Rain and wind...

I'm sure everyone in NYC is starting to freak out. Meanwhile, NC is clearing up. We spent the day watching relatively tame winds and rain from the porch and grazing on food around the house. The power went off around noon and we soon found out it was due to a tree which had fallen on some power lines that feed my parents' street. Surprisingly I wasn't half as stir crazy as I thought I would be in a house with 15 people and no power. No, we're pretty well adapted around here. Anticipating at least a dip in the power, my mother had most of the food for the day prepared before it cut out. Lunch was her famous corn and cheese chowder and dinner was mostly cold salads with steak that was to be grilled (my dad wheeled the grill over to the garage door to get out of the rain). The only thing that was a bust was the bean dish that we usually do in the crock pot. The whipped cream icing for my niece and my dad's birthday cake almost didn't happen but my brother-in-law the chef ended up whipping that up by hand because he's the man. We even broke out the Sterno for some coffee after dessert.

I needed to charge my phone at one point because, admittedly, checking Facebook ran my phone battery down. My dad has a 400 watt converter in his car hooked up to the cigarette lighter adapter so we went out there to escape the kids for a while and charge my phone up. This led my dad and I to take an excursion in his car to see the very tree responsible for our situation. Later on we took a walk back up that way to get closer than we could in a car. The police had blocked the road while the workers removed the tree and got the power lines back up and running. Even with them working all afternoon, the power didn't actually come back on until around 8pm. By then, even with the fading daylight we were already all in the pool because the rain had finally stopped. It's a mark of how well we fared without power that seeing the porch light click on while we were out there didn't even register with me.

Now, I sit blogging at the kitchen table, talking to my brother, drinking a gluten free beer and listening to Ra Ra Riot on Grooveshark, fully ensconced in my electrified life again. So, as I sit with my comforts and the thought of a full sunny day to swim in the pool tomorrow I say "Good luck NYC!" It's going to be a real shit storm for you guys. Have fun! And of course, be safe! Here's a video of the wind outside my parents' house: