Fudge? Cake? I just want them normal.

I'm sitting here trying to soak up all the electricity based entertainment I can before we (potentially) lose power. Ernesto is due in a couple of hours and I tend to assume we will lose power so if we don't I'm pleasantly surprised. I think the only thing we get really concerned about when we lose power is the heat. Last year when we did lose power it was well into October and was surprisingly cool right after Wilma. Right now (8:30 pm) it still feels like it's 85 degrees. Today we have vacuumed the apartment, done laundry, run the dishwasher, and I just made brownies. Roland really wanted some so he bought a mix and I made it so that if we do lose power we will have a nice sweet treat. Of course that will be great because the rice crispy treats I made will be gone by tomorrow. ;) We also charged up our weather radio/emergency light/flashlight station. It is a nice little (but not cheap) addition to our hurricane supplies. I think the only other new item was a heavy duty tarp and some duct tape in case of window breakage. We also have some lighter weight tarps for covering our electronics from last year. I did forget to get a muzzle for Bleys though. I guess that will have to wait for a while now. Anyway, wish us a good hurricane.

Thar she blows

We're gearing up for Ernesto down here. The gas stations all have lines out into the street, the grocery stores are crawling with people and those folks with homes are all out putting up their shutters (well I hope they are anyway). The weather people are still hemming and hawing about how strong a storm it will be, but at this point it looks like they are predicting it to be a category 1 when it comes ashore sometime Tuesday night/Wednesday morning. Schools have been closed for tomorrow already and the young hooligans of the apartment complex are out running around reveling in the freedom of their first hurricane day eve of the year as we speak. To think we had to wait for the morning of a snow day for them to cancel school, down here they know well in advance. The current weather is hot (it's actually about 88 degrees, but feels more like 95) and blue skies.

Roland stopped by the store a few days ago to stock up on some stuff. We have a lot of canned goods now and he stopped again today to get some more marine fuel for our fondue pot/hurricane stove. I think we are pretty much as ready as we're going to be.

and so it goes

The pile of branches, trees, and shrubs keeps growing. I think that even if they stopped adding more to it it would take weeks just to mulch what they have there now. However, they haven't stopped. Every day, all day more trucks come in and out. I just wonder what they are doing with it all. They should charge people and sell the stuff. I don't know how they would sterilize it to prevent spreading pests though. A lot of houses had roof damage from Wilma and I heard that most of the roofing businesses in the area have waiting lists of at least a year. Thats crazy. I suppose if you buy a house, you should also buy some of those blue tarps that can be a temperary fix to your roof.

Limey

We lost power again last night. It was about midnight and there was a fairly large ka-bang and a flash of light and everything went dead. From what one of our neighbors said it was a transformer blowing up or something. It was fine for the first 8 hours, but then it got really warm in the apartment and I couldn't sleep anymore. I got up and took the pooch for his morning walk. I spent most of it hoping that when I got back the air would be back on. No such luck though. It didn't make a comeback until about 1:00 in the afternoon. I'm just glad we didn't have to ditch all the food in our refrigerator again. That would have sucked as we just went shopping for lots of yummy foods.

Last night we had some fantabulous tilapia. Usually the fish at the Pulix isn't terribly appealing (sort of old and off-color), but when we were shopping it actually looked very good. Roland whipped up a breading and pan seared it. MMmmmm....tasterific.

Back to the morning walk:
While Bleys and I were out this morning we walked past the hurricane debris disposal site that they set up in the sports complex. It is crazy busy non-stop. There is a tent/camper village where people are apparently living during the cleanup. There is two vast piles of brush/trees/branches on either side of a gargantuan mound of mulch. They now have two, count them two, ba-giant industrial sized chipper-mulcher things (the kind you can stick like 5 full sized trees into at once. They are incredible. Originally they were just making one pile of mulch in the middle until it started smoking on its way to smoldering so they started trucking in out and spreading it around a bit so they wouldn't have a city block sized fire on their hands. Good call. I also saw a guy cutting a piece of plywood with a chainsaw. Fascinating, yet incredibly dangerous. I wonder how long it will take to not only get all the debris to the cleanup sites, but to actually get it all mulched and taken care of.

Eureka

I'm baaaaack! We have the internet again. Woohoo and whatnot. As you might have read on Roland's blog it has been an eventful week. We started out last Monday with Wilma. It was frightening and yet interesting at the same time. I ended up sleeping through a large portion of the second portion of the hurricane. We were sort of keyed up Sunday night and ended up staying up late (2:00 am or so) and then waking up as the weather deteriorated (about 7:30 am). We watched and waited until the eye and then took the opportunity to take Bleys outside for a bathroom break. Then as the winds picked up again I dozed off again. When I woke up it was mostly over.

Thus began our odyssey into no power living. We made out fine, cooking soup, eggs, and yes, even steak on our alcohol burner fondue pot. As my sister said, we were using our
fond-genuity. So we actually ate pretty well for the duration. Then, with all indications that we weren't going to have power for quite some time, we decided that we were going to flee the area. It want at all necessary, but very nice. We drove to Orlando, an adventure in itself and people were freaking out about gas, mostly for their generators. So they were totally willing to use up all the gas in their car driving around trying to find gas for their generators. Why not just syphon gas from your car to use with your generator? Or maybe prepare ahead of time and fill up your gas can(s) before the hurricane you KNEW was coming for like a week.

Waiting for Wilma

Currently we are looking at Monday for our date with Wilma. Although that keeps changing, as does where it will pass over. At this point Roland and I are not planning to evacuate, but are keeping an eye on what the official peeps say and how strong it is supposed to be. Roland's classes are cancelled for Monday so that's all set. He looked at the numbers today and noticed that they only have like 9 classes left. That seems very fast, but I suppose they have been in session since August. I told him he should make sure to learn them all up quick.

Leapin' Lizards

Stupid Wilma. No dance class this week. They have already cancelled classes this weekend and now Wilma isn't supposed to get here until Monday or Tuesday. Sheesh. I was looking forward to going and learning some waltz. Ballroom Bootcamp is on tonight though, so that's cool. This week is supposed to be three gentlemen learning the jive. Sounds like a train wreck waiting to happen! I think I will have to add Ballroom Bootcamp to the reality shows I would participate in. I think it would be fun, a tad stressful, but fun. Especially since real ballroom dance classes are so expensive (unless you do what Roland and I did and go community education, but then you can only go so far). I wonder if Simon has some sort of studio or something.