| Sep. 2nd, 2004 @ 11:56 pm Rumors and Prophesies |
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Mood:  tired
Sound: Madonna - "Hollywood"
It looks like I’m not going to get any more work done until after the hurricane passes.
At about 1 pm today, just as I sat down to work, ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) velocityb0y rushed into my office, at full panic, and convinced me we had to flee down to Sarasota, to wait out the hurricane with his mom and her boyfriend… And we had to do it soon, before the freeways became clogged with evacuating Floridians. We frantically began piling everything from the pool deck and front porch into the garage, and I began to get all our important papers together, while at the same time trying to figure out how we were going to fit two cats, one bird, and one large German Shepherd (as well as all their paraphernalia) into the Explorer, along with our irreplaceable valuables and enough gear to sustain us for four or five days.
After clearing off the pool deck and front porch, we got a call from velocityb0y’s mom that brought all our forward momentum to a dead halt. Turns out, the staph infection on Rebel’s belly (currently being treated with a course of antibiotics) could prove dangerous to Bill, velocityb0y’s mom’s boyfriend, who’s still recovering from heart valve surgery. So, faced with the difficulty of finding boarding for Rebel at this late hour, coupled with our reluctance to leave her in uncertain hands, we decided to wait the storm out here.
Now, velocityb0y was getting pretty nervous at this point; he’d been reading some of the worst case scenarios, regaling me with stories of roofs being sucked into the stratosphere … wind tunnels reaching through shattered windows and ripping doors off of hinges. The anticipation was driving him crazy, and he had to do something! So, this afternoon, we followed insubstantial rumors and prophesies and stopped by Lowe’s Hardware just in time to greet a fresh delivery of plywood. We stood in line for two hours and paid an embarrassing amount of cash for 20 pieces of plywood (Lowe’s 10-piece-per-customer limit, times two), some D batteries, and an vast assortment of nails and screws. Then we spent the rest of the afternoon and evening cobbling together makeshift shutters for the windows. We blocked out three different windows and have a lot more work to do tomorrow.
Right now, I’m pretty damned tired. We accomplished a lot today … moved furniture and crap into the garage, fought through store lines and crazy traffic, constructed some really sturdy shutters. I get the feeling velocityb0y appreciated having all that crap to do. Sitting and waiting would have driven him insane; he needed something to occupy his mind and make him feel proactive.
The good news is, the latest projections show Hurricane Frances cutting through Florida well south of Orlando. If this projection holds true, we’d still be lashed with category 1 winds and upwards of 20 inches of rain (damn, that doesn’t even seem possible!), but we’d escape the insane, category 3 & 4 winds. Hell, perhaps we won’t even need to finish constructing the shutters tomorrow. Perhaps we’re set with what we’ve got.
(Then again, I get the feeling that a lot of these forecasts are just wild guesses. After all, Hurricane Charley was initially projected to pass well north of Orlando; we only had about 14-hours warning before it plowed right through our backyard.) |
okay
still cold
content
exhausted
awake
bored
impatient
angry
busy