• One last thing about the hurricane, then I won’t bring it up again

    Cheryl and I were talking about it last night, and one of the things we discussed was damage and the loss of life associated with this storm. While I would never wish a storm like this on anyone, let alone on myself, I couldn’t help but wonder if we would have fared better. The news seemed preoccupied with Tampa Bay, and how we were going to finally get “the big one.” Little seemed to be said about the real threat the storm posed for the rest of the west coast. Sure, they brought it up, but they paid it about as much attention as the average viewer would a token Democrat on a Fox News talk show. I can’t help but wonder if we took it a little more seriously, based on the news coverage, and therefore were better prepared. Would the loss of life been lower if it did come here, or if the news paid a little less attention to Pinellas county and more to west coast as a whole? Let’s hope we don’t find out.

  • A new week’s resolution

    The bike is back, baby! They say that one day of exercise is better than none, and we’ll be testing that theory this week, or so it seems. What began as a week filled with promise is slowly degenerating into this summer’s pattern: when it’s not raining there’s something that needs to be done with a car. Yesterday? Lower back pain induced by hurricane preparations. Today? The pain is still there, but I rode anyway! Tomorrow? Mid-day doctor’s appointment. Thursday and Friday? My fingers are crossed, but learned helplessness is setting in.

    In other news,

    I know why the hurricane didn’t come here. Sure, meteorologists will have you believe that it was a trough of low pressure which turned the storm to the east sooner than expected, but you bought that? Here’s the scoop. I’ve got this really menacing looking Hulk shaped bottle of bubble bath in my office. (It was a gift from my co-workers, but that’s another story.) On Thursday afternoon, as we were evacuating our office, I placed my Hulk shaped bottle of bubble bath – his arms raised in a very Hulk like furry – in my window facing Tampa Bay. My thinking was, if anyone can scare away a storm it’s the Hulk, right? I think this could lead to a revolution in preventative meteorology.

  • Welcome back to reality

    The last several days seem like a surrealistic haze. A hurricane will do that to you. I spent Wednesday wondering if a storm would come this way. I spent Thursday walking around thinking about how much my surroundings would change in the next day or two. Thursday afternoon my employer let us off early to get ready for the storm. I went home and asked my wife if she thought I should skip the concert (that I was supposed to take Beth to that evening) in order to devote my energies to storm prep. Thursday night I went to a concert with my daughter. Friday morning my wife woke me up at 2:30 a.m. in a panic, asking me to get up to board up the windows, worrying that I wouldn’t have enough time later in the morning. Having failed to get back to sleep, I got up around 6 a.m. to board up the windows. I finished around 11 a.m. The rain had yet to start, but the forecast was still calling for landfall in my back yard. My parents came over and we watched a couple of movies. By dinner time we learned that the storm and all of its effects went somewhere else. The most we saw was a little bit of rain. The storm warnings were discontinued and my parents went home.

    We got lucky. In a way I feel good, but I feel bad that it was at someone else’s expense.

    Now I’m back at work, everything strangely and unexpectedly back to normal.