Suguay Productions

I love bookstores. I love libraries. I love them both because they have books with so much information and interesting stuff and possibilities. The additional cool thing about libraries is that you can borrow the book to read usually for free. The cool thing about bookstores is that you can own the book and then it doesn’t matter how long it takes you to read it.

I spend a lot of money in bookstores. For that matter so do my parents. My sister I think spends a lot of time at the library. She had two kids. It’s easier and less expensive to go to a library than to a bookstore.

It’s interesting, as a kid I remember spending

a lot of time in libraries. We went regularly to the city library. We went for movie night and we went just because it was the night to go to the library. I remember checking out books to read. I read short stories. I liked the mythology type stories and Encyclopedia Brown. I read most of those. I even read a large number of Nancy Drew.

 When I was a kid my parents went to college in the evening. Instead of leaving us at home with a sitter they took us a long and we spent their class time in the library. I’m certain I read books there, or at least looked through them. I think we usually took our own books and homework.

For as much time as I remember spending in the library as a kid, I don’t remember much time spent in bookstores. I’m not sure we had the type of mega-bookstores then that we have now. I don’t remember the first book I purchased. I remember buying books at garage sales. I had cheap paperbacks from the Pick-n-Save. I even remember going to used bookstores.

When I was a teenager we had a friend that owned a bookstore and then she was closing or selling and in all that we ended up with a lot of books. At that point is when I really remember my family’s collection of books starting to grow. It’s gotten worse. We’ve all moved since then. My parents, well, my father mitigates his collection by periodically culling and taking them to a paperback book exchange and then getting more there. My mother, periodically goes through what she has and gets rid of stuff. My sister and I get the phone call from my mother that is…”I’m getting rid of…Do you want it? If not it’s going out the door.” Sometimes it’s something I want sometimes it’s something my sister wants. A lot of times it’s something we neither one want.

If I want to read sci-fi, I can pretty much go and browse my father’s shelves for something interesting to read. I’ve read a lot of them though. If I want pot-luck, well mother’s good for that.

My collection continues to grow. I have sci-fi and a lot of computer books, there’s some physics mixed in there and stuff on ancient civilizations. Not a lot of what my boss at work calls pleasure reading. Then again, I find reading physics, and Shakespeare, computer books and such pleasurable. I check my bubblegum reading out from the library. I’ve read almost all of the ‘Cat Who…’ series. I like it. I can sit down and read one in an afternoon.

I just got back from the bookstore today. I walked out with 7 books. And I need one more, they just didn’t have it. In the past week to two weeks I’ve purchased 10 books. I still have a few to read from previous purchases.

I don’t have room on my bookshelves right now to add books. I’ve even got some shelve stacked double. I’m going to have to get another bookshelf soon. I was contemplating this problem recently, trying to figure out where I’m going to put it. I finally decided it can go in front of the bathroom. There’s a wall there facing the door. It should be perfect. It’s also right next to the office so it’s still easy access.

Books are such great things. They teach you stuff, they take you places, they sometimes just entertain. You can read about so many things.

 

Originally published at: suguayproductions.com/joomla which has been discontinued.

Here’s a little update on Fay, the tropical storm.

After she crossed the peninsula of Florida at about her mid section cutting the state in half from south west to north east, she got just off shore and sat

for hours and didn’t move. It must have been more than 12 hours she sat there. When she finally started moving it was at 2 miles an hour. Ugh! She moved for about 2 hours and STOPPED! again. At that point I was thinking that someone should get out and give her a push.

The reason it was so important to get this storm going had to do with her direction. After she crossed the state once, she decided she was going to come back across. Yeah. She went north of where she had been though not by much which meant those of us that got rain and wind with the first pass got it again as she went back across. The trip back seemed worse too.

So she finally picked up speed and little more and got far enough away that my area is seeing some sunshine and the winds have died down. The catch to this all is that it is Florida and it is August all that water has brought plenty of steam to go with our sea breezes and we still have these massive afternoon thunder storms. It may be a while before we dry out.

I guess the up side to it is that I think it took care of our drought situation. Not that we needed that resolved all at once. Then again, be careful what you ask for. Sometime Mother Nature is inclined to give it to you.

Cheers

Originally published at: suguayproductions.com/joomla which has been discontinued.

Yes today I would like to discuss the joys of weather events. Let’s face it I’m being sarcastic. I live in the subtropics, we are subject to tornadoes, hurricanes, heat waves, straight line winds, and the occasional cold front.

I spent just enough time during my impressionable years living in

tornado alley in the United States. I remember being told to grab the bag and get in the car, find Mom’s keys and ask later and off we would go to the basement of the school. I think it was the middle school, it could have been a high school. I remember maps of the states with the counties marked out so I would know where the warnings and watches were and if they were going to be close by. I remembers standing on the front porch watching the weather roll in. Later when for some reason I moved back to the area after living with earthquakes, I remember standing at the end of the driveway and looking out on the horizon at not one, or two, but three funnels coming down out of the sky and yet back behind me there was hardly a cloud. I don’t really like tornadoes.

Because of this discomfort, dislike, and basic dread of tornadoes, I developed the ability, to wake up when it got just a bit odd outside. I couldn’t sleep. I would get up and go turn on the tv and see if there were weather notices. If someone else was up watching I could go back to bed and I would be fine. If I was the only one awake I would stay up. Usually, it wouldn’t be long before a parent or grandparent was up checking on things.

