Fred is Dead! Or is he? GOM grovels for attention...

Sitting here in Raleigh, watching the leaves fall and the birds in the nearby oak tree run a commute back and forth from the tree to my neighbors bird feeder. I keep wondering, is that the same bird or different birds? Do they take turns. Do they ever stop? Do the leaves have to keep falling like yellow butterflies falling drop, drop, drop down to the ground??

I'm not a fall person. I never was and never will be. Leaves just shouldn't turn colors like that. I'm a Miami girl, leaves are green and at the end of bushes grown pink hibiscus and green palm fronds twitter in a tropical breeze. Poincianas drop their leaves without this whole yellow, orange festival and come alive in May in Scarlett splendor. I like Spring :)

Fred... is dead. Or so it seems anyway. Never quite sure with tropical systems because where there is convection, there is life and Fred is suddenly convecting again. Downgraded but not out yet.

Isn't it amazing that a storm that was a Category 3 could be gone in just 3 days? I guess...the bigger they come...the harder they fall...




Came on the computer briefly this morning to see if the area in the Gulf of Mexico
was doing anything or if the blob that was wildly red in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico near by blessed Florida Keys was still convecting and it wasn't...but to the right, stage right by eyes got dragged back to Fred.

Storms like this are those annoying boys you kind of sort of liked in elementary school or rather who liked you and did anything to get your attention and then in middle school you bickered through class and argued in the library, in high school you didn't date them because you were dating someone else and they were just annoying ole Freddy and then they go off to college somewhere else and turn into Drop Dead Gorgeous and you are at a different college dating another guy and it just never ends. Just when you think they are gone, dead, forgotten they stroll into weather chat and remind you how damn annoying they were in elementary school!!!

Fred is like that!

You would like to write him off, the NHC has written him off (with a slyly written commentary leaving the door open) and the models seem to suddenly notice how handsome he got around 60w and play with him again as he gets caught, trapped under a strong high moving west. That is...IF...he comes back as some second coming of Fred or he dies a dusty memory.

This is the tropics, this is the drama of it all in a slow, insidious season that hangs over us like a cloud of nuclear waste at the end of a disaster movie. Possibly someone is alive under that cloud of radioactive lime green...

So, I am going out with my guy today, out for brunch and going to try hard to bond with my new blackberry. Very hard for me to let go of the past as you can tell and I hold onto the sidekick and use both but the sidekick is for the hurricane season and well.... it's either really dead or playing possum.

Only time will tell.

One thing nice about Raleigh is the radio stations. And, I hate to say that as I am quoting one of the most handsome guys I ever met who said that about Miami from the top of a bucket truck. Yep, "The River" and "106.1 RDU Country"... really rock. I'm wondering when Kellie Pickler is going to be playing at the Fair and if I can get there to watch her?

And, I am going to ignore Fred for the rest of the day and see how he is after I listen to my favorite Miami Dolphins on NFL Field Pass and then we will see if he is alive or just convection firing up as last yellow flag before he cries uncle and bites the dust.

On a side note... saw this site online at the NHC and boy....you wouldn't believe what my first mental image was... or maybe i will, or maybe I'll tell you my second. A bunch of geekily dressed tropical mets from the NHC walking around at some Rooms To Go showroom trying the beds out... "this one's hard" "this one's soft" "this one is just right!!!"

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/jht/index.shtml
Joint Hurricane Testbed ...indeed....

I'm sorry but when my hurricane friends are busy with Fantasy Football... well what is there to say? And, my political friends are busy with ...Fantasy Football...what is there to say... rolling eyes here. (And, yes that was for you..you know who!!)

Cover of the News Observer is about the 10 year anniversary of Hurricane Floyd. What a storm. Did some chasing, tracking and taking pics of that storm in Florida as it blew by and do mean blew by and boy were we lucky... and boy was North Carolina unlucky that year. What a year that was though, such online fun...such discussion so many memories. Good ones.

http://www.newsobserver.com/

And, heads up to an earthquake in Venezuela where there was a 6.4 shaker. Have a lot of friends from there, I pay attention when I see it in the headlines.

So, I'm done. I've done my job, blogged on the way too quiet tropics at the peak of the season and taking a vacation today from worrying on Fred and the Gulf of Mexico and deadlines and chores and thoughts of really Key West. Woke up this early this morning with the thought I should walk over and watch the sunrise at the end of Duval and then remembered...this ain't Kansas.

And, by the way... I'm talking Fred not Ed, Ed is a horse of a different color.

Fred is still out there blowing bubbles and firing showers and until it's totally quiet, he is hard to rule out.

Take a little walk, take a deep breath, put on some make up... and consider me gone... boy are the tropical mets depressed... dejected... dead season like Fred..

But..to quote a great song "Consider Me Gone"..

"consider me the smile in an old photograph
who used to make you laugh"



Besos Bobbi