You Can Run, but You Cannot Hide

I'm thinking of repurposing this as a weather and travel blog, and giving up altogether on such unattainable concepts as humor and insight. Today at work, my boss asked me to do some research on one of the San Angelo-area attractions we'll be visiting. So I googled it. First place result? My blog!

Oops.

For the moment, Ike's path is forecast far enough northward to bring him up against a substantial chunk of Florida - aimed smack dab at the northern Everglades, in fact. Sucks to be you, Florida! You get all the violence of a hurricane and droves of storm-tossed alligators, flung this way and that by the wind.

Actually, this could make Fox News' on-the-scene reporting significantly more interesting.

Lately I've wondered if it wouldn't be a better idea to abandon the coast altogether. We don't build on greenbelts because of the flood risks, right? Never mind that it hardly ever happens. But what with climate change and all (thanks a lot, Al Gore, you bastard, for inventing global warming) it seems like living anywhere along the Gulf Coast is roughly equivalent to playing Russian roulette.

Not that moving inland helps you out that much. Go to Oklahoma or Nebraska? You've got your tornadoes. California? Earthquakes. The island paradise of Hawai'i? The pristine, pine-forested beauty of Washington State? Oh sure, I suppose you enjoy being drowned in a river of molten lava. And then you've got your wildfires. The Dakotas won't do because they're extremely cold, though I imagine the biking is fairly easy (if perhaps a bit dull) during the warmer months, assuming they have any. Idaho and Montana are just as bad, only with hills. Michigan has Detroit, and Utah has Mormons. New York City is the subject of way too many disaster movies: sooner or later, one of them has to get it right. Virginia has the Beltway and hillbillies; if that isn't proof that there's no God, I'd like to know what is?

Austin is plagued with Californians and fire ants, so it's got problems of its own. I suppose Colorado is nice.

In PowerPoint clip-art today I came across a photo of a picturesque little village on the Isle of Skye, perched in multicolored, historic prettiness on the shore, with the stone ruins of a castle peeking out of deep woods at the top of the cliff above them, and soft green hills and villages fading off into the distant mist across the water. I want to go there. Think I can get a travel job with ScotDOT?