There are a bevy of storm products out there to make your hurricane experience more enjoyable, and there’s nothing like two close calls in the span of three weeks to put a little slack in those purse strings and loosen the crease in those wallets! Yesterday, your roaming blog correspondent walked into a 3M storm-window shop (it happened to be right next door to my daughter’s pediatrician, where my wife was taking care of some home healthcare business). It turns out that protecting your windows from flying debris is just as expensive as I thought it was. Starting at about eight dollars per square foot of protection, you can have easy to install metal shutters. Ringing in at about nine dollars per square foot of protection, you can have state of the art, 3M film, sealed to your existing windows. “For A LOT more money” (as the 3M representative put it) you can have roll-away shutters. Anywhere from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars, you can get a gasoline powered generator for those electric appliances you just can’t live without (provided you’ve hoarded enough gasoline).

Cha-ching Batman, that’s some serious coin! Storm preparedness is the new growth industry in Florida. I was walking out of the store to meet up with Cheryl, who had finished up her business with the doctor’s office, when I spotted a car in the lot just outside the 3M shop. The bumper sticker said “I (red heart) Capitalism.”

**Author’s note: the car with the bumper sticker is a product of my imagination.