"Letters to Miss Emily..."

[backhoe]

We've been experiencing a lot of leaks at the store. There are tubs all over the place with safety cones out. It may well be the largest retail outlet in town in terms of size and I try to imagine how it could possibly withstand the kind of weather you can see there. I gather the entire roof would just peel open. It's got to be a couple hundred thousand sq ft and it's not standing up well to occasional light rain. I also have to wonder how it would stand up to really heavy snow - the kind we used to get here.

It makes you wonder if the designers ever researched where their buildings were going to be built. The Walgreen's at the foot of the causeway is one of the most recent commercial buildings around here.

Built on a berm to get it above flooding, brick & masonry & structural steel. Got a flat roof. Every time it rains, out come the buckets...

[RedDog]

Note the parking garage roof that collapsed into a shopping mall in Ontario on the weekend. Somebody messed up on their mechanical design calculations. Not good. At least one dead. Others missing in the rubble. It would appear it could have been a damn site worse.

Southgate Centre in Edmonton has a partial design like that where a raised parking level is above a large portion of the mall below. If that baby gave way there would be hundreds dead. There has to be 500 cars parked in that one section.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/201 ... -work.html

[backhoe]

Note the parking garage roof that collapsed into a shopping mall in Ontario on the weekend. Somebody messed up on their mechanical design calculations. Not good. At least one dead. Others missing in the rubble. It would appear it could have been a damn site worse.

Southgate Centre in Edmonton has a partial design like that where a raised parking level is above a large portion of the mall below. If that baby gave way there would be hundreds dead. There has to be 500 cars parked in that one section.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/201 ... -work.html

From the comments:

This place was definitely in need of repairs. Any time it rained there were buckets all over the place.

If water was getting inside given enough time you would have structural damage- steel corrodes and when it does it swells- weakening the concrete around it.

Being just a dumb old Island Boy it seems to me that parking vehicles weighing tons and filled with flammable liquids over people's heads is a damn fool idea to start with.

[RedDog]

By the way, no hints last night on mystery girl. Some usual suspects around but no outward advances. One who had been away camping in the high country appeared in hiking gear when not working to gab at 9 at night for a couple minutes. I took note of that. The plot thickens.

GPS coordinate midnight message girl and I left together after close later and yapped in the parking lot a bit but no emergency doctor call messages thereafter.

[backhoe]

By the way, no hints last night on mystery girl. Some usual suspects around but no outward advances. One who had been away camping in the high country appeared in hiking gear when not working to gab at 9 at night. I took note of that. The plot thickens.

GPS coordinate midnight message girl and I left together and yapped in the parking lot a bit but no emergency doctor call messages later.

Nice & easy does it... patience...

When I was a young man courting the girls
I played me a waiting game
If a maid refused me with tossing curls
I'd let the old Earth make a couple of whirls
While I plied her with tears in lieu of pearls
And as time came around she came my way
As time came around, she came

In other news the Moronosphere has a Debby Does Us post up- if cussing & irreverent attitudes offend you, don't read it...http://minx.cc/?post=330407

Tropical Storm Debby (tmi3rd)

Good evening, Morons and Moronettes. I'm tmi3rd, and tonight, we take a moment to try to make some sense of the very uncooperative Tropical Storm Debby. Thanks to Maetenloch for letting me jump in so soon after posting the ONT. Thanks, bro.

As of 7 PM CDT, Tropical Storm Debby was nearly stationary about 115 miles south-southwest of Apalachicola, FL, or 195 miles east-southeast of the mouth of the Mississippi River. Top sustained winds are 60 miles per hour, and the minimum central pressure was 990 millibars, or 29.23 inches. A Tropical Storm Warning is in effect from the Mississippi/Alabama border east to the Suwanee River in Florida. A Tornado Watch is in effect over the majority of the west coast of the Florida peninsula

Discussion below the fold...

[backhoe]

Free Republic has a post up on Debby:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2898741/posts

[RedDog]

Looks like a northerly turn inland now. Pensacola/Panama City look like good places to be on guard.

[backhoe]

Looks like a northerly turn inland now. Pensacola/Panama City look like good places to be on guard.

We'll be getting tons of rain- and the porch roof is leaking again where Emily's sewing room was built on top of it. I may just let the damned thing leak- the roof is pitched at a 45 degree angle and there's concrete about 15 feet below it. Not a good place to fall...

