March 15 is Petfinder.com Adopt the Internet Day

Click the post title to go to Petfinder.com's adopt the internet day in honor of their anniversary.

I did submit Sage for their All Stars gallery. All shelters with petfinder could list one pet. But she's not there. I went through the slideshow three times! I e-mailed them to ask why she's not featured on the slideshow. I hope they fix that. It's been going on awhile, and I assumed she was there, without going through over 400 photos. Today I went through them. She's an awesome cat with an awesome photo and I am disappointed there was some mix up.

However, I was reading someone's rescue blog back east who mentioned the cat they submitted by name and color, and he wasn't on there either. I'll let them know.

I haven't heard from my older brother since the quake in Japan. I only worry somewhat because he travels for business now and then. His boss is Japanese, but at least second generation American. I don't get responses often from e-mails to either brother, so there is no need to worry, I know.

I also discovered one reason why, it possibly could be, that Wah Chang might get away with emissions like what I get to smell here, the chemical smell that burns my nose, athough it isn't every day. I saw how the Chamber recognized businesses and volunteers maybe last week, and Wah Chang was given the best business award, for donating to some local charities and to the hospital.

Ah well, I don't even know that the smell is them. My neighbor, who says neither she nor her son can smell, thinks it likely to be a meth lab, given our location. The smell is similar. I lived near two meth labs in Corvallis. I tried to report one, anonymously, since I didn't want killed, so the cop comes over and announces loudly at my door, "So where's the meth lab?" So much for anonymity.

Eventually it was busted across the street behind me in a shed. Then the other was busted, across the street in front of me on the third floor of an apartment building. I try to recall how strong it smelled, since those were so close to me, compared to this smell. Or to remember if the smell is the same smell. It's not like you can take a photo of a smell for your memory book and show it around and say "Look at this. This is the air outside my house!". To bad, too, because that would be really helpful, if a smell could be snapshoted as to its chemical properties, and in that way, "see" a smell.

There was also an article about the two top Pacific Power execs visiting this area. Why the paper would give them a moment of press for the reason they did is astounding. They were bragging there would be no rate increases in 2012, that they have held costs down and even commented on Lebanon, how much they liked them diversifying their economy, as they toured the new medical school being built there by our local monopoly on health care: Sam Health. Like they're fricking saints.

Who cares what these Pacific Power execs think, or approve of? They just raised their rates 14%!!! An unheard of increase during hard times. They caused lots of people already suffering more suffering by doing so. Reporters following them around, seeking approval and tossed crumbs like they're starving puppies, is pathetic.

My younger brother, struggling to find any work, described how angry one of his former workers is with Pacific Power, over the rate increase, loading misery onto misery.

It's the bow down and worship the rich age now. No matter what they do to the peons, who don't count as real humans.

That's how I figure it.

Due to a windstorm, we lost power here in parts of Albany for hours yesterday. I went and got a block of ice to put in my frig to keep my vaccines at the right temperature. I enjoyed the black out.

My neighbor, who works too hard, at her government job, so hard she has to bring piles of work home to do on the weekends, said she didn't know how she'd get it done now, since it required the use of a computer. "Nap time," I said, and she said "that sounds like a good idea!"

I think maybe a lot of people got extra sleep yesterday. No tv to watch. No computers. No phones ringing. I wore around one of the headlites Kate sent me and just did my normal things. I wash dishes in cold water anyhow, to save money, so I did my dishes and continued my cleaning, read a book, took a nap and by 8:00, the power suddenly blinked back on. "Eh," I thought, unimpressed, and went to bed.

I think I could do fine without power. Washing clothes without power is the most difficult, but not that tough. I had been cooking a chicken for the cats, one that was on its way to being "bad" when I got it, marked down $2 in ther words, for fast sale and use. So, I pulled out my sterno stove and put the crockpot the chicken was cooking in, on the sterno stove and finished it that way.

I lived without power in Alaska when I lived in the teensy plastic tarp roofed shack. I lived there without power too when I moved into a quonset hut, also without heat or power of any kind. I took showers once a week, that's right, once a week, at the Harbor Master, five miles away, in town. Roughing it? Yup. And I was much younger. Now, there's far more gear out there, to help keep warm and even to bathe without the benefit of water.

I try not to think about the people and animals of Japan. I wish I could go over there, just relieve those worn out from the suffering and now the labor of searching for the still alive and the dead. Because it's horrifying, overwhelming and the only thing that could make it comprehendable to think about is if I was over there digging in to help. I want to be over there, helping, just silently doing the labor needing done, giving somebody else time to rest. I know I'm getting old but I could still help and I would work hard.

I know it could happen here, too. All of the Oregon coast communities are vulnerable to exactly the same thing. We don't have big cities or towns along the Oregon coast, but it is populated and some places are very flat, like the Tillamook area. A tsunami there would wipe out a lot of people. Astoria, Waldport, Yachats, Depoe Bay, Lincoln City, Bandon, Reedsport, Florence, North Bend, Winchester Bay, Gold Beach, Brookings, Port Orford, I cringe to think of a wave enveloping these treasures of Oregon and the people who inhabit those precious places.

They say a tsunami on the Oregon coast would run up the Columbia river and even affect cities along the Columbia and Portland.

Since many places have only one road east, up to the coast range, and then access to the north south coast highway 101, there are no quick evacuation routes by road for masses of people to higher ground.

So I wonder why not build a few tsunami towers: easily accessed sturdy concrete towers even with stored supplies that people could quickly access to survive, and to survive afterwards for awhile?

I have suggested coyote towers to people with cats they allow outside in coyote country. Ground hole access, inner core climb, interspaced for cats being chased down by coyotes, to dive into, climb up and stay inside of, safely, until the coyote gives up.

This same concept might work for people in tsunami zones. The would be ergonomically designed, to deflect the onslaught of debris and water along the front and back edges especially.

I was impressed the Japanese warned people an earthquake was coming even before it happened. Then they warned people a tsunami was coming, in some cases, 40 minutes before it hit. Some still could not escape because escape routes were jammed in traffic.