Heavy Wind and Rain, But We Still Have Power, Inshallah

7:37 this morning

7:37

A rough night, with howling, winter like winds, in the thirty mph range most likely, gusts up to 50 from what I have seen on the weather channels.  Right now it has stopped raining, though it comes and goes.  I was up at 6:00, able to get on line, was dropped for about 15 minutes but now I am back on.  Evie is still sleeping in the TV room, so I am not sure if the TV works but since I have Internet, I assume it is.  We have been lucky so far, most likely some small branches down, but as far as I can see, no major problems.  I know Beth lost power in Darien yesterday about 4:30, Jill and family hunkered down in their basement  in Bristow for the night but as far as I know, they did not lose power.  And it's strangely warm, about 51 degrees this morning, such a contrast to the snow in West Virginia and Ohio.  The storm tracker has Sandy moving up this way on Wednesday, hopefully it will have calmed down a bit

Yesterday, we got ready for any emergency, as I went off to Wegmans, fairly empty of people actually. and picked up some food stuffs, just in case we have a problem.  We are always prepared for the worst, at least for a couple of days of loss of power, with water, food, batteries, and of course, we have the lake to flush toilets if necessary.  It is not fun waiting around for the worst to happen, watching the news, as the storm teams stand in knee deep water, talking about storm surges.  And it's no fun to be without electricity, which over six million people appear to be, with more to come. It makes you appreciate how lucky we are to have consistent electricity, gas, cable and Internet in our modern lives.  Life without any of these would seem unbearable, yet little over a hundred years ago, none of these things were available to most people.  When my Internet went out this morning,  I went upstairs to get my book, ready to read it instead of the NYTimes or Washington Post on line and thought about how old fashion that seemed, no radio or TV or Internet.

I am listening, however , to CNN on our portable Sirius Radio, which Evie bought just for occasions like this, where we might not have electricity.  I am using the batteries at the moment, so as not to wake up Evie who probably had a bad night because of the howling winds.

Yesterday afternoon, we mostly read and watched or listened to the news, as the winds picked up, the rains came, quite heavy at times.  I was antsy, wanting to go outside for a walk or hike, our usual routine but the weather made it too unpleasant.  We had wine and cheese and crackers before dinner, relaxing and watching the angry lake disappear into darkness.  We had cabbage rolls and sauerkraut for dinner, along with mashed potatoes (my favorite with this dinner), salad and pumpkin rolls.  We caught up on some of the TV series we had missed over the weekend, Homeland which continues to keep our attention, and The Good Wife, which is getting a bit silly.  We watched New York and much of New Jersey continue to degrade,  on the TV and went to bed around 11:15, me upstairs, Evie down in the TV room.  I was bothered by the howling winds for a bit but was finally able to get to sleep.