The Week That Was

Remember when life just went along, and sometimes you would think to yourself that it was all just kind of boring, and how come nothing interesting or exciting ever happened?  

I learned a while ago that a lot of the time, boring is good.  Because at least in my case, "interesting" or "exciting" was not what I had been talking about.  I mean, if one day you are just living your life, and you find out that you won a million dollars somehow - that's exciting!  But when you are just living your life and then you find out that, say, you need to have a dental implant that costs thousands of dollars - well, OK, no one asks for THAT kind of intersting or exciting.

And this week was good example of that, both locally and globally, if you ask me.  I mean:

• pandemic continues and numbers go back up
• the U.S. troops leave Afghanistan
• Texas decides you can carry a gun with no license and no training, but you can't wear a mask to school and women cannot get legal abortions
• Hurricane Ida cuts a swath of destruction in Louisiana and Mississippi
• Ida's remnants come up the East Coast and there are TORNADOES in the Philadelphia area and New Jersey; New York City shuts down because of TOO MUCH WATER EVERYWHERE

And those are just the things that immediately come to mind!  As someone on Twitter commented the other day: "I think I would have rather had the plague of locusts."

Fortunately, The Tim and I and the critters are all fine, if just somewhat inconvenienced.  We got a little bit of water in our basement, but we get a little bit of water in our basement whenever it even thinks about raining, so no big deal.  No wind damage, no loss of power.  

However, west and north of us in the city - not so much.

You know the Schuylkill River Trail, which is 2 blocks west of our house, where we walk/ride bikes/walk the dog sometimes?  Here's how it looked yesterday:

Do you see on the right of the photo where there is what looks like pipes and something pointing to the sky along them?  Well, that's the trail, and those things pointing towards the sky are the lights on the trail!  

To quote The Tim: "Looks like we won't be riding our bikes there this weekend."

And then, this image, which many of you may have seen on the news.  This is the Vine Street Expressway, which cuts across the city from east to west, and is a major link.  But yesterday it was more like the Vine Street Canal:

And that is about 5 blocks north of our house and below but right in front of the building where I work!

My friend Lisa, who owns Hidden River Yarns in the Manayunk neighborhood of the city, couldn't get to her shop to see how things were, but her landlord informed her that the street level part of the store (aka ALL THE YARN) was dry, but the basement was flooded.  Phew!  

And my other friend Jocelyn who is the owner of O-Wool, lives on a farm nearby in New Jersey, and they lost a couple of trees in a tornado, but are otherwise safe (as is her yarn supply!) - but the house nearest to them, about a mile away, was completely destroyed.

And those two are some of the luckiest ones!

Can we all agree now that it would be absolutely wonderful to go back to boring now??? 😉

I hope wherever you are, reading this, that you are safe, well, and healthy.  And that if you are not, that help is on its way.  Take care everyone, and for those of us here in the U.S., have the best kind of Labor Day weekend that you can - however you can!