say that just 2 miles away from my work was spared. The bridges to get to Cape Coral were flooded out on the ends, Downtown was under water, businesses were closed. I still had to be in the office.

Which was a ghost town. People who could work remotely, did. Those who couldn't, came in. The ones that had a bad commute, took paid time off. There was about 10 people in the building. Which isn't bad, since there's usually 25. 

It quite literally was a regular summer storm for us. The hype was worth it but not worth it, since we're still trying to rebuild from last year. It's better to be safe than sorry. Especially since there was some erosion in places locally, but not a lot. 

Where we are still in peak hurricane season, it's far from over. This won't be the last time anyone talks about threats, considering there are a few more storms out in the water that are currently being watched. Plus, we just finished with the "I" letter. There are 17 more to go.

I know this is short and probably doesn't make sense to read, but I wanted to post something, even just to say things are okay here. We survived Tropical Storm Idalia. 

Cheers;

When work expects you to be in during a storm...

 ... and the whole area the building is in, floods easily, what do you do?

As of this post, Idalia is not hitting us (Fort Myers area) as a hurricane, only a tropical storm. She's making her way into the Gulf and up the west coast of the state, where she will stroll through areas like Tallahassee as a Category 2 (maybe a 3 by tomorrow morning), reaching the Georgia boarder as a hurricane rather than tropical storm. If she continues on that easterly path going north, she'll hit the Outer Banks / Carolinas and maybe a little bit of Virginia before turning right and going to the Bahamas. 

Everyone is going to get loads of water - by either storm surges or by the clouds emptying. It'll be a matter of what comes first, since the hippies and science people say it's tidal and full moon on top of everything else. So things are going to pop off. Plus, the wind shear will bring out the toys that were just put away. 

There will be a point where the wind hits 40mph and becomes unsafe to travel on the bridges. So once that happens, there will be no police around, no barricades, no one to stop you from traveling, so traverse the area carefully. You're on your own if you get blown into the water as you were warned. 

People were talking today, wondering what would happen to the local bridges here with this storm. The Sanibel Causeway is finally getting rebuilt; will it survive the night? The water might rise and flood it out, potentially. What about the little bridges going to Pine Island and Matlacha? Will they last? 

All these water questions are why, knowing how the area I work in floods at a dime, I'm not looking forward to potentially going in to work tomorrow. 

Credit: Wink News

                                                                           Credit: Fox4 News

The above picture was taken last fall by Wink News, while the Youtube video was taken by one of the Fox affiliates in 2021. Both are around the area I work in. 

Even though the picture and video were taken on separate days, they both happened to be days when a really hard, really fast band of rain came through, so the water had no where to go. 

Being built on sand and shells, the saturation level some days is bad because the water starts pooling quickly. I did have to drive through that level of water that day, so I am slightly worried what tonight will bring for the area. Especially when the parking lot my building is in, has no proper runoff and starts to puddle quick. 

With no option to work remotely, I'm going to have to chance it to get downtown and in the building. They're going to be open tomorrow, as we're just getting a breeze through storm... even though everyone has put their shutters up, my mom and I have filled a bucket of water, and we know we'll be fine. It's just that they said that about the last two "I" storms we had... You just never know here. It's bad enough a lot of people have PTSD from the last sucker who rolled in on us... he can go eff himself. 

Considering around 2:30 today, a tornado landed by one of the connecting Fort Myers / Cape Coral bridges. It decided to travel the route I take, and stopped at another bridge. I don't think there was any damage, but I heard Marco Island got themselves a funnel as well. 

When you get tornado alerts on your phone and the sky is black but sending large drops of cloud cry to the ground at rapid succession, you really shouldn't be at work, let alone out and about. But there were were, in a building that already has roof problems (and active leaks), wondering if we'd all get home safely. 

I did, as I had been able to work my weekly hours by 3:30. Our work week is an odd one: We start on Wednesday and end on Tuesday. So my ending 90 minutes before I typically have been going home, was because my 40 hours were up for the week. Which is a good thing, as I missed the funnel clouds and I was in a band of sunshine. It sprinkled at the time I left, which is just the calm before the storm, I know. 

We are probably going to start getting more rain soon, so it's a good thing we are shuttered in. Maybe I can sleep a little better tonight, knowing the house is dark. 

I think I'm starting to go off on so many topics, I'm rambling. So off I go for the night and I'll check in when I can. Don't expect pictures; this isn't that type of storm. I can't see out of my house anyway with the shutters closed. LOL. 

Cheers;

We think he's a lost little guy...

 Along with being a (nocturnal) protected species, out in the middle of the day. 

Weird.