[backhoe]

Jake's chair

Somehow the discussion about a "new little laptop" at my favorite banned of Grouches degenerated into Jake's Adirondack Chairs...http://www.grouchyconservativepundits.org/index.php?topic=46784.msg361699#msg361699



For something "free on the interwebs" it was a SOB finding a downloadable, printable set of files.
Then, since my wireless printer no longer works wirelessly I had to unzip the thing to a thumb drive and get it to the kitchen PC where the printer is USB'd to it.

As the song goes "there is always something there to remind me... as I was printing the plans the Lexmark software shoots up its ink reminder flag... and checked there is the box Emily had checked over 2 years ago to order cartridges over the web like she always did. I have printed that little, she burned through ink like crazy with all her EFM, Cursillo, and Diocesan stuff. Oh, how the ghost of you clings, these foolish things...

My Dad built a whole set of Adirondack chairs and a sofa back in the forties for our old house- I am flabbergasted how much lumber for a single chair requires- 32 feet of one-foot planks.

I wouldn't mind building one for me to use on the porch but that gives me pause- not just the cost of so much pressure-treated wood, but getting it here- he recommends 14 foot lengths. Can't do that with my truck- eight feet is pushing its capacity.

Maybe I'll just make do with what I have already.

Debby seems determined to make a nuisance of herself well into the week:



“Oh, bother!” said Winnie Ther Poo as he paused to reload...

-30-

[backhoe]

When I went shopping earlier at Walgreen's Nancy there, who's young & bubbly & tattooed asked my name so I introduced myself- geez, I'm becoming a social lion in my old age. I guess having nothing left to lose helps that a lot...

Since I have actual money in my pocket ( All thanks to MaryAnn... ) I ordered a takeout from Cilantros- I haven't done that in ages. Cole is shedding so copiously that I hesitate taking him with me now- Lord knows what it's doing to the AC- but I decided to take him along since he loves r-i-d-i-n-g so much. We got a #11 combo plate and ate it on the porch with some rice I had fixed earlier- it should be good for several more meals.

The rain & winds cleared earlier into a gray overcast so the forecasted 95 degree temps didn't materialize and it's actually kind of nice in the bay window.

I have a stack of bills to pay tomorrow- but I'm grateful I can pay them. It's hard to believe the 25th is here already- time's flying and while most everything is a lot better “fun” is not quite how I would describe it. But life is pretty good.

The garbage can is out and for the pure snarkiness of it I put that “Obama isn't working” bumper sticker on it- maybe that's what I ought to name my wireless network...

-30-

[RedDog]

We had Adirondack chairs at our cottage which my father made. He also made a couple double chairs with an attached table in between for a drink, a book, etc.To this day anywhere, I continue to be amazed how comfortable they are for wood. The basic design in the beginning has evidently nailed correctly.

[backhoe]

We had Adirondack chairs at our cottage which my father made. He also made a couple double chairs with an attached table in between for a drink, a book, etc.To this day anywhere, I continue to be amazed how comfortable they are for wood. The basic design in the beginning has evidently nailed correctly.

If I heard MaryAnn right one or more of those old chairs Dad built remain in that empty lot next door to her. I'm trying to work out if I could rip pressure treated 2' X 4' panels into one foot planks- but it's probably too dern much trouble for a chair.

[backhoe]

With a hattip to Ed the WXman at The Banned O' Bros...http://www.grouchyconservativepundits.org/index.php?topic=46354.msg361930;topicseen#msg361930

Debby Does Us...

[RedDog]

So it came your way after all. Wow.

[backhoe]

So it came your way after all. Wow.

Well, except for one shot of lightning that caused my pansy dog to land on my pillows it's just been wind and rain...

I've been doing "thrill a minute" bachelor things like washing & bleaching and re-sorting my underwear... finding a new drawer to hide the Shark hand vacuum in that was one of the few pitiful things Emily brought home from 9 years at Honey Creek- they didn't even give her a gold watch I could hock at the pawn shop...

You take care of yourself.

Edit- let's take another look at Debby- sometime I'll have to tell you all a little more about the real Debby I knew- Helen's BFF with the rubber jugs- and how I avoided being snared by her. She wasn't "one of the good ones..."