Windstorm!

[shannon_a]

Whew! It's been quite a day. The wind is out there just whipping all the trees around like no one's business, howling and blowing. That's been going on for hours. The power keeps blinking too, sometimes going out for a full minute or so. A bit ago a towel which had been pinned up on the lanai made a break for it thanks to the wind and I had to go outside to rescue it. I was blown about just in the trudge around the house! I keep waiting for a window to shatter -- or the whole back wall to go out because, as my dad says, it's got so many windows and thus less support.

(OK, not really waiting for that, but the wind is like a primal force of something.)

I'm not sure I've ever seen sustained wind like this, not even when we were in Missouri for my Grandma's funeral, and there were tornadoes all around.

To make a point, the thunder and lightning just started up again too!

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Though Kimberly & I have been cloistered most of the afternoon, we did do some adventuring in the morning. Around 9am we headed out to walk out to the town of Kalaheo proper. It's a two-mile walk, with considerable up slope on the way there and not much in the way of sidewalk, but the walk was still pretty nice. The views of the nearby mountains were often spectacular.

When we got down to Kalaheo, we learned that it was a bit bigger than we'd thought. Kimberly & I had thought all of Kalaheo was at one intersection, but it turns out to be spread across three or four very near intersections. Of interest to us were the pharamacy, Kujo's convenience store, the vet, and several restaurants -- of which we stopped by one, a little cafe.

Turned out to be quite a nice place. Kimberly & I had just had some pastries, then we ventured back to the little mall with the other restaurants to read more The Hobbit (our current book), and finally headed home. We got back around noon for lunch.

(Fortunately this was all before the weather turned apocalyptic!)

The walk reminded us of our trek from our condo to the town of Old Koloa, when we first visited here in late 2001. That was also about two miles, and a trek from the boonies to civilization. We were pleased to see that there was a fair amount of stuff, available not that far away (and very close to the Maka house that my dad & Mary intend to give us). And finally we got to connect up the dots, seeing how several places we'd visited went together, something you can really only do when you're out and about on your own power.

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I learned a couple of days ago that Mongoose's stock of Designers & Dragons is down to just 10 copies or so. I don't know if Mongoose will be reprinting, but I've started marking up my mark-up copy more thoroughly so that if there is a reprint, it can have corrections. I'd actually intended to start this on the plane (before I knew their stock was so low, even!) but had pen problems. Now I'm seeing there's a lot to be done to go through the whole book (because, y'know, 350k+ words), but it'll be done eventually.

I'd originally planned to correct & index simultaneously, but I've now decided that'll drive me crazy. I'm instead going to go back and forth. Having just finished the TSR article earlier today, for example, I'll now index it.

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My main goal is still continued rest through. And maybe swimming on Wednesday, if we're lucky and Mother Nature stops trying to kill us.