My mother and I were running some errands today when a neighbor (Brian) texted. He said that there's an owl at his front door, and it's one of those protected birds. He also sent a picture. 

Brian is one of those guys in the neighborhood that likes to ride his bike to the fishing pier on property and fish the things you can't keep. It's all catch and release here since the lakes are man made and you probably don't want to eat what's swimming in them as it is (gross water). 

So coming home to leave his bike at his front door, he saw the owl waiting to get in the house. Bad spotter if it has to alert its friends on the inside that the human is home. 

Obviously a poorly executed break in. 

Brian was able to get in his house, but the owl hid in the bushes. He texted a few people and by the time my mother and I got into our house, we didn't know if it was still there. She texted Brian and he said he thought it was, so I grabbed my (now old and a renewed product on Amazon) Canon EOS Rebel T7i with the stock lens and EF 75-300mm f/4-5.6 III Telephoto Zoom Lens (also renewed). Off we went to find the little guy. 

I think my camera is at the point now, where if I rush, the battery doesn't connect in the slot. When I walked up the walkway, I was trying to get my camera to turn on and it wouldn't. This happened when we went to Sanibel, too. 

As I'm fiddling with the battery and compartment, I scared the owl out of its hiding place in the bushes. I wish I had gotten it in semi mid flight, but when it landed in front of Brian's neighbor's door, I was able to get enough photos, that now I feel bad he's so lost. He obviously doesn't belong anywhere near here.

You don't normally see the owls out in the day time, but Cape Coral has an influx of the burrowing kind that will sometimes come out during the day to inspect the world. I'm sure there are plenty of videos still online if you look hard enough. 

As with all tech going awry, I know my photos are probably going to look horrible on other screens. I edited them in Photoshop CS 5 on a 10 year old HP Pavilion. I don't have the monitor calibrated to do solid photo editing, so apologies in advance that the owl may not look so hot. I really should start investing in real stuff if I'm going to keep posting and sharing my photos. 

- We interrupt this post for a commercial break - 

That's also what Ko-Fi is for. "Podcasts aren't cheap" and neither is photo editing. The likes and shares are awesome, but if readers expect more, please think about showing some appreciation by going to the Ko-Fi link. Everyone sends me private messages saying how awesome my stuff is, and I truly appreciate it. Don't get me wrong; I dig it when people make comments to my pages and send positivity in email form. It makes me want to do more work, 100%. But I cant get there without the proper equipment. My full time job is not in the visual world, so I don't have the right materials needed to make the magic happen. I try my hardest though, and it shows for sure. 

-Now back to our programming - 

So as of this post, I've got 29 owl photos to put up or I shut up. Again, I don't have my laptop monitor calibrated (which I guess Spyder systems are cheap enough, I can try to find a decent one on Amazon.. anyone have suggestions?) therefore, WYSIWYG. I did auto tune everything, so that might or might not work in my favor. 

It's funny; Tay and I were talking about some random things happening in our lives over the past few months to a year. He's had some unexplained things happen lately and he knows I've had my share as well. So the two of us commiserate together and try to offer advice on what can be done. 

The crazy part is... he was woken up at 2:15 in the morning last week, to what seemed like a horse neighing. He lives far from the country, so there's no way in hell that a horse is galloping down his street (in the hood) and having a go at waking up the neighbors. 

The Brockton Fair is demolished as of last year, I think, so gone are the days the carnival would be in town for the month.

As he recorded the sound to send to me, he wanted to see if I could figure it out. His email had a few expletives of question, and I responded back saying it has to be equine. 

Sure enough, we were both wrong. 

Last night, I received a message from him saying he researched the sound that has now woken him up several times. 

It was a screech owl. 

Apparently that's their thing. 

I haven't fact checked this, but according to Tay's research, screech owls can sound like horses under the right context. 

So what was my retort? 

Well... an owl in the treeline would make sense, given the whole mythology around them. 

They are supernaturally mystical in nature and oddly enough, would jive with recent events in Tay's life as of late. Plus, him telling me all this, coincides with the podcasts I've been listening to. 

I've been catching up on Ryan Sprague's Somewhere in the Skies podcast, and there was a conversation about owls. Again, there's a mythos behind owls and under normal circimustances, people relate them to the spooky season (Halloween), which also makes them part of the fantasy realm. How many science fiction moves or comics have you read where an owl is present? 

There's this whole sub genre of what owls really mean in context to when you're seeing them. 

Even while I was catching up on Season 10 of History Channel's Alone, one of the participants sees an owl and talks about it relating to their past. 

Something is happening, if all of a sudden this bird is showing up in places it wasn't before. I just can't fully explain everything, but I did tell Tay to think about it and do his own research into what it might mean for him. Maybe another episode or two of the stuff I'm listening to will talk more about this subject. 

