Personal

I don’t know what the freaking hell is wrong with me (there are probably some people who could give some suggestions… wisearses) but lately I seem not to be able to get to sleep. I’ve been lying in bed for the last couple of hours trying to get to get some shut-eye but it seems impossible. My mind continues to race. I get up for a bit and play a few chords on guitar, and then I end up wishing I had my piano. Next I’m listening to some songs on my ipod, sampling anything from Rachmaninoff to Roxette to Rammstein. I’m freaking jumping around my apartment like the people in the iPod ads (except to Rach - can’t really jump around to classical… at least I haven’t yet figured out a way to yet). Why is this? Is it because the succulent, sumptuous, salivacious (???) pork ribs over here are just so good? Is it because the amount of fat in the food I’m eating is much more than it would be over in Oz? But hey - it’s all “low carbs”… yeah, whatever that actually means. Take the stairs every once in a while instead of the lift pilgrims. Maybe it’s not the food. Maybe it’s the humidity. Maybe it’s the fact that the air conditioning isn’t working properly at work and I’m so bloody cold I have to wear a jacket. Then I get outside and instantly I’m covered in water from condensation. Maybe the sudden changes in temperature are causing the meninge of my brain to expand and contract weirdly which could somehow adversely affect the sleeping centres of my brain, if they’re located on the periphery of the brain… which they probably aren’t… wtf am I talking about now??? ...

I don’t know why, but every place I want to go to or have been to in this part of the US seems to get hit by a hurricane. Orlando (Disney World) got hit a week before we went. Palm Beach got hit by Frances just last week. Jamaica got pummeled and now Ivan, not content with killing 60 odd people in the Caribbean, has somehow sneaked into the Gulf of Mexico and is poised to hit New Orleans. Of course that’s what everyone at work is talking about at the moment. I was reading this story this morning and that picture of traffic looks all too familiar. Apart from reading that article I was also reading the latest advisory on Ivan which I’ve got an excerpt from here: ...

If anyone asked me what I did on the weekend, I’d have to be given some time to think about that. I sure as hell know what I felt - incredibly pissed off. In fact, I haven’t been that angry in a long time. Long story short, someone was supposed to catch a flight out on Saturday and we couldn’t find them anywhere as we were going to drive them to the airport. I spent 5 hours trying to locate this person and nearly got to the point of calling local hospitals. The hotel didn’t know where the person was - they were supposed to check out but hadn’t changed their hotel booking. At 8:30pm Saturday night, just as I was about to drive to work to attempt to find out flight details, the person showed up. They’d changed their flights till the next day and had spent the afternoon having fun in South Beach. The person didn’t let us know this because they didn’t want to wake us up. F$#K OFF! That has to be the lamest excuse I’ve ever heard and when they told me that that I got in my car and sped off back to my apartment. I tried to spin the wheels but an Oldsmobile Alero is too gutless for that. I was just so angry I couldn’t actually say anything. Not only did that incident stuff up my whole Saturday afternoon it also stuffed up my whole Saturday night. I was planning on going out and meeting some people in South Beach but of course that didn’t happen because it was too late to get ready and head off to Miami. Yeah, I’m still pretty angry about that. ...

Nobody really knows where hurricane Ivan is going to hit. Whatever the case, we’ll probably feel some of the effects here. I and a cow-orker are contemplating getting out of Florida for the weekend through to early next week and heading to somewhere like… ooh New York. A few reasons for this: It’s far enough up North that the hurricane couldn’t hit us there. It would be cheaper flying North than West (so we’ve been told), also taking into account the considerable costs in getting a ticket at such short notice. It’s New York. Due to the emergency situation, the company will pay for all costs (within reason - it may turn out that New York is too far - or too wishful thinking). The Sheraton that I was going to shack up in for the weekend has recently had an influx of what I would call ‘questionable’ people. Ok, they’re here to fix up things that have been damaged from the previous hurricane and their company has provided them with accommodation. Normally it wouldn’t worry me at all. There are, however, over 100 of them. They will be locked down like the rest of us in the hotel for the whole weekend and they’ll probably have copious supplies of alcohol (hell, we did for the last one). Yes it’s cliched and you may think I’m being pretentious, but I don’t give a shit what anyone else thinks at the moment. I’m not going to take the risk of being in the same hotel with them. They’re snorting and belching already and I feel like I’ve already been sized up. I just wouldn’t feel safe staying there. The other choice of course is my apartment here, but if a hurricane did hit I am on the top floor and on the corner. That’s practically one of the most exposed apartments possible. Plus, there is no backup power here. So, I’m in for another interesting weekend. I’m curious to see how this one pans out. ...

This is unbelievable. This link *should* spin you off to a saved image of the predicted track of hurricane Ivan. I’ve marked a red cross indicating my approximate location. If the image link doesn’t work, this site has the latest updates on the hurricanes that may be threatening the region. Ivan is currently a category 5 hurricane (the worst you can get) with wind speeds up to 165 mph (~260 kph). That is bloody fast. I was reading up on hurricanes and I think the worst winds recorded have been 200 mph (320 kph) so Ivan has a way to go yet. If the hurricane continues on that predicted track then it could be worse than Frances was. I was lucky with Frances because I was on the south-western side of it. Plus, I was a little south of where most of the damage was. *I think* the north-eastern side is typically the worst in anti-clockwise hurricanes/cyclones, and it looks like it may be that side that hits here. We’ll see what happens. ...

If you have one, I guess that is. I’m amazed it took me this long to get one. I gots me a new 40GB iPod yesterday and I friggen love it. I’ve been walking around everywhere listening to my music collection, probably looking like a bit of a wankerchop, but oh well. I also realised how disorganised my mp3 collection was. A lot of the mp3 tags are all screwed up and iTunes reorganised the directory structure… shit. Now I don’t know where a lot of my music is hidden. I’ve half filled my iPod already and have currently around 4000 songs to choose from. Would you believe *most* of them are actually legit? I forgot some of the music I had, which was probably a good thing. I think my mind was actually protecting me in some way by doing that. Ooh - INXS is playing. Gotta love that shuffle function :-) ...

G’day everyone. I’m safe and well! I just arrived back from the hotel to find my apartment still intact. There isn’t a huge amount of damage around the place - a few downed trees here and there but in my neck of the woods we seem to have gotten off pretty lightly. I didn’t even lose power at my apartment. I’ll be writing some more stuff later - I have to get ready to go out now :-)

I need to see something happen here. My mind normally races at a million miles an hour, and I have some mechanisms built in place to filter out a lot of the crap that could come out. I do it for all you lovely people out there. If I didn’t of course, you probably wouldn’t be reading this because you probably would write me off as being ‘a bit of a weird wanker’. But, my mind is racing and I have nothing to occupy it with. I’m turning into a freaking psycho here. I’m going to turn into one of the performers at Key West, sprouting out mis-guided gibberish at harmless tourists passing by for measly tips. ...

This thing is bloody HUGE with a 185 mile radius, which is quite unbelieveable. Coverage on this hurricane is on every channel there is, and at work yesterday the *only* thing I heard people talking about was the hurricane - where they were going to get enough wood to shore up their houses, making sure they had enough supplies, where their evacuation zones were. Theoretically, I should be at work today. However, the office has been closed down for today and possibly tomorrow. Given that it’s also the labor day weekend over here, that’s 5 days I’ve potentially got off. I have to find some good reading material I think… ...

This category 4 hurricane (max sustained wind 140mph) has a few people in Florida a bit worried… including myself.