litch

There's a palpable unease at work this afternoon, lots of Rita anxiety. Many of the people there haven't live here long, trolling the news sites they become alarmed. They cite dire predictions of "hurricane force winds" hitting us, and "possible flooding". Piffle and penobscott!

It's too damn early to know which way she's going to turn, and those dire predictions assume the worst path. Even slightly off and the potentials drop drastically. The only flooding will be localized flash flooding (unless it stalls out over us like a giant hen with ten billion eggs of rain), even that won't be too bad because we've had a wet summer and most of the waterways still have viable ground cover.

I'll be more confident in the morning when we get inside the 3 day forcast, but I doubt we'll see more than a bunch of rain (9-10") and some normal strong winds (40knts).

Cool, the city council voted to add an ammedment to their contract with walgreens (walgreens is the contracted pharmaceutical vendor for the city) requiring they fill perscriptions even if the pharmacist doesn't want to.

I'm glad I work in a city that is actually doing something about this outrageous crap the right to life pharmacists have been pulling.
http://news8austin.com/content/top_stories/default.asp?ArID=143579

Unfortunately at the same time they are ponying over 50 million in corporate welfare to get the new samsung plant. But it at least is a fit for our community.

Driving in to work this afternoon I saw a whirlwind on the side of southbound mopac, just north of braker. It was large, playing in the cut grass on the hill after the offramp. It was delightful to see it and I was struck with how pleasent summer in central Texas can be. The long baking heat, interspersed with enough wretched humidity that it doesn't get too dry for the grasses and hardy trees. Huge cloud structures, titanic dollops of whipped creme floating through pale blue skies. Walking from the underground niche of the parking garage into the building I found the second monarch I've seen this summer, it was fluttering around the door into the building.

Everything in summer seems to slow down here. I imagine it is in part a legacy of the fact austin was a college/part time government town for so many years. It is less so than it used to be but it still permeates the soul of the town.

There is a blue and white helicopter (looks like a bell jetranger) that's been making big counter clockwise circles over the mopac and braker area for what's seemed like hours. Anyone have any clues what is going on?


coworkers said it landed in the field over between mopac and the tracks met up with a buncha cop cars and then took off