Well, first there was Gustav, and then there was Ike.  Here in the Atlanta area, we missed most of it.  Got some rain, which we needed, and there was some local damage due to the strong storms.  But, in general, we were lucky.  In terms of the storms, anyway.

But, if you’ve been reading the news, you know that the Houston area was hard hit, and the refineries there are still trying to get up to full speed.  And, where does Atlanta get its gas?  You guessed it.

State of Georgia officials don’t have a firm estimate of when things will get back to normal, but it might be sometime next week.  Officials are urging people to stay calm and not deplete the supplies that are remaining.  Like that was going to work!!

One local station owner got a delivery of 3,000 gallons last Saturday.  By Sunday morning it was all gone.  Way to go folks – staying really calm, that is.

This is getting crazy.  There’s a question on Yahoo answers that asks:

• Is the Atlanta gas shortage a pre-marshall law test to see how people will deal with shortages?
• What????

Well, if it is, we’ve failed.  There are long lines at gas stations to buy overpriced gas.  In the city, there are traffic jams around stations that have gas.  The president of a company that delivers fuel to stations said that “We’re not out of fuel. There is enough fuel in the system to keep it going. There’s not enough fuel for people to start topping off their tanks, hoarding fuel, filling up every day and unnecessary road trips.”

So, what are we doing?  Topping off tanks, hoarding fuel and filling up every day.  It’s just like the empty grocery shelves right before a big storm.  That has always given me a chuckle here in the Atlanta area.  A “big snow storm” might leave snow on the ground for a day, maybe two.

How many loaves of bread or gallons of milk can one family consume in a couple days?

I’m luckier than most, because I use my car very little.  I did try to find some gas today.  The four stations I visited had none.

So, I guess I’ll have to go foraging again tomorrow.  Maybe I’ll save gas and call ahead!

I took a friend to the doctor to get cataract surgery.  Twice in the last month or so, actually.  I thought she was pretty young to have cataracts, but I discovered that it’s not just an old-person’s disease.

I don’t know what cataract surgery consists of, and I don’t really want to know.  The reason this topic made the Whimsical Wednesday lineup relates to what happens after the surgery.

Cataract surgery is done on an out-patient basis.  It takes longer sitting around in the waiting room than it does to do the surgery.  However, the physicians do use some type of anesthesia before and during the procedure.  I don’t think it’s the same type of anesthesia they use for removing an appendix, for instance, because the patient “wakes up” quite quickly after the operation.

I put “wakes up” in quotes because my friend seemed to be in a place somewhere in between being normal and being totally anesthetized.  After our second trip, I finally came up with a theory about how this particular anesthesia works. 

My theory is that the drugs wipe out short-term memory about every 15-20 minutes.  You can only imagine what it’s like being with someone who “wakes up” again about every 15 minutes.  It’s better than a comedy club.

The first time, she was amazed by someone who was coming out of surgery as she was going in who was snoring.  She told me that story multiple times on the way back to her house.  The second time, she was chuckling over someone who wouldn’t wake up and the trouble the nurses had getting him to come to. 

I counted the second time.  She told me that story 5 times on the way home.  Each time, with the enthusiasm of someone who had just remembered a funny story.

She wanted to call her husband right after we left the doctor’s office to tell him she was OK.  About a half-hour later, she “remembered” that she wanted to call her husband.  I said “Well, we did call him, but we can do it again if you’d like”.  After a few minutes of deep thought, she asked “Did I talk to him?” 

The first time she wanted a McDonald’s hamburger after her long fast since the night before.  That would make sense, except that she hates McDonald’s hamburgers.  The second time, she was craving real food.  I wasn’t excited about steering her into a restaurant, but it was off-peak hours, so I decided to give it a try.

After a couple minutes of sitting at a table, she decided that she’d just like to take some food to go.  While I was arranging for a carry-out, she wandered over to the bakery counter in the restaurant.  I tried to talk her out of it, but she ended up ordering 3 deserts, then I had to go pay for the carry out.  By the time we got back to her house, I discovered she’d actually purchased five deserts.

Opening the box after finishing a sandwich, she declared that “we should just eat all of these”.  I convinced her that eating 2.5 deserts at that point wouldn’t be the best idea.

Afterward, I put drops in her eyes, and tucked her into bed.  She slept late into the evening.

My friend apologized for needing to ask me to take her to the second appointment. . . . but I told her I wouldn’t miss it for the world. 

I doubt I should write a post about politics, but I just can’t help myself.  I think this is going to be an important vote.  I have strong opinions about it, but I won’t talk about that.

What I do find extremely interesting about this presidential campaign is how much of it seems to be focused on the kind of people who are running rather than the views of those people.

On the Democratic side, a woman almost won the nomination.  But, when she lost, many of her supporters said they’d vote Republican in retaliation.  What kind of sense does that make?

