[Shotimes] OT my kind of entertainment

[George Fourchy]

On Wed, 27 Aug 2003 11:14:20 -0400, Ron Porter wrote:

>Of course, we had the worst thunderstorm I have seen in my life yesterday
>AM!! Thought it was a hurricane! It was "green" outside, and I couldn't even
>see the house across the street. Then the lightning struck VERY close (we
>thought it hit the house), which is what blew the breaker, I suppose.

OK....now we have a quandry.....

You have said in the past that you wouldn't consider spending the kind of money 
that houses cost around here.  Since you are not used to seeing the kinds of numbers
that flash around when California house shopping is the topic of discussion, I can
understa
that.

.........................................................BUT.........................
............................................

If you had started out here as a youngster, you'd be enjoying the fact that property
now costs as much as it does.   You'd also enjoy (hopefully, since you are a car
person) the fact that we don't have snow in the winter, and so we don't have ice on
the roads, so we don't salt them, and so we don't have our brand new cars rusting
away and disappearing like sand castles on the beach.  You'd enjoy the fact that we
don't have typhoon type weather (rain AND tornados, or hurricanes AND floods) every
spring, summer, and fall, and we don't have huge day long blackouts.  (During 2001,
the area I live in had exactly ONE 2 hour power outage during the power crisis we
had....yes it got hot while the power was off, but it was only ONE time.)   We had a
week long period this year, in late July, where there were scattered thunderstorms
every evening, but they were an interesting diversion, and not severe....they never
are.

I could go on and on....there are earthquakes here....most of them we don't feel. 
Most of the rest of the country has plenty of fault lines, too....they just aren't
mentioned as much.  There is "the big one" coming, if one believes history as a
teacher, and I do.  That's the second most important reason I moved out of the
immediate Bay Area....the first one was I wanted to make a profit on the house I was
living in (where the Cobra was stolen from, and where the Lowrider was vandalized). 
Where we live now, the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 did not do any major damage,
other than to bare wood structures with no actual foundation, and the '89 Loma
Prieta quake was barely felt.  

The fact that California's population is actually shrinking due to more folks
leaving than arriving makes me smile.  If they can't afford to stay here, that means
one of two things....they can't do anything productive to help our society progress,
or they don't have the intelligence to find a place here to live where they CAN
afford it, and there are plenty of those....in either case, good riddance.   

Not angry, not vindictive, not looking for an argument, just being the 'devil's
advocate' (my favorite role), a very important part of a complete and intelligent
discussion.

George