I’ve discussed this with my Grandfather in recent years. He’s never been able to sleep through those types of storms either. He’s lived most his life in tornado alley.

For a while I lived in Southern California. Tornadoes are rare there. Oddly enough though, my family was living there when they had one of those rare tornadoes up near L.A.. I don’t remember there being tornadoes in the Seattle area. That was a nice break. Then we moved to Florida. Hurricanes, Tornadoes, Alligators and Palmetto Bugs.

I was living in Florida when Andrew came through. I got chased out of the Keys by it. A friend and I had a trip planned and when we left the Central Florida area Andrew was projected to hit the east coast about even with where we were. Going south seemed like a good option. We went down on Friday and then went site seeing on Saturday. By the time we were heading back to our hotel it had changed course and they were evacuating us. We left. The adventure of evacuating the Keys is a whole other story.

It was years before I had to face another hurricane. It was Mitch. I was working at a theme park, it was going to be big and ugly when it got to us. Fortunately it changed direction at the last minute and stayed off shore. And so I blissfully wandered on through life until 2004.

That summer pretty much sealed it for me. I don’t like hurricanes, or strong tropical storms for that matter. I had really been through a hurricane, if you think about it. I was enthusiastic about it. Ok, I admit, it was kind of odd to be excited about a hurricane. Never again. June 1 only brings me dread, and many sleepless nights until December 1.

Yes, Charley was one for the history books. That think came a shore with a vengeance. It was also interesting in that it changed course right around the lunch hour. This hurricane that looked like it was going to miss us was suddenly coming right at us. Through a series of circumstances, I was still working at that theme park by the way, I ended up riding it out alone, well with my birds. I lived about 6 minutes from the airport, drive to pick up. I have heard that they clocked 110 mile and hour winds at the airport. I know what that’s like.

I got really lucky with Charley. The damage to the house was minimal, there was just the fence that was bad and the poor lime tree. Truthfully, I got really lucky that whole summer.

 And just a couple weeks later we turn around and have to face Francis. That one was moving so slow that it took 4 days to cross the state. Jigsaw puzzles are great things to have during those sort of times. We worked a couple. I didn’t have to ride this out alone fortunately. Though I do remember sitting working one of those puzzles and every time we would get a big gust I would think “make it stop!”. It was nerve racking.

So after Francis came Ivan. It didn’t hit our area as a hurricane. First it beat the devil out of the Cayman Islands then it hit the panhandle hard. Knocked out part of a highway bridge. Ivan ran up the west coast hit the panhandle went across the south and back out into the Atlantic and turned around and hit us again as a tropical storm. Now someone has a sick sense of humor if you ask me.

Ivan wasn’t the last one. We still had Jeanne to get through. She did some odd things. She came up the east coast and then sat out in the Atlantic just south east of the space coast and did loop-de-loops for a while before she decided to come ashore about where Francis did. At least she was fairly quick about it.

I will admit, after that, I found a dislike for wind. Even when we were living in Nevada for a short time. That wind would come down across the mountains and  blow into the valley and I would just cringe.

So now I’m back in Florida. My circumstances have changed quite a bit, and Mother Nature hasn’t. Fortunately we’ve got a great meteorologist at one of the tv stations and since he’s the one who first called Charley’s track, well, he’s my hero.

The years since then haven’t been entirely storm free in this area. There was Ophelia and Wilma to be dealt with. I don’t remember what year that was.

As I write this up, I sit and listen to the remnants of yet another storm. This one is Fay. She was just a tropical storm and yet, she’s done some odd things too. She actually got stronger while over land. Yep. They are already saying they will be studying this one a while in the off season. Not only that. She’s gone across the state from west to east and then she’s going to turn around and come back across again. The last picture I saw looked like it was going to be more north of us. Thankfully. I’ve had enough for this week.

We have this idea here that we’re supposed to get 2 weeks in between storms. One week for clean up and then a week to prep for the next one. I really hope I don’t have to prep for another one. While I’ve made it through this one much better than some of the other ones I am at my limit. I know others have been through much worse with these things. They have lost it all and sometimes more. We all have our achilles heal of a sort. For now the weather is mine. It’s not that I’m really afraid of it, it’s more that I have a more than healthy respect for what Mother Nature can do and I just don’t think it’s a good idea to mess with Mother Nature. She usually wins.

Originally published at: suguayproductions.com/joomla which has been discontinued.

I have been working on this site, mostly as a test site. I need someplace to play with all the options that some of the different programs offer. That’s why I got the site. I started doing some web stuff for some friends and relatives and they were wanting bigger things than just the html pages I was doing so I figured I’d better have some place to play and figure things out where I wouldn’t mess up there stuff.

That means I’ve got stuff loaded that

I don’t like and some stuff that I think might be good except I haven’t had enough time to test it and all that. I’ll get to it, sooner or later.

 I really like this app, Joomla!. I want to recommend it for a coupld of people. I realized though that if I didn’t really get in and try to use it and make it work then I wasn’t going to be able to help people with it. So I’ve set up some articles and now I’m going to try setting up some blogging. I hope to keep this going just for whatever. Like other bloggers do.

I hope you like the look. I found this template and really like it. The only thing about it is that it’s a 1.0 version so I had to set things to a legacy mode. Oh well. I really like the look of it.

 So this is the first general goofiness post just to get things started.

Cheers.

Originally published at: suguayproductions.com/joomla which has been discontinued.