Lift Up Your Hearts!

Friday, October 1, 2004. 7:30 a.m. Again, I don’t know who gets the credit for this; it appears to be circulating unattributed.



A few random notes:

• Our grapefruit tree still has most of its fruit!
• We had no trouble (except psychological reluctance) getting Heather and Jonathan to the airport yesterday, and the made it safely home.
• All the plywood is off of our windows, and we are rejoicing in the fact that for the first time in eight weeks the Tropical Weather Page shows no hurricane threatening to come our way.
• While life is essentially back to normal for us, there are still people without power, with “boil water” alerts, and of course with major damage.
• Porter is almost finished with what turned out to be a much bigger job of roof repair than he had planned. In some places, enough shingle parts had come off that the next rain would go right into the attic, so he bought a bundle of shingles and set out to make repairs. Once up on the roof, however, he was not content with that, but replaced the shingles that had only had their tabs broken off (rather than simply patching with roof tar, as he had done after Frances). Eventually this required another trip to Home Depot for more shingles.... And he is very stiff and sore from the unnatural effort of standing for so many hours on an inclined surface. Aspirin, extra doses of vitamin C, and many sessions with the electric massager are gradually improving the situation. He did a beautiful job, and we expect that as a consequence we can afford to wait to do the roof replacement at a more convenient time. By the way, this is one advantage of having a single-story house. Of course I was nervous with him up there, but when I think of my own father doing similar work on top of our three-story house, or of Jon and Heather’s four-story home...!!!
• Porter also repaired our garage door opener yesterday, which **sproing** broke one of its supports. Unrelated to any hurricanes, however.
• We have been pleased with our insurance company, Amica. They were not as generous as they were years ago when our roof was damaged in a hail storm, but they were certainly prompt.
• My brother in the insurance business has been sending me interesting hurricane data, which indicate that our recent bombardment is a “statistical correction” to our having had far fewer hurricanes than we should have expected in recent years. Before this, Peninsular Florida went 38 years with only one major hurricane (Andrew) making landfall. So there is no need to cry “global warming!” (at least, not in this case), nor to fear that this is the result of some major climate change. We can’t expect the peace of the previous quarter century, but neither should we worry that this year’s experiences presage what hurricane season will be like from now on.