About to get real

    So the city has asked us to restrict water usage (like don't flush toilets or do laundry) because the water supply is down to one day. I personally have near limitless faith in the National Guard and think they're going to succeed at getting the breach in Columbia Canal repaired in time, but I admit and I'm certain that they would agree that it is an element of time pressure that they didn't need. So hi, I live in Columbia, South Carolina, and we may be one day away from The Lord of the Flies. Hello, Augusta!
    All this is even more surreal than yesterday, because otherwise things are going, not fine, but as fine as they could be under the circumstances. The latest dam which was going to fail "not if, but when," didn't fail. I hope they track down the guy who keeps saying "not if, but when" and fire him. What we really need around here is more stuff to panic about. But the weather is again crazy stupid beautiful perfect, so the prospect of the end of civilization within 24 hours is difficult to get one's head around.
    Meanwhile, I got a replacement set of Keen boots, as my old ones had worn out (and one lace popped, but the tread was gone anyway) and a Wes Montgomery/Jimmy Smith CD. The former are working out great; the latter is an insane disappointment since there's so much orchestra that you often can't hear Wes or Jimmy. Even more overproduced than Wes' later top-selling but awful "with strings" records. (Kind of hard to play guitar without them, isn't is?)

Normality becomes surreal

    Everything is the same as yesterday except that the rain has stopped and the sun is out. Oh, and roads are open in Lexington County. So I crossed the river and hit Aldi, Publix, and a health food store and everything was weirdly normal. Yesterday, late yesterday, people were posting pictures on Facebook of stripped shelves at Publix in town. Today, it's like nothing happened at all. This in spite of the fact that Lexington (the town more than the county) was also hard hit. The Old Mill lake's dam broke. The Old Mill, which became a shopping and entertainment complex, was flooded and partly destroyed. The best used bookstore in this area (or certainly the most extensive) is presumably ruined. So kudos to the other retailers of Lexington County. It's weird that everything is so normal but I'm certainly grateful.
    The interesting part of shopping is trying to figure out how to live without trustworthy water. I usually have a simple approach to gluten free living: meat, beans, steamed vegetables, plus rice, potatoes or noodles. Unfortunately, only the first of those is doable without trustworthy water. So I was finding canned vegetables and beans with as little added salt as possible (trickier than you'd think) and frozen meals that are gluten-free, dairy-free and soy-free (about as tricky as you would think). I finally decided that the wise move for rice would be to make a sort of risotto, plumping the rice using low-sodium boxed broth. But what delighted me most about the normality mentioned above was, well, if this doesn't work, I go back and try something else. It's nice living in a country with bounteous supermarkets.

Note: I'm fine

    Living here between the creek and the river, an area where when I moved here was regularly subject to flooded streets, it's funny (emphatically funny peculiar, not haha) that I'm almost untouched. We are under a boil water order, but my water is at least clear and not malodorous. (I'm boiling it, though, believe me.) Friends have the ugly, stinky water, or none at all, so I'm ridiculously lucky. Nor did I ever lose power. This is an unbelievable disaster, however. One good friend lost his house; since dams are still failing, we haven't been able to enter cleanup phase yet. Still, a day or two and we should have a better idea what the situation is. When the Red Cross asks for help for us, give generously, but you don't need to worry about me.
    My longtime favorite park, Canal Park for short or Columbia Riverfront Park and Historic Columbia Canal, has washed away. The canal breached and is gone. This is not just a recreation issue, as the Columbia Water Treatment Plant is there, and many high tension power lines also cross(ed) the park. I'm amazed that I still have water and power. Obviously, this will not necessarily continue to be the case.
    Wrenching the topic wildly away from reality to dreamland, I had a wackily photorealistic dream last night, where I was at my brother's house, offering him my synthesizer and organ like I'm thinking of doing in real life (since he's had piano instruction and I haven't). And he said "(A female name) can't be around those." Apparently, he and his girlfriend 40 years ago had a baby and she's still a baby. Pretty weird even by dream standards, I thought, particularly as everything was 100% real up to that point.

