Come On, Irene

I keep singing "Come On, Eileen" over and over in my head with the word Irene instead.  So, have you heard?  About Irene?  She's comin'!

Apparently there hasn't been a severe hurricane in Salisbury, MD for nearly 70 years.  That is about to change.  My friend, M, moved here about two weeks ago (she just got a music teacher job here).  When her mom mentioned that the weather might be bad here, M said "Oh no!  It's perfectly safe!"  Well, two days after she said that there was an earthquake.  And five days after that a huge hurricane is supposed to hit.  Sorry, M's mom.

I will show you exactly how this is supposed to go down (found on The Weather Channel's website this evening):

Do you see that yellow dot?  Yep, that's Salisbury.  That's me.  I have to put all my instruments (that I just got out ) at school back in the closet for the weekend.  And bring my patio furniture inside.  And buy up all of the milk and bread.  And prepare for possible long periods of power outages.

So, we went to the grocery store tonight and bought milk and bread (it was crazy, by the way).  And we bought lots of dry goods in case we don't have electricity for a while.  And we are bagging all of the ice that our ice machine is making.  And tomorrow we will gather all of the candles and flashlights.  Friend M and her fiance may be coming here this weekend to stay safer.  So I also picked up some 1000-piece puzzles to keep us busy!  It's weird to think that our very first day of school (Monday) may be cancelled due to weather!  Usually that happens in the dead of winter!

I will try to keep updating about Irene (if I have power!).  If you don't hear from me in the next few days, you may need to send a raft.

On another note, I am actually in my grad school class right now.  It's the first session of my Fall course.  I was all worried after the B+ fiasco I talked about here.  So I tried so hard to prepare for this session.  Then it started.  And my professor's voice is so boring I can barely stand it.  I can type and ignore him at the same time, which is what I am doing right now.  But don't fret!  I think I will be fine.  I just caught these short phrases after desperately trying to pay attention for 51 consecutive minutes:

"...you will not be penalized for late papers."

"I want everyone to have a grade at the end of this semester."

hmmm....