Eye of the storm

After This American Life, I noticed it had stopped raining. This called for my first venture out of the day, a walk into the Heights and along the Promenade. Several below-grade entrances to row houses were sitting in a good inch of water, but otherwise it was clean and scrubbed down all around, the results of that good hard rain that washes all the scum off the streets. My favorite sinkholes were progressing: one I'm sure is going to swallow the entire Heights, sucking the Fruits into the old salt mines below.

A curtain of fog hung over the Emerald City, making all the buildings across the East River look the same height. The sky was blue gray, the water gray green. Low flying jets, unseen, Dopplered overhead. There was quite a bit of wood floating on the water. The Floating Pool Lady, a barge converted into a .5 Olympic-sized pool, complete with cabanas -- no kidding -– that’s been moored under the Promenade since the fall, was riding high on the swollen water.

On the radio they had just said that this was the wettest local Sunday on record. I think that’s what they said, although that’s kind of a silly measure. The wettest day, on the other flipper, is something to be impressed about. There’s still four more hours of the day to go. On the Faraway Island when we have a nor’easter it rains for three days.