we had  my littlest granddaughter   singing thing at the Elementary school ..My son said at hiswork they were talkign about it..he  does somekind of Goverment stuff., but we couldn;'t tell here in  western PA

just making sure your'e all okay.  I know quakes there are rarer than here especially 4.0 and higher.

 Yeah that was the biggest one around here in over 20 years \o/

 Yes I am safe and my family and friends are safe ty Nikki \o/

 I guess I was the closest to it of our group?

 I guess..I am western PA on your side of Pittsburgh

.............

 for that  You Tube think i put up..some of the  parts in there, remind me of  Roy given Aliens  a history lesson..the speaker   could be Sanri or Occui

 Yeah I can drive to the epi center in 3 hours I would say I alot closer than you hehehehe. It was pretty scary though but it didt last long but it felt like forever hard to explain.

years ago, one hit  around  DC.. it shook my house, I just thought it was one of the Bih  coal trucks that was  taking rocks up the alley  to dump  for clean fill.

well, a 4.0 and 4.8 are mid-sized to me and I'm use to them.  Now I am NOT used to big thunderstorms.  I can count on one hand how many we've had in Anchorage. so when one does happen I sort of freak out on those.  Since they are fairly common in the lower 48 I am sure you just nevermind them unless they strike in your lawn or directly on your houses.  So it's all relative.

We had a decent quake hit Salt Lake City back in 2020 (just under four years ago, now).  I was at the park...they were installing a new ride and I got picked to be part of the install crew for the facade (it's a kids' ride, so it wasn't a HUGE project...not like the one I was helping finish up last year...)

I heard the rumble and thought someone was driving some heavy equipment past the building I was in...sounded like a front-end loader or something like that.  Stepped outside and nothing was there...poked my head back inside and noticed the brooms and rakes that were hanging on the wall were all swaying back and forth, and then I looked outside and the plants were all swaying, even though there was no wind...

All my friends that live in Salt Lake, proper, were freaking out about it...but if I hadn't had to be at the park early for that install project (it hit just after 7am), I would have slept right through it, very likely.

And thunderstorms are fairly common here, but the worst ones I've ever been through were in the Midwest, or down on the Navajo Reservation.  I'd rank the Midwest higher, because the storms on the reservation, while VERY intense, were also usually fairly short.  The one my friends and I drove through when we went back to Minnesota?  That was hours of driving through some of the heaviest rain I've ever experienced, with lightning flashing from somewhere around us every few seconds.  I told my friends at one point that if it started hailing, we had to pull over and look for a ditch, because it was so dark that we could have been driving straight into a tornado and wouldn't be able to see it...when the lightning provided enough light, the windows were so rain-soaked that you couldn't really make out much.  My friend was basically just following the stripes in the middle of the road because he couldn't see far enough ahead to follow the road, itself.

After that, thunderstorms in this part of the country seem comparatively mild.

The first quake I experienced was in 1984 here in Cheshire early in the morning. I seemed to dream of an earthquake and woke with the thought "But we don't get them here" only there was one. Dearly beloved was hanging out the window counting... he thought someone had dropped a nuclear device on Manchester and was watching for a flash! We are about 40 miles from Manchester. Fortunately we did not become part of a radioactive cloud!

Since then I've been in quite a few, both here and in Greece. One there - on the island of Zakynthos - happened when I was in the bath and I sat watching the bathwater slosh around and decided to stay there until all was calm again. That was about a 5.

One time dearly beloved had gone to visit a client who was having network problems. They had a split site and used a radio link across a road. He was baffled, everything seemed to be working. He called home to say he didn't know how long he'd be, and I told him to check the orientation of the antennae as there had been an earthquake the night before. He muttered about them being omnidirectional, but checked anyway and... well, that was the problem!

