I got to see the alpha male of Canadian songstresses, Alanis Morissette, last night in Boston at the Orpheum. Her live show has a lot of energy, and her voice holds up quite well despite the constant yodeling. SG and I had the misfortune of sitting behind two guys in their forties who seemed to be stereotypes of loud, drunk, obnoxious Bostonians. They were so very out of their element amid the crowd of hippie chicks, gay guys, and couples; their classiest move was repeatedly yelling "get off the stage, Yanni!" when her opening act was fluffing the crowd. Ah well, it was still a fun experience. We did the typical Boston tourist things, walking the Freedom Trail and touring Harvard (its campus is not nearly as impressive as the beautiful Stanford campus, I must say).
I have not played an iota of Scrabble lately; it's actually possible that I will slide into the NYC tournament without having played or studied at all since Orlando. I am really setting myself up for a potential rating slide, but if so, it's only fair. I have always tried to have a relaxed attitude about Scrabble, and have, without fail, enjoyed tournaments. I'm sure I'll get back into the swing of studying and playing online soon. I think I'm going to go to the Lake George tournament; I bet it's beautiful up there in October.
In the wake of lazy, meandering Tropical Storm Fay, there are currently two potentially dangerous Atlantic tropical storms lurking: Gustav is pummeling Jamaica with 70 mph sustained winds and up to a foot of rain (after already haven taken a toll in Haiti), and the newly formed Hanna, located northeast of the Leeward Islands, could threaten Florida or the Bahamas in the next week or so. Gustav clearly has the potential to develop into a category 2, 3, or 4 hurricane that could have a significant impact on the Gulf Coast states in five days or so. It would need to rather improbably thread the needle between the Yucatan peninsula and western Cuba (or strike one of them with a glancing blow) to have the highest chance for such intensification, but as of now, the models are predicting that such a path could indeed occur. Atmospheric conditions for Gustav will be nearly perfect, and so land interaction might be the only inhibiting factor. Hanna could become a hurricane as well, but it won't likely have the warm loop currents of the Gulf of Mexico or the extremely warm waters of the Caribbean to feed from, so its maximum potential strength might be lower. There's also an unusual upper air low to its west that could make the storm asymmetrical and rob it of some feeder bands of moisture.
While two simultaneous named systems are quite common in the Atlantic basin this time of year, what makes the current situation in the tropics quite remarkable is that there are no fewer than three additional systems that have warranted "invest" status by the National Hurricane Center. One massive blowup of thunderstorms in the Bay of Campeche just east of Mexico has ramped up from non-invest to low-probability invest to moderate-probability invest in just 24 hours. This system will be very unlikely to reach beyond tropical storm status, given its proximity to land. The second system is the weakest of the three, a diffuse area of thunderstorms located in the open waters of the eastern Atlantic. The third invest area is a very strong tropical wave currently emerging off of Africa's west coast. Some long-range models are predicting that this system will develop into an intense hurricane over the next week to ten days as it takes its long trek across open, uninterrupted waters of gradually increasing temperature. And finally, there are two strong impulses currently crossing the Sahara that will eventually emerge into the Atlantic and could potentially develop within the next two to three weeks.
Ahhhh, nothing like a little weather analysis and gentle prognostication to soothe the savage, Scrabble-less mind. I'm going to the NYC tournament and possibly to Lake George, so I'll get my fill soon enough.
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Ignore me, as I am a test entry.
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contemplative
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