It just goes to show you that you've got to be open about things and do your research. Read. Listen to conversations. Have conversations. Think outside the box. 

Until we can figure out how to get the owl somewhere safe... 

Stay cool, stay hydrated, hopefully the tropical storm coming will completely bypass us... 

Cheers;

Time to watch the weather...

 Not that it's never time to watch the weather, but now that we're in the middle of peak hurricane season, it's more prevalent of a time. 

The news and weather stations are currently watching a few different activities out in both the Gulf and the Atlantic. There's a tropical storm brewing to the left (Gulf) and a hurricane brewing to the right (Atlantic, "Franklin"). Both are decidedly equal right now in what they can do. 

The Gulf storm will create a tropical depression for Southwest Florida - lots of heavy rain (upwards of 8 inches or more), heavy wind, and do some havoc on the area still trying to rebuild from Ian. Once it moves closer to the panhandle / "big bend" area, it'll be a category 1 hurricane for northern Florida before going east and up the coast as a tropical storm. 

The Atlantic storm is currently a category 1 and will be a 2 before fizzing out in the ocean. It's far enough away right now from the coast, that it will give the eastern seaboard some smallishly rough weather but will remain too far away to do something drastic. 

At least that's all the news as of this morning. The Gulf storm is being watched (it didn't have a name this morning besides the "Invest" stuff) and could be trouble by Tuesday and Wednesday for me. By midday Wednesday it'll travel up the state and more more of an issue. 

Time will tell over the next few days to see how things are going to turn out. I wanted to do a quick update for right now, with the limited information I have, in case I will all of a sudden post "we got a very bad storm!!!!!!!!" pictures next week. At least there's been notice. 

Now it's time to make the donuts... 

Cheers;

See Also

* Dunkin Donut's Coffee (the donut reference)

* Ryan Sprague's podcast and two books if you're going to "keep your feet on the ground and eyes to the sky"

Slimmed down from 1030 photos

 ... and upload 90. 

I can't slim down further even though I need to. 

My mother and I took another local Floridian adventure this morning. 

Lee County Board of Commissioners have been gracious enough to not charge people the price of admission to go over the toll to Sanibel and Captiva, every Sunday from August 6, 2023 to September 10, 2023, in order to "Savor the Shores"; a campaign to help get the area back on its feet and a little spending money in local business pockets. 

It seemed like a slow roll today, as when we got on the Causeway and into Sanibel. There weren't a lot of cars around until we headed for the Lighthouse. We decided to make that our first stop, so once we got to that beach and I took pictures... I solemnly swear I didn't make friends today like I did at Bunche Beach. I made it my mission to get to the actual Lighthouse and get back to the car... which I was eventful in doing. My problem was, my camera went a little wonky the second I got on the sand. It was a battery issue, I think, because I had to pop the battery out and pop it back in. When I was finished, I got back in the car (full of sand fly bites. Big mistake not to have worn spray or something), my mother told me she heard someone recently say that this is the first time the lighthouse has been lit in a while. I don't know about that, as aren't lighthouses meant to shine in the night? Maybe it's the first time since the hurricane that the light works. I don't know I haven't fact checked that. 

Anyway, we made our way through the rest of Periwinkle Way and into Captiva, where more cars seemed to follow us in that direction. It wasn't a parade of any type or sort, but when we landed (parked) at the Mucky Duck for lunch, that was the one place we noticed getting busy. 

The restaurant opened at 11:30 and I'm told under normal circumstances, you're super lucky if you can get in at any time of the business day. It's always a packed house and today was no exception. The place is like a hole in the wall, it's that tiny, so of course it'll get full real quick. As we waited in the 100° heat, the line was already snaking around the corner to get in. Once the lunch bell rang that they were open (yes a worker rang a bell), the restaurant was soon to be standing room only for a table. As my mom and I were able to sit and eat, we watched the wait staff hustle so quickly, that you'd think the building were on fire. By the time we left to finish exploring and go home, the line to wait for a table was back out the door and around the building. Inside and outside patio seats were so full, it was a wonder there was places to turn the car around to get out. It was amazing to see that many people support this place. Plenty business was generated today, and again, this was normal! 

We snaked back through the same way we came in, and let this be a reminder or a notice: some of these places (Sanibel, Captiva, Fort Myers Beach, Pine Island / Matlacha, Naples to Marco Island) are one way in and the same bridge out. That's why they had big problems after Ian visited and destroyed everything. A two lane stretch of road that begins and ends on the same bridge and circles the entirety of the island / area, makes for not good times when you need to get out of dodge, quick. It brings new meaning to "The Long And Winding Road" because the road did disappear and is now being rebuilt. 

