One thing I have learned for certain in my 34 years on this Earth: people freak the fuck out when it comes to in-climate weather. Growing up in the Southeast, my childhood was warm and humid. On the rare occasion when snow would fall it felt like winning the lottery...as long as you got to stay at home. Driving was a nightmare. One inch of snow, and everyone acts like it’s the first day of Driver’s Ed class. Milk and bread are non existent on the shelves in the grocery store. My family was big into camping. The Big Guy had me sleeping in a tent before I was a year old. So a massive power outage due to a snow storm meant he got gleefully excited to using the camp stove in the kitchen. We had a wood burning stove to heat the house so being comfortable was never an issue. Well, except for my brother who would get dragged out into the cold to chop firewood. I think that may have been his most hated chore growing up.
Cut to my current life in New England. People do snow up here fine because it’s just part of scene. Hurricanes on the other hand they do poorly. The Southeast has hurricanes down. It’s just part of the scene. When a massive storm is forecasted to hit New England it’s akin to Southerner’s snow panic. Last year’s hurricane was epic for the region. It decimated parts of Vermont which is crazy since they usually blow out before getting that far inland. My town has one of the largest populations of old growth trees. This means that region of the state I live in was without power for over a week due to tree limbs breaking and trees falling. The city of Hartford is still working to replace trees that were lost from last year’s storm.
We got through that storm okay. Our kitchen is equipped with a gas stove so that wasn’t an issue. Unfortunately, we lost heat despite having gas heat. The heater relies on electricity to get warmness up into the house. We trouped along like good little campers until it was warmer outside than in our house. Our house is old, and it just couldn’t get enough heat from outside to get the inside comfortable. We were sleeping with hats on until I had a bright idea: set up the 2 man tent in our loft. I attached the rain fly to keep maximum heat in. Sure enough we were sleeping in toasty warmth, and set up most activities in there until power was restored. Our three cats were the happiest with this situation. My boy, Moe Sonic Smith, was extremily pleased with the tent as it was filled with plenty of cozy places for him to nap. He was the saddest on the day I dismantled the tent.
Cut to this year. Hurricane Sandy or Frankenstorm is supposed to be as big and bad or possibly worse than last year’s storm. I’m annoyed b/c I need to travel by plane on Thursday, and don’t want to deal with the hassle of delays. People are already panicking. The grocery and hardware stores will have tumble weeds drifting through the aisles at this point. I suspect he local REI is probably out of Coleman fuel by now. It's around five o'clock right now, and the winds outside are kicking. Flooding is happening all over coastal Connecticut.
We are as ready as we can be for this. After the joy that was "C'mon Irene" TheGirl and I created an emergency box. Cell phones are charged to the hilt, and we even have our old dumb phones charging too in case our smart ones lose juice. I went to the comic book store on Saturday so I'm stocked up on mah funny pages. We've eaten a lot of stuff out of the freezer in the past couple of days so we won't lose it. TheGirl has the DS all charged up for maximum portable game playing. Puzzles are in the waiting. Of course there's plenty of booze. I'm Southern we always have backup libations. Ain't no party like a hurricane party. The only down side is that I can't find my favorite headlamp. I have my old one from the YHC days, but it's clunky and not LED. Also, my new one has an emergency flash setting so if we decide to have a midnight rave in the loft I got the strobe light. So maybe no midnight rave if I can't find it. I will probably find it after this storm is over. We fully expect to lose power, and we're prepared for it.
There's some crazy, fundamentalist preacher that's saying Hurricane Sandy is all the LGBT communities' fault. Silly me. I was unaware my awesome was gonna blow everybody away! TheGirl and I will try to keep teh awesome contained, but no promises. Who knows maybe the avatar is trying to bring balance back?
