Go??

So here we are, post-Irene- or at least post-Irene here in DC.

 Now I know that Irene was a beyatch of a storm.  I spent a lot of Saturday watching the weather channel, yelling at the weather man to get out of the wave of the giant waves and praying that I wasn't going to witness someone bite it from a flying hunk of debris on national television.  I have a friend who lives near the beach in Conneticut and posted on facebook that they had to evacuate further inland.  I'm praying that they and their house comes through this unscathed - the pictures from Long Beach are  terrifying (did you see the lifeguard headquarters be swept away from its base with Al Roker looking on?).  And it's really sad that 10 people have died, although I'm kinda surprised that it's not more considering the frat boys who decided to go streaking the news when the hurricane hit VA Beach.

But from where I was hunkered down, Irene wasn't really more than a big rainstorm.

Saturday morning I helped my friend secure the furniture out back because last thing I wanted was a patio table going through my window.  I actually managed to use my bike lock to attach my take to the patio.  After that I went with her family to Second Watch for breakfast.  As we headed back home, the rain started.  At that point I glued myself to the weather channel and monitored Irene's progress up the coast.  Occassionally I would go out and check to see how conditions here changed, but it stayed pretty much the same - rain and little wind.  Around dinner time, I cooked up some pasta and tossed it with garlicm, olive oil, parmesan cheese, and fresh parsley that I had to go outside for a pick from one of my plants (my herbs were all moved to the patio to avoid the wind).

The electricity flickered on and off a couple of times during the day, but it never stayed off longer than a few seconds.  We did end up with a longer black out period later in the evening -around 11pm, but at that point I just switched off the light switches so that if the power came back on while I slept it would not wake me.  If anything exciting actually happened around here, I missed it - and I'm pretty sure that I am ok with it.  I will confess that I was a little confused when I was woken up by the kids running upstairs and I looked at my clock and it read 2:30 am because kids shouldn't really be running around at that hour- it took me a minute to figure out to look at the time on my iPod, which said that it was actually 7:30 am.

There doesn't appear to be any damage around the house, or around many of the houses in my neighborhood.  We were just really really lucky I guess.

Ready, Set...

If you haven't heard this week, we had an earthquake this week in DC.  Well, technically it was centered something like 80 miles away from DC, but we felt it.  Everybody has their own story about it.  Every where you go you hear somebody ask someone, "Where were you?"

Well, my story is that I was caught in the bathroom after lunch.  I could say that I was caught with my pants down, except I was wearing a skirt.  I wsa just about to flush the toilet when I noticed that all the water was vibrating, and then suddenly the toilet was vibrating, and then I was vibrating.  My first thought was "Oh god, we've been attacked - but hopefully it's just an earthquake."  My second thought was "Is it safe to flush the toilet" (It's the polite thing to do).  After the shaking stopped, I quickly rinsed my hands before heading out, where I was immediately commanded to evacuate.

Now here is the thing, I realized as I was following the masses down the emergency stairs and outside that 1) I didn't have  my glasses on me [they were sitting on my desk] 2) I didn't have my wallet or commuting ticket with me to help me get home [also sitting at my desk] 3) My cell phone was at home 4) I had left a heater going at my desk [I've been super cold somedays this summer and sometimes need to use it to warm up - Tuesday was one of those days] so if the earthquake didn't destroy my building, my heater would and finally five 5) I was wearing my two inch high heels to stand around in and not my comfy flat flip flops [which I commute inand were in my cubicle closet].  Thankfully we were allowed to go in the  building to retreive personal items after a cursory check of the building's structure, but the basic gist is that I felt woefully unprepared.

So just a few days later, we are waiting for Hurricane Irene to hit.  At first I was highly skeptical that it was going to hit us, but each day as it moves closer I become less and less convinced.  So today I went to target to stock up on goods.  I grabbed batteries and a head lamp, a radio that can use batteries, canned food and other things that don't really need heating (although even if the power goes out in my house, I could still cook because we have gas appliances.)  I also got some non-essential but nice to have things like diet coke, pop tarts, and gum.  I already have a case of water, but figure that if needed to I can boil water and then send it through the brita filter if need be (we have regular plumbing and not a well - so i think flowing water won't be too much of an issue - clean water maybe, but actually flowing no).

So that's my plan.  I'll let you know how it ends.