Tuesday it will be sunny in one of the first sunny days in a month now. Then Wednesday another storm hits. then Thursday we might be over this weather pattern for awhile (or not).
But, it's been raining now seemingly non-stop for about 2 or 3 days so far.
We took our Gasoline powered electric Generator back to Home Depot because it was leaking gasoline in such a small drip drip drip that I couldn't even find it only smell it at the time. Finally a day or two ago I moved the generator out of my garage and onto the pavement next to my garage when I finally saw what had been smelling like Gasoline which was those little rainbows the gasoline makes when it hits a wet surface about every 5 feet or so along the pavement leading to my garage.
Then my son in law from Europe who is tall and strong came out to help my wife and I because my daughter's cat who is visiting us is about to have kittens unexpectedly (she adopted a wild feral cat that came to her door in Santa Barbara but didn't know it had gotten pregnant while being wild in the forests there.)
So, since she was busy my wife and son in law tried to move the generator up onto my pickup truck. In the past I would have been strong enough to lift 300 pounds likely myself but with a hernia now this isn't any longer true. So, I got 3 2 by 4s 8 feet long and leaned them onto my pickup Truck rear gate and tied the center one with rope to a rope I had secured to another rope tied inside the truck for safety. I then tied a come along rope to the axle of the generator because it is about 300 to 400 pounds. So, my son in law pushed the generator up the 2 by 4s quite quickly and unexpectedly because he is only 30 and wanted to get it over with quickly. So, I had to just grab the come along line and haul it up by hand to keep up with him. But, all's well that ends well.
Then when we got to Home depot (my wife and I) they were supposed to send out some men to lift the generator down to the ground but when it took forever I went into customer service and told the lady we didn't just need one man but two to help us.
Then an older man that I didn't want to get hurt moving the generator came out and got a shopping basket (don't know how this would have helped). But, then I spied a cart that was flat with a top level about the same level as my truck gate in back and moved it over to my truck. By then another younger man who I had more confidence could help us came and we then the three of us wheeled it off onto this cart at about 3 feet high (or the same level as my truck rear lift gate. This worked and then all I had to do was to help push the cart through the front door of Home Depot and I was done.
They didn't have any other generators to replace this one with so we just got our money back and left it at that even though we had already bought one of those pre-fab plastic sheds that could fit our generator to keep the rain off of it while it ran outside away from the house to generate electricity. So, now we have a generator shed or potential wood shed where we can put firewood until we need to get another generator to keep food in the refrigerator from going bad and for lighting at night (and cable tv and internet) when it isn't too large a group of homes without power at one time in our area.
Thousands of people are without power between San Francisco and Big Sur and likely north of San Francisco too.
Rivers are still flooding to a greater or lesser degree and one guy built a zip line across a stream where the stream knocked their bridge out from high water to transport people landlocked the other side of the stream with no way out. They showed people using this on TV local news.
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