I remember the one that happened in the UK about a decade ago (1984 is well before my time) I just thought it was a truck something equally heavy driving past until I saw an ornament vibrating round in circles on the shelf

 Yep  Izzy...that's what that was like here..at the  time we had   Big Coal trucks that were carring Rocks   and  dirt passed  my house   to the end  where it was a drop off to a field  near the creek.

 the  House  shook ,( old  company-mine house )..the   wodd  creaks , noise upstairs  light  people ran through the house. and I was bymyself then... aabout 5 minutes later, I'm getting texted  and Checked  FB because people around here   didn't know, or just found out about the  quake. I can only imagine being in a 'real ' one

In Alaska we get a crap ton of them.  Big and small.  I was a babe in 1964 here when we had a 9.2 that shook for 5 minutes.  According to my mom... I slept through it. years later sitting on the floor I watched (yep watched) a seismic wave gently rolling into the house across the floor and under me then out the other side of the house like a gentle pond ripple (it was weird), about 4 to 6 inches high and a foot wide.  that was back in 1974-75, or so.  In 2016 we had 2 big shakers, like 7.0+ each.  about 4-6 months apart. tossed my house like a bomb went off.  One happened at night too.  then that shaker in 2018 really shook even worse.  I know I wrote about it here in an earlier OOC.  My sister freaked.  She still has PTSD from 1964.  For me I don't mind the shaking or the noise, I freak out when it goes dark. the 2018 one happened at 830 in the morning in late Nov. at that time it's still night out.  So when transformers blew it got real dark.  No flashlight right off hand so had to use the one on my phone.  kept thinking I was gonna step on my cat or glass and such.  had weird thoughts of finding a broken floor and falling in it.
still... I'm alive.

The most noteworthy thing, to me, about the one here four years ago was that, as a kid and growing into my teens, I remember at least two or three significant (for our area) quakes...like, looking up from the living room floor to see hanging lamps swaying kinds of quakes.  And then, for decades, there was pretty much nothing (except increasing talk from seismologists about how the lack of quakes could actually be cause for alarm, because the longer we went without one, the more likely it was to be severe when we finally had one, from all the tension built up between the tectonic plates that was accumulating as each year went by without even minor tremors.

So it was weird, after having them happen often enough as a kid that I was pretty unfazed by the quake (literally, as soon as I realized it was a quake, my brain was like, "Well...nothing to be done about it.  Don't stand inside, stuff might break loose and fall, but don't go too far away from the building, because stuff might tumble off from overhead.  Right here in the exterior doorway is about as safe a place as you're gonna find..."), having one that was significant, but not exactly a real property-damaging shaker (a few buildings got cracks in facades, and a few streets got cracks in the pavement...but nothing had to be reconstructed or even have serious repair work done), and having most of the people I know on FB in the area freaking out about being in an earthquake, waking up to stuff falling off shelves (light stuff, at that), feeling their car kind of shimmy as they were driving, etc.  Part of me was like, "Really?  It wasn't THAT bad.  Unusual, sure, but have you people looked at news reports about BAD earthquakes?  This was nothing..."  And part of me was understanding...they have no frame of reference.  Most of them are young enough that they either weren't yet born or were too young to remember Utah's last cycle of seismic activity, so they couldn't even compare this one to others in the past.

And part of me was like, "People...come on.  We live ON A FAULT LINE.  Quakes are gonna happen.  Be glad this one just scared your aquarium fish.  They've been telling us for years an earthquake was coming, and this was WAY less than what they had predicted."  Sometimes being a pragmatist can cause some oddly conflicting emotional responses to situations...

one of my kids   asked  me 'where is the safest place to live.."  i said 'There isn;t"

 " Textas? "... I sai.. droughts , hurriances  and too many texans.


"Rhode island"... I said... flooded  and  'tail end Hurricanes"

 Connecticut .. snow, hurricanes

 Daughter  is  in NC.. Hurricanes..Oldest  Boy.. FLA   , same thing, Plus too many Florida folks

 a woman who was on of mu best friends   in online gaming. Mississippi.. floods, hurricanes  and..where she lives, they get snow  some time, about 19 years agout her pipes  froze..they don't have  basements where she lives ..the crawel spaces  become deep freezes.

we heard  about Garret and the oregon fires,,,Kansas was  so many tornados  they  made a movie  about  a girl and her  dog....pick a state.. it has something bad.

