D.O.P.-T. (yesterday)

The rain mostly held off in the morning, so I was able to give both dogs separate walkies. It was slightly chilly; both moved along smartly, but Bear also snuffled in piles of maple leaves. I note the city has planted a little tree next to the war memorial. Maybe they realized we were all having to drag our dogs past it.

D.O.P.-T.

Rain and wind all night. The store door kept banging - several customers were unnerved by it - and the ceiling once more leaked: over a rack of DVDs, which I shoved over several times until the drops were finally no longer hitting even the bottom row. There is also an ominously stained ceiling tile over the work area that went much darker during the night, so that may well let loose a cataract - hopefully during the day when there's more than just me to deal with it. The rain actually lashed the front windows at one point, driving away the smokers. And the radio service had a few outages as they lost their signal, and was interrupted around 4:00 by a flood warning. Unfortunately it followed the usual pattern: "Mumble mumble FLOOD WARNING for all of mumble mumble. THIS INCLUDES mumble." Followed by two minutes of detail about the fact a warning means flooding is IMMINENT or IN PROGRESS and lowlying areas are AT RISK and creeks MAY RISE RAPIDLY but where is this for, again? Hah, we wouldn't dream of actually telling you audibly or repeating for anyone who turned on the radio in the middle of the URGENT WARNING or even in fact saying audibly anything except the SCARE WORDS. So I opened the door in case Noah's Ark was floating down the middle of El Camino but it didn't really look any worse out there than Blackpool at illuminations time. However I did note that someone had affixed a witty obscene graffiti sticker to the store ashtray.