Speaking of disasters . . .

I hung out this evening with my friends and we got to talking about lahars. That’s when Stan told me about bleves (pronounced “blevvies”), which I’d never heard of before. Bleve is actually an acronym, BLEVE, which stands for Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapor Explosion:

A BLEVE can occur in a vessel that stores a substance that is usually a gas at atmospheric pressure but is a liquid when pressurized (for example, liquefied petroleum gas). The substance is stored partly in liquid form, with a gaseous vapour above the liquid filling the remainder of the container.

If the vessel is ruptured — for example, due to corrosion, or failure under pressure — the vapour portion may rapidly leak, lowering the pressure inside the container and releasing a wave of overpressure from the point of rupture. This sudden drop in pressure inside the container causes violent boiling of the liquid, which rapidly liberates large amounts of vapour in the process. The pressure of this vapour can be extremely high, causing a second, much more significant wave of overpressure (an explosion) which may completely destroy the storage vessel and project fragments over the surrounding area.

This one is spectacular:

I’m not sure what’s more impressive — the sight of the fuel car rocketing 3600+ feet, or the fireball which follows.

D.

What am I thinking? I can’t move here!

Something new to fear: lahars.

An eruption of Mount Rainer would include lava flows like those that scientists have discovered from past Rainier eruptions – flows that stretch more than nine miles from the volcano’s peak. In and of themselves, these scalding rivers of molten rock will be the least of our worries. What’s far scarier is the prospect of a massive, eruption-triggered lahar that travels more than 60 miles per hour down the side of the mountain.

“Lahars can be directly triggered from the eruptions because there’s a lot of snow and ice on the surface [of Mt. Rainier],” says Pierson. “You dump out a bunch of hot rock and have it flow over all that snow and ice, you’re gonna produce a lot of water from melting snow, and mix it with the rock to form devastating lahars.”

The largest mudslide the world has ever seen occurred on Mount Rainier 5,600 years ago. The Osceola Mudflow dumped 10 billion cubic meters of mud over more than 200 square miles. Six other massive lahars have occurred since then. The most recent happened only 600 years ago and didn’t require an eruption to begin. With a 4.5 billion cubic meter glacier resting atop Rainer, lahars that stretch more than 50 miles are not unimaginable, which puts the city of Tacoma at risk of being submerged in mud, trees and volcanic ash.

What do you think, folks — should I risk a lahar?

D.

Tacoma, day two

I think today’s interviews went well. The Assistant HR Director told me, “I think you would fit in very well with our organization,” to which I almost gave her my most effusive wrinkled-nose smile and almost said, “I bet you say that to all the candidates.”

No, I’ll bet she really liked me. I told her stories (hey, she said she liked stories) and I answered all of her HR-ish questions with something more than a monosyllabic grunt. In particular, I managed to answer the super-tricky “What is it that interests you about our organization?” with something more logical than just, “You’re hiring.” I suspect she appreciated that.

Of arguably greater importance, the doc who would be my partner spent something like an extra hour with me at lunch. I’m going to take this as a good sign, even if things did get off to a rocky start. First thing, he took one look at me and said, “My GOD, how long ago did you take THIS photo?”

. . . and he flashed a page he had printed out from my medical blog, wherein I looked like this:

No way to answer that question but the honest, “Um, er, ten years ago?” (At least?) But jeez. Back when I still had some hair. And back before private solo practice had stamped out all my joie. I suppressed the urge to ask for a ten-year-old photo of him.

Just got back from dinner, a trendy fusion Japanese place called Two Koi, where I ate kaki kushi (bacon-wrapped oysters grilled in a mild teriyaki sauce), calamari strips, a teensy sushi platter, and lava roll (imagine futomaki topped with maguro and that Thai spicy/sweet sauce, what’s it called?) Not bad, but nothing knocked my socks off, either. Before dinner, I made it to the University of Tacoma bookstore 5 minutes before closing and picked up Carl Hiaasen’s Lucky You, best I could manage with so little browsing time.

Now I’m debating whether I should sit around and veg, finish my Judith Ivory, maybe watch some TV, or go driving around the area. I have such a nice hotel room (23rd floor overlooking the harbor!) that the temptation to veg is great. OTOH, how often do I get to go cruisin’?

D.

Nothin’

Just spent the last forty minutes watching George Carlin videos on YouTube, wondering which one I should choose for an RIP, and thinking, “Nope. No. NSFW. Naw, wouldn’t do.”

It’s the damned job search. I keep imagining that these folks are looking over my shoulder and that none of them are quite as out there as I am. Obviously, there’s plenty here at Balls & Walnuts to offend a potential employer, but I’m counting on people not to look any deeper than the first page. Folks are lazy that way.

Logical would be for me to realize that they’re too lazy to google me, let alone explore my websites, and that I can safely say whatever the hell I please so long as I don’t refer to them by name. (Bad idea. People DO google themselves.)

But in any case, I’m tired, I want to shower and shave and go to bed, but I still have to pack and I still have to type up Jake’s homework for the next three days. So yeah um nothin tonight I’m afraid, just a load of blather. I’m flying to Tacoma tomorrow and staying at a pretty nice-looking place. Maybe I’ll get me some decent food tomorrow night and blog about it. That’ll cheer me up.

Wish me luck!

D.