I was in Sweden when the big quakes hit California in the summer of '89...made the new reports over there, even, with collapsed overpasses and buildings partly destroyed.  I remember one of the people I knew over there was absolutely beside herself about it...she asked me how it could happen and I pointed out that big quakes in California were not uncommon (if memory serves, this one was in the San Francisco area, but there had been other quakes down near LA a few years before, and I think another fairly serious quake hit the LA area a few years later...), and they tried to prepare for them, but there's really only so much you can prepare when the ground you're building on starts to move around relative to other parts of the same building...

"So why in the world would anyone decide to live there?"

I just kind of shrugged, and pointed out the same kind of thing you did, Don...people there ask why anyone would live in Sweden when there are parts of the country that don't even see daylight for several weeks out of the year.  Japan, Taiwan, Macau...popular tourist destinations for Swedes...all have a monsoon season and get hit with storms that would level some of the buildings in Sweden.  Iceland is literally an active volcano, it's just that the island has gotten large enough that there's some distance from the vents of the volcano.  "Pick a place, anywhere on the planet, and there's an argument to be made for why it's not a safe place to live.  They know the risks and are willing to live with them."

Whhooo-Hooo! got blue skies and sunshine today.  43 on my porch.  gorgeous!!

yesterday was on again/ off again snow-rain mix, overcast. the high was maybe 31.  like today better.

Reads like a bit of Frolicking is to be enjoyed.

oh yes.  even damaged as I.  I'm readying my flower pots and such. next month is planting season, not that I have land to plant anything. lol.  but I do like my flowers, so starting my seeds now for my sweetpeas. talking my sis in to taking me to my favorite plant nursery for pansies and maybe a rose bush.  She does not know I ordered one from Jackson & Perkins, already paid for and is due for delivery mid May.  My therapists and doctor recommend I garden.  Her idea to get plants is home depot.  problem is up here they get at end of April they get them and have outside to match lower 48.  It could be 20 degrees and half dead they put them out.  they look like crap and only a limited selection, usually ones I don't like. who wants ugly mismatched flowers that are half dead? I like where I used to go and get my flowers, even outside Anchorage.  Everyone loved my deck. got to whip it into shape!

Have you considered 3-4 bonsai's

I like outdoor plants... indoor ones don't do well for me.  wish they did.

Ah, I'm back in one of my less-favorite positions at the park...the voice of pragmatism.

One of the tasks on our to-do list for this year is to repaint the stage.  Sounds simple enough, right?

Well, last time they had the stage painted, they also had a clear-coat put over it, theoretically to improve the longevity of the paint (it worked fairly well, but they've been talking about repainting the stage every year since they had that done because, while it looks lovely when it's brand new, that high-gloss finish shows every scuff mark, ding, scrape, peeled-up tape mark, and any one of the dozen or so other ways you can ruin a stage floor finish to EXTREME degrees.  There's a reason most theaters don't use gloss paint for their stage floors (it also throws weird light reflections, but that apparently isn't an issue with our lighting designer, although he's the only one I've worked with who's never complained about a shiny stage floor).

Last time, they put up plastic around the stage for the winter, the HVAC guys set up some big forced-air propane furnaces to heat it, and the painters took their time getting it done.  The clear-coat was the big problem...it is supposed to be applied and remain at temperatures over 60F so that it can cure properly.  There are only three days in the forecast for the next two weeks where the temperature is supposed to get above 60, much less stay there for the length of time the coat needs to cure (at least twelve hours before a recoat, and 24 hours before using the floor, if I recall the directions correctly).  So, I have concerns about that, because we don't really have the option of putting up the plastic and heating it the same way...we have lights hanging where they attached the plastic last time.  So, we may have to forego the clear-coat (or maybe find a less-durable alternative that's not so fussy about its application conditions...)

The clear-coat, itself, is a problem for more than just that reason, though...since we put a clear-coat over the last layer of paint, that's a different formula from the paint, I'm not sure if the new paint will stick to it without some kind of floor prep...scuff-sanding the floor.  And nobody's said anything about that so far (I just sent an email to the entire production team to ask about it and express my concerns...), so we may be stuck with the 'slap it on and pray it sticks' approach.  That's how most theaters handle their stage floors...but they also don't generally use a non-acrylic-based 'armor coat' over the paint...they just repaint the floor with a new layer of paint, and the acrylic bonds to the acrylic that was there before.

