Overcast with a bit of drizzle this early Thursday on California’s north coast — and warmer than expected as yesterday afternoon and evening were pretty chilly adding to the wet air.
We’re here now, though, that’s something.

And something, too, was last night with no tsunami warnings from a 6.7 earthquake right off Canada’s Vancouver Island — just another insignificant shaker. However, a couple of aftershocks — a 5.0 and a 4.2 — does raise the concern level.

(Illustration found here).

The big news event today is personal — on this date seven years ago, April 24, 2007, my blog, Compatible Creatures, made its debut on the InterWebs. And the sound of rejoicing and merrymaking could be heard resonating  across the land.
Yeah, right.

Seven years seems like a long time — sometimes so, sometimes not — and yet April 2007 was way-way further back. A time on the other side of a lot of shit. As in: Barack Who?
And: Sarah Who?
And: Where’s that $22 trillion sucked out of America a year later?
All gone in the mists of time — except for Barack and Sarah, they’re still here, of course. The US and the world was a way-different place with a different agenda and a different outlook. The most-biggest whiplash between then and now is “climate change.” Although I’d heard the phrase before, mostly paired with “global warming,” the reality of our deteriorating environment was still a blank page — later on in 2007, the now-watershed now famous fourth assessment report from the IPCC opened the floodgates: The headline findings of the report were: “warming of the climate system is unequivocal”, and “most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.”
And here we are seven years later with our air at 400 ppm of carbon — what can we say?

My first post was a literary gemstone: “Woo-hoo!” And that was it. (reality check here). And I did a second post that same day — I can’t remember the circumstances.
In those days, I lived in the town of San Luis Obispo, located about 10 miles inland, maybe less from the Pacific along California’s central coast, about 70-80 miles north of Santa Barbara — a charming, and rich, place. Cal Poly is located there, so the region has a youthful appearance, with Beamers traveling in packs.
I’d just gotten a my first laptop, (“I gotta Dell!”), but no Internet connection, so all my postings and online surfing was mostly conducted from the most-wonderful Linnaea’s Cafe and coffeeshop via their WiFi hook-up. Located just a couple of blocks from my apartment, Linnaea’s was the intellectual center of SLO town — a great place to relax. I moved six weeks later to Northern California.

And the blog began. The initial post here was made by my IT guy, announcing the major unveiling, but the next one was mine, and in its entirety:

In an age where events are known so fast and everybody just about everywhere can instantly become aware of every corner of the globe even the smallest little word can carry a big weight.
And the little word here today is “palliate,” which means to try and make a wrong or an offense seem less severe, mitigate the circumstances.
And palliate is just what the Bush Black House is now doing with the announcement that Scott Bloch, Bush-appointed head of the US Office of Special Counsel, will lead a sweeping investigation into Karl Rove’s politicking with taxpayer money and breaking a ton of federal laws while doing it.
Bloch himself was recently investigated by the IG of the Office of Personnel Management for pushing a right-wing agenda down the throats of federal employees.
So all Bloch is doing is an obvious attempt to try and bury Rove’s political wrongdoing by creating and intense investigation and then, By Golly, there was no indication of any lawbreaking on Rove’s part. Bush/Cheney/Rove are just trying to palliate the whole mess.

Lie, lie, and monkeys can fly.

The title was ‘Word,’ and most/a great deal of my posts to follow were about the horror of George Jr.’s tenure as president and the war in Iraq, which in April 2007 was being calmed by the famous “surge” and so not so.
And now 1,707 posts later, here we be.