Who is Evolet?

I'm borrowing this non-running thing from Irene...just because I thought it was funny. Who is Evolet? Apparently my ultimate Halloween Costume requires that I wear a sheet. 

I've really got nothing else to write about. I'm waiting for the washing machine repair-person to show up to (hopefully) fix my ailing beast which burst water all over the laundry room floor over the weekend. It's a tough call...do we fix an 8 year old washer that does about 10 loads a week or get a new one? In the end, we are opting for repair (if the repair-dude ever gets here) mostly because a house-call repair is far more convenient than having to do all that buying a new one entails.

As soon as Walter gets home, I'll get on the treadmill for a quick run...and because I know you turn to this blog for my frequent weather/humidity report and accompanying whine...

It's almost November and it was 91º today/18% humidity. As opposed to Saturday night's drip-fest, today was dry, dry, dry. For those not in SoCal, we get these fall heat spells brought on by the desert winds, the Santa Ana's. The wind switches course from the lovely off-shore, tropical ocean breeze, to a dry wind that blows from of the dessert. The winds and the heat makes everyone restless and cranky. I've had sinus issues and a headache from the high pressure for three days... Currently, it's 4:00 pm and it's still almost 90º...again I ask...WTF?

Joan Didion (one of my favorite writers) wrote of the Santa Ana's, "...that the Indians would throw themselves into the sea when the bad wind blew.... and one woke in the night troubled not only by the peacocks screaming in the olive trees but by the eerie absence of surf. The heat was surreal. The sky had a yellow cast, the kind of light sometimes called "earthquake weather."  

In another essay, she writes of a California "...haunted by the Mojave just beyond the mountains, devastated by the hot dry Santa Ana wind that comes down through the passes at 100 miles an hour and whines through the eucalyptus windbreaks and works on the nerves. October is the bad month for the wind, the month when breathing is difficult and the hills blaze up spontaneously. There has been no rain since April. Every voice seems a scream. It is the season of suicide and divorce and prickly dread, wherever the wind blows..."

Raymond Chandler wrote of the Santa Ana's that "every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husband's necks."

Both Didion and Chandler have it right. Everyone is cranky. The heat is oppressive and the threat of fire is very real...I'm hoping it passes soon. It seems like it's gone on forever this fall.

Now...where is that repairman? And where is my knife?