Our Weekend With Irene

As it turns out, we did not lose power for more than one second at a time.  However, we did not have cable/internet for about three days.  This made it pretty difficult to do my grad school work... which is why I am writing this and taking a break from reading boring articles right now.

Although we were expecting the worst Saturday morning, here is the view we had from our deck on Friday night:

Pretty, right?  I like to think those clouds look like they are swirling in a hurricane, but unfortunately I checked the radar and they were definitely not hurricane clouds.

Irene was quite the popular girl, but she ain't that great. Don't get me wrong: I saw the disaster that is Vermont.  I am praying for those people.  But seriously, this is the extent of our hurricane damage:

Yeah, that's my poor crepe myrtle out front.  With one amputated arm.  Remember my friend, M, that I talked about in this post?  Well, she and her fiance live in our old townhouse in Salisbury.  They were under a mandatory evacuation.  So they stayed the weekend with us.  It actually turned out to be a great weekend.  We watched movies, drank beer, played games, drank wine, did the puzzle I bought, and drank whiskey.  All in all, it was a good time.  We didn't go outside, though, because our trees were sideways.  Our neighbor's tree (and many others in Salisbury) actually fell down completely.  And there were some tornadoes about 30 miles north in Delaware and one in our county as well.  But everyone is safe and sound.

Today was the first day of school!  I went yesterday to set my room back up after tearing it down in hurricane preparation.  It was a very pleasant day.  Not very stressful, not chaotic, and altogether "good".  My classroom is really cool this year, with "Under the Sea" as our theme.  Josh's schools were closed today.  Ocean City is in his county and they got pounded pretty good, so they were busy cleaning up today.  Josh's first day will be tomorrow.  He is excited because he starts out his year with a 3-day week (no school on Friday--labor day), then a 4-day week (no school Monday--Labor Day), and finally a 5-day week.  He is lucky.

I originally wanted to finish a spray painting project this weekend, but obviously that was out of the cards for me.  Now I am going to finish reading for grad school, take a hot bath, and go to bed!  I am exhausted!