I Survived Ike!!!

Tree through fence.

Large Branches

Neighbor

Neighbor

Man! What a crazy bunch of days!!! That Ike was one crazy mother!!! Today is the first day since Sunday that I've had Internet service so I apologize.

So, last I left off, Jim and I were hunkered down on Sunday trying to survive the force of Ike. We ended up losing power around 3:30 PM (just in time to put us out of our misery that was the Bengals). Jane, my neighbor came over (a bit frightened and bored) and we commenced drinking lots of vodka. We went back and forth between her house and our house, checking on dogs and eating (I had to reheat my chicken tettrazini on the grill using my cast iron skillet). Dad and Becky never lost power so at around 7 PM, Jim took all our perishables (and Jane's) to their house. School was cancelled around 9:30, I passed out around 10:45, Jim got home and thank you Jesus, the power came back on around 1:30 AM. We were soooooo lucky! About 650,000 Duke customers in the area (out of 800,000) were without power and there are still (Lisa) those who haven't gotten it restored. Ugh!!! Can you imagine? There are still streets in my neighborhood that are closed because of downed trees and live, fallen power lines.

School was cancelled Tuesday as well though many schools (Cincinnati Public) were out through Wednesday, Thursday and even tomorrow. Unbelievable!

They said that 84 of the 88 Ohio counties had damage from the storm. Maggie in Columbus was out of power for, what, 1 1/2 days? Phew!

Jim and I lost a tree which took out part of our fence (and I just happened to be looking out the window and watched it go, it was scary). In addition, we lost lots of huge tree limbs and the number of leaves that littered our lawn, well, it might as well have been November with the amount of raking we had to do. Pretty much all our neighbors lost at least one tree but thankfully, no one had structural damage to their house. We really were lucky!

One thing that amazed me: In a neighborhood with trees, thousands upon thousands of trees all over the place, in 60-70 mile per hour gusts of wind, with trees falling left and right, what do you think my neighbors are doing? Yup, sight seeing, jogging, bike riding. Looking at all the damage BEFORE the storm has even passed. It was crazy. People and their stupidity amaze me.

Okay, I'm going to go read my book - which I'll update about later. See ya!