Not that funny anymore

    Yeah, the flood did in fact arrive. Overnight was very bad, all morning has been even worse. There has been flooding all over town and we're probably doing much better than the state at large. Water rescues all over town and apparently in the majority of the 46 counties. There was also flooding in my neighborhood but not on my street that I know of. Anyway it's peaceful at this address. Forecasters think that we only have a few more hours of this. Waters on the rivers will keep rising but flooded streets should recede almost immediately (KNOCK ON WOOD). Fortunately this is not New Orleans or even Charleston; plenty of scope for water to go downhill. No deaths that I've heard of so there's that.

Thank you, sleep paralysis!

    I was having a very run of the mill dream, in the sense that it involved a mysteriously huge college campus apparently designed by M.C.Escher working closely with Rube Goldberg. This time, it was ostensibly the University of South Carolina, or some random other college where the student union is also called the Russell House. This time, though, the Russell House was maybe ten stories high, and Rube and M.C. made it very hard to reach. I was climbing up and down untold numbers of brick stairs without getting any closer, then there was some sort of dealio with an escalator, from which I had to slide down for some reason onto some kind of extendable seat from which I would have to jump. And I was trying, trying, trying to slide down and couldn't understand why I couldn't, since it didn't seem like anything I would actually be afraid of. Eventually, the internal contradictions of the dream just woke me up, and I was SO relieved I hadn't succeeded at sliding off of anything. It was also a relief when I woke up that I wasn't particularly close to the edge of anything.
    Earlier, I dreamed of cats very like my own, though I think I switched around the coloring. I made the tabby into the huge one. He or she destroyed some article of cat furniture by climbing on it. In real life, while Amelia the calico is fairly huge, she hasn't actually destroyed anything except for sweaters, and those by claw rather than heft.
    The storm has been very serious in parts of South Carolina, but hasn't been much of a problem here. I haven't checked whether the banana crisis has continued, but things are so zen I just might. (No, seriously, I need something else; I wouldn't really go out just to look at the banana selection. I don't think.)
    In icky news, it is not squirrels that Harry is killing (he's up to two in two or three days and three overall) but the neighbor's rabbits. I'm sad at the thought that they might be pets and wish I could do something, but I can't keep him in and I've already put a bell on him. Cow bell maybe?

Apocalypse later

    So the rains are still coming, but so far it's just been variations of the same mist we've had nearly constantly for a week or more. Is heavy mist even possible? If it is, that's what we're getting. However, we are assured that in mere hours we will undergo the beginning of an historic rainfall event (forgot the "fall" part before), which I'm totally not going to make fun of because a) rain is way easier to forecast than is snow and b) like I said, I can always make fun of it later if it turns out wrong.
    I was childishly amused by the odd things that were sold out at Publix. Mind you I'm not much for checking the bread or milk sections; presumably they were all gone or low. But bananas? Frozen okra? Dammit, in a weather crisis, you have to have priorities! (That said, I did buy the last two loose bananas, which I probably wouldn't have done without the herd instinct promptings.)
    So bye everybody! It's been fun! Sorry that it's over! Really wish I'd bought that inflatable kayak! Wonder if the Amazon distribution center has any? Maybe I should ask. I could go into the gondola business!

Apocalypse and how!

    There's major instability coming from the Gulf and Hurricane Joaquin coming from the Atlantic, so we're hearing forecasts of a (or an) historic rain event. A week from now, I hope to point out that we have had many such forecasts and they never seem to happen, but for the moment, I'm not doing anything to piss Ma Nature off. Jim Cantore is in Charleston; this is quite worrying enough. If I owned a business with a marquee sign, I'd put up, "We love Jim Cantore! But welcome? No I don't think so."
    The toy organ fits on my breakfast tray (just don't ask why I have a breakfast tray), so I may be able to interest the cats in it, I mean before the power goes out and the house washes away. Anyway, I'll look pretty funny sitting on the floor like Schroeder playing my little keyboard. It is so easy to amuse me.