Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Static Weather/Casualty on the Lake/Job Training for Disabled

HURRICANES AND WEATHER
Tropical Atlantic is quiet. There is an area of disturbed weather in the tropical Pacific about 1400 miles east of Hawaii. According to the National Hurricane Center, it has less than a 30% chance to develop. Will keep you posted.

Upper pattern has flattened a lot...so much so that an asssociated frontal boundary has drawn up mostly stationary over central Arkansas causing training of rain cells and flooding. This pattern will change little over the next few days--with minor flucuations in the north south position of rain producing storms.

On Thursday, there will some severe storms in west Texas (see figure at right). Highs will be in the 90s and 100s in south Texas and much of the desert southwest. The west coast of California will be in the 60s. The rest of the country will be in the 70s and 80s. Much of the country will have rain.

Houston will continue hot and very humid. Look for scattered thunderstorms on Thursday and Friday (Friday being cooler due to more cloud cover and rain cooling). Over the weekend, there is only a slight chance for rain. But, it will still be hot and humid.

SPANISH WORD OF THE DAY
Let's do camera or cámara, pronounced CAH-mah-rah. Find out what happened to my cámara in the AND MORE section.

We used a different kind (and much more expensive) cámara while shooting our award winning DVD, Let's Learn Spanish with Frank & Paco. Order your copy from www.frankandpaco.com/. You can also order from http://www.venturaes.com/, http://www.dololanguages.com/, http://www.carlexonline.com,
www.thecuriousmindstore.com/, http://www.amazon.com/, http://www.bestbuy.com/, and http://www.barnesandnoble.com/. For our English as a Second Language (ESL) version, go to http://www.frankypaco.com/.

AND MORE
Well we had our first casualty of the trip...on the dock of a restaurant called Campbell's, I was doing my 2 handed still camera vs. movie camera when I dropped the still camera. And although I thought it would stop below my feet, it rolled and skidded right into the water. Now I don't care that much about the camera...but I had snapped about 20 photos...many of which were very meaningful. I watched it sink as the turtles and huge fish (catfish?) tried to nibble at it. The camera was ruined the minute it hit the water, but there is always the hope that the memory stick might retain the photos. No point in thinking about it--it is dangerous and too deep to dive for anything in the dock water. Besides, I'll be some of those fish are 3 feet long.

We drove into Branson yesterday. Sarah loves the arcades. We also decided to stop at The Toy Museum. There was an amazingly large number of toys (more than 1 million come to find out). They claim to be the biggest toy museum anyway. Made me feel a bit old as I say some things on display that I had played with. Worth seeing at least once.

I am so proud of Megan, my step-daughter. She did not get to make this trip as she is completing finals for becoming a veterinary technician. You see, we set up this reservation a year in advance because these places book up. Poor girl has been checking in with us frequently. This is her first year to miss ever. She is making the grades!!! Monday will be her last exams. You go girl!!!

Started a new book (thanks Mary Ann--that's my mother-in-law). It's called The Shack (by William Paul Young). Will let you know what I think.

My good friend Leslie has written another fantastic article for the Chronicle. This one was especially of interest to me because it discusses how to train disabled young adults so they can get jobs and make a living--it's called SUCCESS. Please share this with your friends who have children with disabilities like autism, mental retardation, Asperger's
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nb/fortbend/news/6550990.html

Don't forget to answer the poll about you are economizing.

Gotta close and visit with the family. These times are too few and too fast.

Have a terrific Thursday everyone!
Cecilia Sinclair
Wonder Weather Woman