Thu Aug 21, 2008
Boys Will Be Boys
There's just something wonderfully stupid about this picture that I came across yesterday in our local newspaper's photo coverage of Tropical Storm Fay.
Take a few boys, give them the day off from school, and then provide a flooded canal next to the street, a pickup truck, and a wake board and you've got the perfect recipe for either:
1) A great memorable boyhood experience
2) A painful lesson in why combining the things above is not a good idea.
Either way, you gotta love the capacity that boys have for the foolhardy, dangerous, and totally stupid things that they get themselves up to.
Wed Aug 20, 2008
Snow Day for Floridians
Tropical Storm Fay has come and gone, and as you can see from the radar images down below what we mostly received here in South Florida was a whole lot of rain. Steady winds for about 24 hours and some real blustery moments, but for the most part Fay didn't give us all that much.
Except for a day off of course! Sort of a snow day for us as schools and most employers close their doors and everyone "hunkers down" and prepares to flee into the safe room. OK, most of us are a lot more experienced these days, after going through 4 hurricanes since 2004, so for the most part I imagine folks just stayed home, watched the Weather Channel, or found other ways to entertain themselves at home. We got a little stir-crazy ourselves in the afternoon, so we hopped in the car (against all official advice) and took a short cruise over to the beach to watch the wind blow the tops off the waves and see mountains of water that the storm was piling up against the beach.
But for the most part Fay was a welcome break, even if schools were only able to get the first day behind them then take a day off and have the second day of school today. A bit weird, but part of life here in Florida these days, where tropical storms that bring lots of rain to areas that are too dry--and a free day off--are actually welcomed.
(Best source of cool stuff for weather geeks? Definitely Weather Underground where these radar images were found.)
Wed Aug 30, 2006
In the Teeth of Tropical Storm Ernesto
Whoo boy! This is one vicious storm.
Not.
I honsestly believe that the greatest wind generated by this particular storm was caused by the TV guys and gals who fulminated and conjectured and speculated about what might happen with this particular storm. Like how it might turn into a Category One hurricane once it gets out over the Florida Straights, and how it might generate strong, heavy, flooding rains where I live.
Actually, none of that has happened, and while it is a blustery rainy day, there's no high sustained winds to take down power lines and disrupt infrastructure. So that's good.
But there are two bad parts to a storm like this. First, many of us busted our humps getting ready for this storm and for little reason. I admit that I did some storm prep here, boarding up the large windows in the front of the house and putting a tarp on the roof to prevent further damage inside from the leak that we developed two years ago. (That wasn't supposed to be necessary since we were supposed to have a new roof by now, but that's another story.)
Secondly, when a storm is over-hyped people become jaded and when the next tropical system comes along they'll look back at Ernesto and say "Jeez. I busted my hump getting ready for Ernest and for no reason whatsoever. Maybe this will be another Ernesto and I can skip all that."
So, it's a day off for all of us and a day off from school. The weather is pretty messy, so it's probably best that we're all at home today watching the trees blow around and the radar showing how hard it's raining somewhere else.
But all in all, we're thankful that Ernesto has turned out to be a bit of a sissy. I'll take my tropical storms like this every time.
Sun Oct 30, 2005
Neener, Neener: We Have Electricity
Far be it from me to gloat, but we have electricity again. To those of you who don't? Well, I could write some comforting words of encouragement, but to be honest that's not how I feel. I'm happy for me and for us. I'm sorry you don't have power yet, but the truth is, all I feel like doing is my own little happy dance around the warm glow of an incandescent bulb that is actually plugged into the wall, and not an extension cord snaking through the house.
Does that make me a bad person?
Will Today Be the Day for Electricity?
Things are inching ever-so-slowly back to normal here following Hurricane Wilma. We're actually hoping that today will be the day that power returns and we can resume our regular modern existence, with luxuries such as a refrigerator that works and lights that come on merely by flipping a switch.
Last night after returning from a friend's house we turned on to the main street leading to our home to see--wonder of wonders--streetlights! And what's that? Everyone on that street seems to have power! Look! Porch lights! And the unmistakable glow of televisions in their windows!
Asa we rolled down the street we could see block after block where the lights were most definitely on. Oh my. We won't have to live in the dark tonight. Won't have to light candles and stumble around with flashlights. We won't have to get by with generator power, a single lamp, and put up with the roar of generators in the neighborhood. Bliss! Joy!
And then we turned onto our own street. No porch lights. No blue glow of TV's through our neighbors' front windows. Drat! (Or similar words to that effect.)
But we're looking on the bright side, or would if we could see it from here. As we left to go to dinner last night we saw the trucks from the power company working away. Perhaps it just got too late for them to finish our street. They'll be back first thing this morning to take care of us, right? There's no major problem like there was last year that kept us in the dark for a week longer than all of the neighboring streets like last year, right? We'll have power today. Right?
Well, we're hoping anyway.
Sat Oct 29, 2005
175,000 Students Out of School
Life inches back towards normalcy here in Palm Beach County, with one major hurdle still facing us and one question in the back of all parents minds--When will schools open again?
Right now all schools are closed in our county, affecting all 175,000 students and all 167 of our schools. As of yesterday (Friday) only 42 schools have power, which makes it seem highly unlikely that schools will open on Monday. The decision will come down later today, but considering not only the lack of electricity in so many schools and the still treacherous conditions on the roads, with 90% of traffic signals inoperable, it appears that we'll be on an extended holiday a bit longer.
Of course, for many parents, this is hardly a holiday. How do you entertain the kids when you can't go anywhere or do much of anything--at least not the usual things that most kids would do. With many parents going back to work on Monday as business and government offices open again, the dilemma will be what to do with the kids.
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