And on top of that, we're having some renovation work done to the theater, and changing the shape of the upstage wall (it currently angles out toward the audience as you get off-stage and into the wings...the stage was originally just a band-stand, and that was desirable to direct the sound of the band toward the audience, but our producer/director wants to use some magic illusions that won't fit through that off-stage opening, so they need to make it wider, and those walls aren't actually structural, so it's a relatively easy fix...)  Except the park's carpenters came down and took all the wood off the stage side of the wall, discovered there was some electrical stuff in there, and put the whole project on hold until the electricians came and removed the wiring so the walls could be demolished.  And that meant that, rather than just saying, 'Okay, go work on this other stuff until this is a viable option again," they basically rotated us to the bottom of the priority list.  The electricians have been done for most of a week, and the carpenters haven't even come to take a look at what their next step is.

And since this project is going to result in more stage floor, we can't paint until they're done, at least with the on-stage stuff (they could do all that and then work on the rest backstage while we paint, but I'm not holding my breath...)

Now, our deadline to finish the stage floor painting?  A week from now.  So my email was, basically, "So, are we actually doing any sort of prep work on the floor?  And that deadline isn't happening, because the carpenters are nowhere close to done and Mother Nature has decided to have seasonal weather in April this year for a change.  So how do you want to proceed?"  Theoretically, this was all going to be done by next week, so that the illusions that we were theoretically going to move down to the stage by now could be used on stage for early rehearsals.  The illusions are still up in the Opera House (which we use as a combination rehearsal area and workshop space) because we don't want to risk them getting damaged or filled with sawdust when the carpenters are rebuilding the new wall sections.  We don't have a stage curtain up yet because we don't want to fill it up with sawdust (or have the carpenters snag it with lumber they're taking out or bringing in).  And once they decide they're going to start rehearsing down there, painting the stage isn't going to happen, no matter the temperature (at least, not with the clear-coat they bought.)

So, yeah.  I'm just a little stressed about it.  I mean, if it doesn't get painted, I'm fine with that.  They actually bought all the paint for it last year, thinking they would get the painters to do it then, and it just never worked in the schedule.  So I'm okay with sticking the paint back in a corner for another year and taking a more practical approach to it (like heating the space so we can paint it in the middle of winter, when NOBODY is using the stage for anything...)  Or maybe getting an acrylic-based clear-coat that doesn't require days to apply and cure (I've used Polycrylic on stage floors before, quite successfully).  I mean, not every project requires that you buy one of the most expensive products available to do the job (I'm still trying to figure out who decided we needed that particular clear-coat...)

But, hey...I've made my reservations known.  We'll see how they decide to address them.  The stage isn't THAT bad, it would be fine waiting another year.  The paint, by itself, is pretty durable...I used the leftover paint from last time to paint the halls going into our Seance show, it had hundreds of people walk in and out of there last fall and it held up great, so JUST paint should be viable (especially if they're going to turn this into a yearly/every-other-year kind of thing).  There are viable ways to proceed.  Just need to have them decide which way they want to go (or not go, as the case may be.)

Anyhow...yeah.  Life is good.  Nothing to worry about.  Right?  *grin*

why would  an rubberized  covering, nit  be goof? it would be  good  footing. it  wouldn't shine. it might even be easier on the performers?  I dunno...its out of my wheel house.. but  i think rolling a  new  floor on line that  every few years m would be better then the paint?

::chuckles:; some times  i thing the  bosses are just  playigna game.." who can stump Roy! "

Meanwhile, at the university, everything is ramping up to the year-end grading frenzy. Just setting up the final year project assessments - 2 assessors per student - which means sending some 290-odd personalised emails out telling the little darlings what to do.

Better get back to it...

I hear you guys  and think about  me career as a Lettercarrier... I only had to put up with  weather, some  jerk customers...but mostly Mindless management who got  were they were  because  A...They couldn't handle being a  Carrier...B..they woke up one morning  as a clerk, and said, "hey? I think I'll be a supervisor.. C.. they  had a very good  set of knee pads.!

Power is out while the  replace stuff , should be back around noon, my time, post as you will, I will try to catch up