Then, at the convention, Senator Clinton did an outstanding job of speaking directly to those among her supporters who threatened to jump ship.  She actually felt she had to make the point that if people supported her, they supported the views of the Democratic party, and therefore should support Senator Obama.

Are we that stupid that we couldn’t figure that out on our own?  Guess so.

And, from what I hear, there are many people who are fanatically for or against the Democratic ticket because the nominee is African-American.  Well, at least that’s what everyone calls him, although he’s actually a mulatto.

The definition of mulatto is: a term used to describe a person with one white parent and one black parent, or a person whose ancestry is a mixture of black and white.  I would imagine that definition applies to quite a few of us.

Then, the Democrats initially seemed to be running against John McCain.  Now, it seems that they’re running against a war hero and a woman.  And, since I went to the grocery last night, I now know that the tabloids have already come up with alien-lands-in-Alaska-type stories about Governor Palin.

I am glad I had the luck to be born in the U.S.  But, our political process seems to get crazier every four years, and it drives me nuts.

Speaking of nuts, I think we should nominate a squirrel for President.  I’m sure there are way more squirrels than there are people in this country, so I figure a squirrel would be a shoo-in.

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you might remember that I’ve talked about Southern bugs once before.  And, I imagine this time I’ll start getting hits from the search engines when people look up cockroach or water bug.  But, that’s OK.

For any of you who got here using that kind of a search, I apologize.  This is just a Whimsical Wednesday post, not an information site about insects.

There are pesky cockroaches lurking about outside here all year around, I imagine.  But, there are times when they seem more determined to join us in the house than others.  I’m not really sure what triggers it, since I’m not really a cockroach expert, but the first sign is that you’ll see a couple belly-up in the garage.  That’s the clue that the roaches are on the move indoors.

So, the other night, I was sitting quietly in the living room when in FLEW a cockroach, closely followed by my cat.   Of course, we all know the little devils can fly, but generally by the time they get in the house, they’re too groggy from the bug spray to work up much energy for it.

The only thing I can assume is that Joey found the bug shortly after it slithered through whatever crack it found to get in the house, and the bug was still pretty perky.

An insect that size in flight is an awesome sight.  Especially when it ends up landing on your living room furniture.  So, this was no time for fooling around.  I raced for the vacuum cleaner while Joey tried to find a way to leap high enough to grab the intruder.

Joey has not quite come to terms with the vacuum cleaner.  I think it’s a bit loud and obnoxious for his taste.  So, when I came tearing up, plugged in the machine and turned it on, Joey decided to retreat to a safe distance.  I sucked the cockroach up in the long extension to the vacuum, let it run long enough to convince myself that the roach had not survived, then turned the vacuum off and collapsed on the couch to try to return my breathing to a normal  pattern.

Joey is evidently not completely conversant in how vacuum cleaners deal with cockroaches.  He first went back to the last place he’d seen the bug and did a bit of reconnoitering, but was rather puzzled by the fact that the bug was nowhere to be seen.

Then, he approached the vacuum cleaner and sniffed it over thoroughly, looked from the vacuum to the last known location of the bug and back, and walked away shaking his head.

At times like that, I wish I could have the same level of enthusiasm for playing with cockroaches as cats do. . .  but it’ll never happen.

The Olympics are back again.  I watched most of the Opening Ceremony.  It was an amazing thing.  The drummers, for example.  How you can get all those people to do the same thing at EXACTLY the same time is mind boggling.

I gave up watching after some of the teams entered the venue.  As usual, I was amazed by all the countries I’ve never heard of.  But, then, I was curious about the lighting of the torch.  I’m a night owl, so I tuned in toward the end of the broadcast and had a chance to see the torch ceremony.

I’m not a big sports fan, but there is something about the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics that touches me.  It’s more about so much of the world coming together – if only we could truly understand each other and quit fighting, that would be my dream, Olympic or otherwise.

So, the lighting of the torch is always a touching scene for me.  If you didn’t get a chance to see it, here’s how it went.  There were 8 torch bearers.  The last one was a famous Chinese athlete.  After lighting his torch, he was elevated on some kind of a wire to the height of the “membrane” at the very top of the stadium, and if you saw any of the Ceremony, you heard about that.

Once he reached the top, the wire changed the angle at which he was suspended, and he “ran” all the way around the stadium.  As he passed by, photos of the travels of the torch from Greece were projected on the membrane.

How he had the strength to “run” in place while hanging on a wire is beyond me.  It was quite something.  Then, the torch had appeared as if by magic at the top of the stadium, and the lighting of the flame gave me a familiar lump in my throat.

And, the men’s gymnastic team got a Bronze medal!  How cool.

And, Sarah Brightman was there.  I am in awe of her voice, but I can’t help thinking that she always looks like she’s high on drugs.

One of the people I watched the early part of the Ceremony with (who will remain nameless) complained, “I can’t understand a word she’s saying!”

Guess that’s what happens when Sarah sings in Chinese…