Tornado Watch

An unusually powerful, fast-moving autumn storm set off the tornado sirens again here around lunchtime. The most intense cell, complete with rotating clouds that sometimes spawn tornadoes, came right over our neighborhood. But the storms here are so concentrated, and they are tracked so closely by radar on TV and the Internet, that you can stay pretty well informed about their progress.

Five minutes before it was scheduled to hit, I saw an ominous gray wall in the sky approaching from the southwest. The wind picked up; the TV satellite feed went out. It got progressively darker outside, as if the sun was setting. Me and the dogs took to the basement with a flashlight and cell phone. Torrential rains came; then the power went out. It flickered back to life a few minutes later. Gus was a little spooked; Violet just played happily through the whole thing. Ten minutes after heading to the basement, we came back up to find the wind had died, but sheets of rain were still sweeping across the yard.

We need the rain. It’s been very dry here for weeks. Just wish it could come in a little gentler form.

What We Did on Our Vacation

Back from our first real vay-kay in more than a year. Mrs. SR013 and I took a week to visit the Virginia countryside and Washington, D.C. The drive over the Appalachians to West Virginia, Maryland and Virginia took us through mostly rural southern Ohio, and fall colors made the landscape a tapestry in orange, red, yellow and brown everywhere we looked. We were pleasantly surprised tasting wine from wineries in Virginia’s budding but already sizable wine industry; were humbled while tramping across a civil-war battlefield; ate soft-shell crabs in D.C.; visited many excellent museums; toured the White House; walked the national mall; and on the trip home, even visited Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater country house in southwestern Pennsylvania. Among the restaurants we tried in D.C. were Art Smith’s Art and Soul, and Jose Andres’ Jaleo (a contemporary tapas bar). Both were first-rate.

Now it’s time to lose weight and buckle down for work!

The Brothers Snard

I got a chance to tell the Geabbrey Snard story when Mrs. SR013 and I were invited out to dinner last weekend. Truth is, I always look for openings to tell the Geabbrey Snard story, but this time, somehow, it was easily worked into the flow of the conversation.

You may recall the story’s details: how some years ago, a young solicitor appeared at the front door of my brother, Geoffrey Smith, and asked him to contribute money to some cause. Geoffrey declined, but agreed to put his name on a list for future contact. However, the solicitor made a crucial mistake in asking my brother to write his name and address info himself on some form. My brother doesn’t have the greatest handwriting in the world…

So, a few months later, he started receiving junk mail addressed not to Geoffrey Smith, but to Geabbrey Snard. These particular form letters used the addressee’s last name repeatedly throughout the text in an effort to personalize the message, as in, “We know you are concerned about this issue, Mr. Snard…”

You have to give the young solicitor kudos for being able to decipher the double consonants in my brother’s first name, although with “Geabbrey,” he clearly mistook “f’s” for “b’s.” On the other hand, it’s easy to imagine the kid pondering the last name for several long moments, and finally giving up altogether, coming to the conclusion that “Snard,” however unlikely a last name, was perhaps close to what my brother had written on the form. There was a certain amount of optimism in that conclusion, and in the end, it wasn’t well placed.

In the course of the dinner conversation last weekend, I had to admit that this unfortunate turn of events in some ways makes me a Snard by extension — after all, I am Geoffrey’s brother. Someone suggested that we two should be known as the brothers Snard, of the Anchorage Snards, and I had to agree with that, too. If my brother and I ever go into business together (perish the thought), The Brothers Snard would surely have to be the main name of the business, whatever it might be. As in:

The Brothers Snard — Fine Home Furnishings for the Distinguished Executive

or

The Brothers Snard — Discount Car Wash

etc. etc.

Raccoons

There’s good news to report: the raccoon population here on the edge of Cincinnati, where the city gives way to farmland, is extremely robust. The bad news is that I am certain of this because of all the dead raccoons I’ve seen recently lying on streets and highways after they’ve been slammed by cars.

Today in a 30-minute, one-way drive, mostly on the freeway, I saw 15 dead raccoons. I’m sure the other side of the freeway had an equal amount.

Raccoons can be nasty — nastier than cats. Many locals consider them big-time pests. But they’re smart, native predators and have an important role in the ecosystem. Perhaps Ohio should consider changing its nickname from “The Buckeye State” to “Ohio — Our Dead Raccoons Are Bigger Than Yours.” Alternately, local governments might consider taking some of the tax dollars they pour into law-enforcement speed traps, and put some money instead into dead-animal pickup.

Keyword: Brittany

Violet Downloading New Software

We’re often impressed by how smart our new dog Violet is. For instance, as you can see here, she has picked up the operating system of the Mac quickly, even though she was originally trained on a PC as a puppy.