Which is why when I had to go to Marco everyday for a month and a half for work, I said to myself I would never live in a place where you rely on a single bridge to get to your city and home. It was the end of hurricane season when I was driving there, but it made me uneasy because it's a 65 minute drive to get there and a 65 minute drive to get home. Driving in the dark in an area with very little street lights and then going on a bridge is not the best when you're not used to it. It's creepy and very eerie. I'll take the 90 minute (train) commute to Boston (or just about any shitty traffic jam in the city) any day of the week, over having to drive on a single use strip of road. Thankyouverymuch. 

Anyway, there are parts of Sanibel and Captiva that are still looking third world country, but there are other places that are definitely getting rebuilt. There are scaffolding pieces on buildings, holes looking patched up, but it could have a house next to it that is missing an entire section of siding.  Parts of the million dollar houses look like they never got a blink of wind, yet, there are sprawling areas of mangroves / tree lines where they are so bent out of shape, you wonder if someone actually took a heat gun to it and started bending it. The unfortunate part of all of this is, some of the quaint little plaza shops are no more. The one off kitsch stores are still standing to an extent and trying to continue selling items even though they still have a blue tarp or plywood on a window. It seems that the bigger plazas were the ones that got hit the worst. Even though they are mom and pop stores, solely known to be one of Sanibel and Captiva's finest or coolest, the locals have very little places to visit right now because too many buildings are boarded up. 

Hence part of the reasoning behind the campaign to get people over to visit. Those places and restaurants that are open are the ones who can then potentially help the ones who need to start again. Although, there are some restaurants that have food truck ability, to they've had to slim down their menu and are working out of the truck at the moment, in order to get the locals fed and generate enough income to work on the building.  

All the photos I'm posting were taken with my Canon EOS Rebel T71 and I didn't do any editing to them. Because we stayed mainly in the car, I had on sports mode and ended up keeping the windows up while taking the photos. So some pictures have reflections in them and some look darkly weird. I didn't want to try to do any editing because there are just so many. Like I said, I tried to slim down from 1030 photos but ended up "liking" 90. 

There are some I shouldn't include and some I debated on including. Others didn't make it in the cut. But without much further ado, the pictures or this was all for naught:

I know some look the same. I wanted to get every angle of buildings as we were driving that I could. There were some I could have stitched together, but the way I was holding the camera and the way we drove by places, there was no way I could, as the slight shift in movement caused the angle to change too much. Otherwise I would have gotten quite a few panoramic pictures of some of the places we passed. 

All in all, I guess it was a good day. We got to see what people were talking about (those who have made it over by paying) and we helped the economy just a tinge by eating at a restaurant. We could have stopped at some of the stores that were open, but where they're probably gearing up for the tourist trap - everything would be extremely overpriced. 

As it is, my mom and I were talking about there not being a proper grocery store on the island. There are two super local places the natives can shop at: Jerry's and Bailey's. Unfortunately, Bailey's is compeltely torn down at the moment and getting ready to be rebuilt. So part of the conversation was... that your basic items are probably so inflated, that you are forced to buy it or travel off the island even though it's already probably so expensive to purchase items as it is (normally). There is no [enter regional name brand grocery store here] anywhere in Sanibel and Captiva. Sure, with the million dollar homes and expensive vacation rentals, people can afford to pay out the nose for their items, but that mindset is getting to be everywhere else too. We all just choose to ignore it until we go to these tiny communities and can't use coupons. Good on the local businesses though, for keeping people thriving while they rise out of the ashes from the storm, but how come some big business hasn't come in and at least offered to build a supermarket yet? Why don't they want it? Is it to keep the riff raffs off the island? It could give the teenagers or retirees living there some work though... -shrugs-.

That's about it for now. It was nice to take the ride and see the cleanup. Now I can tell people I was there and once things get a little back to normal, I'd probably venture out there again and try one of the beaches or another restaurant. I just need to remember to take earth friendly repellant with me if I attempt the walk at the ocean again. 

Cheers;

By the way, have you checked my side links yet? Ko-Fi page, Yelp, Pinterest, etc? If not, nip them out, and if you like what you've been reading, definitely stop by my Ko-Fi page (because, as they say in the podcast realm: "Podcasts aren't cheap", so someone has to keep the lights on. I need to keep my camera charged to go out like this).

See also:

* The Beatles The Long and Winding Road, (track 10), Let It Be

* Canon EOS Rebel T7i EF-S 18-55. It's renewed on Amazon because it's an old model already. 

* Canon EF 75-300mm f/4-5.6 III Telephoto Zoom Lens for Canon SLR Cameras. Another renewed item as it's an old model