When the levee breaks

I live near the Mississippi River in Illinois.  Pretty close to St. Louis.  If anyone's been paying attention to the news lately, you may have noticed that we've gotten just a bit of rain.  Enough to breach a levee in a small town across the river from me earlier this week.

This is the local bridge, the New Clark Bridge.  It will always be called that.  Even though it's twenty years old now.  It was finished during the Flood of '93

The local landmark.  Those silos have two distinguishing marks on them now, there's a black base marking where the water level was in 1973, and roughly 13 feet higher, a red line telling people where the water crested in '93.

At the moment, we're under the '73 flood level, but just barely.

 

People here just shrug, grabs shovels, sandbags, and water pumps.  The river is home to many.  I live far enough away that I'm not effected directly, but some of my family lives on the flood plains.  One house you can see from the highway next to the levee.  

Yes, that last picture is of closed flood gates with water seeping under them.  I have a feeling that if I go back, there'd be sandbags there.

Bad blogger

I've been AWOL for awhile.  For no clear reason, really

While things have happened in my life, I just haven't had the urge to write.  It wasn't there.  It was....irritating.

So, you get a drive-by blog before I go put some make-up on to meet the guy I've been dating for six months or so, so that we can go to the symphony for his birthday.  Don't side-eye me, they're playing Pink Floyd. 

However, I enjoy classical music as well.  So, whatever.

School's done for another semester, and I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to swing another semester.  Or if I'm even going to get into the program I want.  I'll deal with that later. 

I'm knitting an absolutely fuckawesome star chart of a circular shawl called a Celestarium over on Ravelry.  As well as another beaded shawl for my best friend's wedding.  But something tells me that I may have to start that one over.  It just doesn't look right so far.  I'll have to take it to knit night or something to have it looked at maybe.  Because something about it bugging me to no end.

After the drought of last year, we've got more than enough rain.  I'll see if I can get pictures of the river levels sometime.  It's...impressive.