Sucking it up
No time to post pictures but if you visit any online news site you'll undoubtedly be able to see the pictures of Cedar Rapids, IA. When the river crests tomorrow (God willing), it will be about 12 feet above, not flood stage, but 12 feet above the previously-highest measured flood. Twenty feet above flood stage.
We are on high ground here in Hiawatha, but very wet, saturated ground. The water started coming up through the cracks in the basement floor about 1 pm on Thursday, and we've been running two Shop Vacs non-stop since then (14 hours now). We're keeping up with it, but only just. It hasn't rained for almost seven hours now, so I keep thinking (hoping) that the water level will go down enough that it'll stay out of the basement. I guess we'll find out. For now, we're just praying for no more rain and for these shop vacs to hold out. I doubt they were designed to run this long this hard.
We have an internet connection finally here at home (it was out for 24 hours due to the flooding), so I'll try to post updates if I get a chance.
And it rained all day…
It's been a weird year for weather here in Iowa. We started with the snowiest winter on record. Once that melted, we had an unusually cool spring. Now we're finishing up spring and headed toward summer, and the rain has been nearly unstoppable. Seems like every day is another thunderstorm, bringing an inch (or two) (or three) of rain.
Now the flooding has begun. Already three of the bridges crossing the Cedar River in Cedar Rapids have been closed because the river has reached (or nearly reached) the bottom of the bridge. Mandatory evacuations have been declared for low-lying areas of town. A flood totally took out the railroad bridge up in Cedar Falls. They've got a fully-loaded train sitting on our railroad bridge here in Cedar Rapids to try and keep it from being swept away, too. (This picture is of a different bridge in CR.)
A lot of the low-lying areas are well known for flooding, but this one (near Ellis Park on the SW side of CR) is still stunning:
And there's rain on the way again this morning. And tonight. And tomorrow. It's gonna get better before it gets worse. Now, friends, fortunately our house is far away from the river, and on high ground; we're in no danger of flooding; however, we have friends and co-workers who are currently in the process of sandbagging, packing up, and evacuating. Let's pray that this rain stops, very soon.
[The pictures above are from the KCRG-TV website's YouNews page. There are a lot more pictures there if you're interested.]
Saying Goodbye to a little friend
The little four-footed creatures have a way of finding a place in our lives and hearts without us hardly noticing it... until they are gone. Frankie was part of our household for nearly nine years, from his birth as a little kitten out at the farmhouse until his untimely passing after an accident at home last Friday. Becky picked out some of her favorite pictures and asked me to post them... so here you go.
Shared Posts on the Sidebar
Some of my regular readers will remember that from time to time I'll have link posts that will show up here; interesting things I've noted on the web and wanted to share. I've been notably inconsistent with that type of post, but still link some stuff from time to time. I was surprised, then, when after posting a couple of links yesterday to my del.icio.us account, they didn't show up here overnight. Come to find out that the del.icio.us service that cross-posts apparently hasn't run since March sometime. Phooey.
So I've been using Google Reader as my usual feed reader and it has a nifty little interface to share items which will then show up for any other Google Reader user who's one of my contacts, or anybody who wants to subscribe to the shared items feed. What GR doesn't provide is a similar sort of remote-posting functionality. What GR does provide is a little bit of javascript that will pull in the most recent shared items and list them. So, for the moment I've put that on my sidebar. The obvious downside is that anyone who just reads my items from a feed reader won't be able to see them. (On the other hand, those folks could easily enough subscribe to my Google Reader Shared Items feed.)
If and when I find a better way to do this link sharing, I'll do so. For now, hey, I suppose anything is better than nothing.
The passing of another weekend
I had three things on my to-do list for the weekend as of last Friday afternoon. And though I kept busy all weekend, those three things are still on my to-do list. How did that happen? I suppose I could do like Becky does and add items to my to-do list after I've done them just so I can cross them off. But when you use an on-line list that removes completed items from view, there's not a lot of satisfaction in it.
Still, I managed to get a bunch of stuff done around the house: mowed the lawn, cleaned out the gutters and installed some gutter guard, did the dishes (well, at least unloaded and loaded the dishwasher). Led music for both Saturday night and Sunday morning church services. Took the girls to the park to play in the splash pad. Laura, who last year was too scared of the water to even want to get wet, was running through the sprayers yesterday with great enthusiasm. I foresee many trips to the park this summer.
And now it's Monday again. I guess I'll be hitting 'postpone' on those tasks a few more times.
