flirts with Teppy

Hey, baby....you so sexy, even hurricanes are hitting on you!

(Er, see, as an example of my flirting abilities, that attempt might just illustrate why people don't flirt with me.)

Seriously, Laura -- how's everything down there?

Laura!

(there is a very inappropriate response about "blowing" trying to come to life better it doesn't.) Laura...hey.

Hee. I had to tag that Steph.

Things are odd. I did a detail post in Natter. We have generator power at home and the office. Boil order on the water still. Gas becoming more available. Everything is a big mess with trees and power lines down all over.

My house did ok. Lost the pool screening and a few roof tiles. 2 mango trees and an orange lost. All the fruit is on the ground. It looks like fall up north with all the leaves blown off the trees. Pitch black at night.

The kids are supposed to do the trick or treat thing this afternoon for safety. I can't imagine them walking around at night with all the debris and no lights.

The eye of the storm was over 100 miles long so a lot of people are in the same boat. I watched the whole thing from my sliding glass doors on the side of the house away from the wind. Very dramatic.

Good to see you, Laura! I'm glad the damage wasn't as bad as it could have been. (off to go check detailed post in Natter)

Laura! MWAH!!! I'm so glad to see you.

More detail because internet!

The storm came in 2 parts. The first half arrived about 6AM Monday. I got up and sat by the east side doors to watch the awesome wind. Trees bending over, branches breaking and flying past. I noticed I could see my neighbor's house better than ever so some big trees must have been missing. The eye arrived at 10 or 11 or so. All the people around us ignored the warnings and walked around to survey the damage during the 45 minutes of calm. Lots of trees down, but it didn't look bad. The radio was saying that the 2nd half wouldn't be so bad. They lied.

The back side of the storm was horrific. We had the whole family pushing with all our might to keep the front door from blowing in while Brendon pounded shims around the edges. They held. We piled all his weights there too. I could hear the roof tiles tumbling and see them falling in the pool. The door for the screen enclosure, a couple of the braces and much of the screening blew off. Power poles that were leaning at a 45 during the eye were now upright because of the wind direction change. It went on forever.

We hadn't purchased a generator because we had planned on going up north if a big storm was coming. This was supposed to barely be a hurricane by the time it got to our side. Instead it picked up steam on the trip over the everglades.

After the storm Brendon became chain saw guy and helped clear the street and people's yards. For the last week all the kids have been playing in the street and park. Bonfires at night with the debris. The social situation is fun, although they stopped selling booze, the stinkers.

We plan on working this week on generator power since we have to get stuff done. We have the computers all connected to a big UPS which is powered by the generator. Not exactly clean power, but what ya gonna do? A couple of the programmers don't have power so they are showering and keeping their food at our house. It'll work out. Just send some cold front ~ma our way because A/C is too much for the generators to handle.

xpost+ from Natter, my 2 cents...

My take on DST is making the timekeeping (of man-invention) somewhat closer to nature/God/Gaia/etc. In fact I think we should have more divisions, set it back an hour more for July and August.

There's still too much sunlight before you have to get up in the summer.

I mean you can get up at 4:30 am, but I'm not so hot on the 8:30 pm bedtime that would warrent.

Good lord, Laura. Love to you and yours!

Erika, most excellent reading your interview! I'm aglow with inappropriate 'That's my Erika!' sisterly pride.

Must say, though, that this:

In the UK, much of society is still ruled by churches, especially in villages where we have "Parish Councils

boggled my mind. Dude. Society is not ruled by churches. The UK is WAY more secular than the US. There are churches, and it's something that some people do get involved with, but ruled by? Really, really, REALLY no.

Blah. I checked the power company website and the estimated restoration date for my area is Nov 22nd.

Off to head home to do the Halloween thing. We have phone at home, so I'm not sure why we don't have DSL. I'll mess with it some more. If it doesn't happen I'll be back at the office later....