Friday, July 23, 2021

When it rains it pours

 

 

The view from Sun Mountain Lodge this morning.  You're looking at the Methow Valley filled with toxic smoke. The town of Winthrop below has the worst air in the country, possibly the world. The summer tourist season in the Valley, for all intensive purposes, is over. No one expects the fires to be completely out until winter. A big blow for local businesses. We can still visit our home, but most town activities are cancelled, including swim team. Fortunately, there are no evacuation orders yet for Twisp. Winthrop is at Stage 2, meaning be ready to leave.

The Purple Air website gives a real time air quality map for whatever location you type in. The air hazard levels go from zero (clean green dots) to 500 (dangerous purple dots) and Winthrop's numbers were over 600.  Twisp, 7 miles down the valley, is only slightly better.  All the more surreal, because this is such a perfect morning in Seattle.  Our marine push is keeping the pollution east at least for now.

What else? My 5+ year old Mac laptop was being balky about an update this morning. It has over 15,000 photos on it, and the thought of getting a new computer set up (expense aside) fills me with dread. People my age don't care for big changes.

What else can I complain about?  While cleaning the kitchen windows this morning, I snapped off one of the plastic fasteners for the door blind.  A trip to the hardware store to try and find a fiddly little piece of plastic. John at this moment is replacing a fuse in one of the under counter lights, and says it will take him a couple hours of fun. I'm getting ready to paint the back deck, an annual chore. That's all the news fit to print. 


2 comments:

  1. Have you thought of transferring your 15,000 photos to an external storage device? You can if your laptop has a USB plug. I see where you can pick up a 4TB external drive for less than $100. You might get one anyway and use it to back up those pictures. . .

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  2. I think that is a good idea, even though my computer is supposedly backed up on a time machine gizmo.

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