It’s a matter of risk calculation. Yes, the hurricane could take the roof off, and then having covered the windows looks silly. But high winds are a lot more likely to heave a branch through a window than to take off a roof. We make reasonable preparations, but no one can prepare for everything that might happen.
Back to work.
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Perhaps the best waking-up news is that Frances has diminished slightly to a Category 3 storm, though there’s still plenty of time for change, good or bad, before she hits us. And Category 3 is quite bad enough!
Question for my youngest brother: I’m seeing a one-to-one correspondence recently between your visits to Maine and hurricanes plowing through Central Florida. Can we persuade you to stay home when Heather, Jon, and Jonathan next plan to visit? :)
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10:00 p.m. The end of a long, but not unpleasant day. The worst news of today is that Heather, Jon, and Jonathan will not be coming as planned Friday night. Under the circumstances, maybe that’s good news. With the Orlando airport closing at noon tomorrow, they have no choice but to reschedule. As disappointed as we are by not getting to see the World’s Most Adorable Grandson and his family, we are happy to keep 1000 miles between them and Frances. Plus—well, it’s one thing to go through an unknown number of days without power, and quite another to go through the same number of days with a baby in diapers and no functioning washing machine. :) (More)
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But it doesn’t matter for our street, now. Thanks to the help of several neighbors, we were able to put much more in the trailer than I had thought, and have only one load, instead of three, which makes a great difference. Neighborliness is the best part of a hurricane!
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Although we waited in line nearly two hours, it was not unpleasant, except in thinking of all we could be doing at home. Everyone was friendly, talkative, and eager to help one another out. We made a point, as we left, of thanking the Home Depot employees for working today, when I’m sure they would much rather be working at their own homes.
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It’s dark, so it’s time for indoor work: making ice, cleaning, organizing, updating the website.... We’re working optimistically to get the house ready for The Worlds’ Most Adorable Grandson. I promised a Poor Man’s Cake for our neighbor who is recovering from surgery; guess I’d better get to work. See you in the morning!
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12:45 p.m. Too late. All the Home Depots in the area are out of plywood. THAT’s what we should have done last weekend instead of yardwork (Saturday) or Disney (Sunday). We’re fine with batteries—good thing, because they’re out of those, too—but I’ll need to make a trip to the pool store and the grocery store. I had been planning to go grocery shopping Friday, to buy what we need for the Daleys’ visit next week. I guess that had better wait, but I should pick up a few staples while I can.
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Wednesday, September 1, 2004. Yes, it’s true. While we are still recovering from Charley, Frances has us in her sights. Not locked in, I trust—but right now we are sitting on the bull’s-eye. We are praying that Frances will take a harmless turn out into the Atlantic, not only because we don’t want to deal with another hurricane, but also because Heather, Jon, and Jonathan are supposed to be flying in Friday night. Jonathan, of course, has never been here, and Heather hasn’t been home since before she got married. We’ve been looking forward to this visit for a long time. However, just because we went through a hurricane with Janet, that doesn’t mean we’d like to experience one with Heather to even the score!
We still have many of our jugs of water in the freezer from last time. I’ve started freezing more, because we discovered that they are a wonderful way of having both ice and a fresh water supply. I just finished measuring our windows, and we hope to go out for plywood later today. (For those of you new to these updates, when Charley came we discovered that our window-protection boards had disappeared with our move.)Permalink | Read 2104 times | Comments (0)
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Life for us has been essentially back to normal for a week, but there are still people around here without power. The more local the damage is, the longer it takes to fix. Whatever knocked our power out apparently did so for a large number of people, so that repair had high priority.
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Disasters seem to bring out the best and the worst in people. You hear about looting and price-gouging, but after Charley I’ve heard more about kindness and sharing. Costco opened its gasoline pumps to non-members, and when the regular grade of gas was gone, sold premium for the price of the lower grade. In one neighborhood a longstanding feud was broken as neighbors united around a common need. On our street, post-Charley cleanup brought many of us outside at the same time, evoking conversations among people who hadn’t said more than hello for weeks or even months. People shared tools, information, advice, and labor.
Not everyone’s definition of the necessities of life is the same, but one neighbor and I found common ground as we shared computing resources in an effort to keep our personal webpages updated!Permalink | Read 2481 times | Comments (0)
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