Summer Time!

Wow, June 1st already. The year is really flying by. Feels like it was just yesterday when I was stranded outside the Mezz at 4am on New Year's Eve. Now summer is here and, as usual, it is absolutely God awful hot outside. This year is a little unique in the fact that, here in Houston, we have had almost zero rain. April and May are generally the months where we get the giant storms of the century that knock power out and prevent me from playing xbox and blogging. Summer time also means the return of the dreaded hurricane season. I only say dreaded because you would absolutely not believe the hype it gets in the media around here when the season starts. Every year it is the same "how to be prepared for the apocalyptic storm that is surely going to kill everything and everyone that you have ever loved ever." Is it too much to ask the media to spin up the wheels on the fear machine only when there is a reasonable likelihood of being hit by one of these storms? Yes? *sigh*.

And, of course, there is the annual report out of Colorado State University (who, by the way, has never been hit by a hurricane) who predicts, every year, that the upcoming season will be the most horrifying and intense season that dwarfs even the most terrifying nightmares that mankind has ever had. This news, without fail, always drives up the prices of gas at the pump due to the speculation that some oil refineries might be knocked offline for a few days because of a storm. What a beautiful twisted system we have.

It is kind of funny that today, the first day of hurricane season, there happens to be a "disturbance" in the area of the Atlantic Ocean near Florida which means that news stations across the country have coverage similar to this:



Then, after a few months of little to no activity usually around August, the Colorado State people will inevitably revise their outlook downward for the current hurricane season and the news stations will be all like:



Must be nice to be able to make predictions year after year that end up having to be "revised" and still have people hanging on your every word because you were right "that one time."

At any rate, I generally enjoy Hurricane season for what it is. Sure, they can be devastating storms that cause tremendous amounts of loss of property and life, but at the same time I can't help but look at them in awe for what they are. So, with that in mind, here are a couple links to keep you apprised of the 2011 Hurricane Season. None of these links have scare coverage or anything like that, just raw information, which is great if you just want to know some information about a particular hurricane. So before you panic when a hurricane does form, crack open a beer first and check out some of these links before you start looting and pillaging your neighborhood. Enjoy!

National Hurricane Center: The National Weather Service page about both the Atlantic and Pacific active hurricanes.

TropicWX: A no frills weather map site with satellite, radar, infrared ocean temps, time-lapse animations and much more.

StormPulse: Great hurricane tracking site that shows the possible future path of a hurricane based on several different models.

Weekend at the beach

Well it was another exhausting weekend. Still pretty sleep deprived from the trip to New Orleans, I very reluctantly decided to go out for happy hour in midtown on Friday with promises from everyone involved that it would not turn into "one of those nights". And since "those nights" are pretty much the norm when hanging out with the folks that I do, I was skeptical to say the least. My fears were realized early on when the shots of patron started flowing only 15 minutes in. I made my friend, who shall remain nameless, promise me that we would leave no later than 10:00 since we had a big day at the beach planned for Saturday. Needless to say, that didnt happen and I finally got home around midnight.

I got up around 10 and started getting ready to go to the beach for the 23rd Annual AIA Sandcastle Competition. Learning my lesson from last year, I purchased some uber powerful SPF50 sun tan lotion to protect me from once again getting the worst sunburn of my life. This stuff was so powerful that Im pretty sure it gave the sun a mike burn. Anyway, after arriving in Galveston, I had to wait in line for nearly an hour to park. The crew that was working the lot were a bunch of yahoos, who wouldnt know a parking lot from a popsicle.

So I finally get out there with the sun blazing in all its glory. In case you are interested, here is how this thing works: each team has to build a sandcastle concoction of some type and then they are judged in several categories. One of the categories, apparently, is getting lots of people to come sign your sheet in a rudimentary election type thing. We used this to our advantage by soliciting bribes from the teams in exchange for our votes. In all, we probably got a few beers and several jello shots each for our efforts. I really got a sense of how awesome it must really be to be a politician.

Our teams theme was something to the effect of The Economy is in the Crapper. The idea was to have a conveyor belt of money bags being dropped into a toilet. The idea was brilliant, but the execution left a bit to be desired and we won no awards. Most of us were only there for the free beer and food anyway so we didnt particularly care. Some of the teams out there really did a spectacular job with their designs and I was genuinely amazed at some of them. If I can find a link to some of the pictures I will post them up here.

At some point during the day, people convinced me to go out into the ocean. Yes, the real ocean with all the sharks, jellyfish, undertow currents and vicious bacteria. I had to be gently coaxed out there but eventually just accepted the fact that I would probably be eaten alive.

At the end of the day, it was time to clean up our site. We had this kind of canopy that someone brought that needed to be taken down. Now there were 5 or 6 of us involved in this undertaking. All of us educated, relatively smart people and 2 of whom were engineers. I kid you not that it took the better part of half an hour to figure out how to fold the damn thing up. Defeated, I left for home before the task was completed. I later learned that it took a bit longer to discover a couple of latches that were holding the whole thing together. I am just going to chalk that one up to being in the sun too long.

All in all it was a blast and would really recommend everyone coming out next year. The SPF50 sunscreen was a life saver and I appear to only have been sunburned around my eyes where I didnt put lotion on because I assumed the hat I was wearing would be sufficient. Looking forward to next weekend where I have exactly nothing planned. Sitting on my ass will be a welcome change of pace.

Quote of the day on Saturday: "You'd be able to eat that watermelon a lot quicker if you took your shirt off." - One of my friends