Irene

Hurricane Tropical Storm Irene has come and gone.  We are extremely fortunate and did not get hit as hard as others.  Our neighboring town (and by that I mean the town that is on the other side of our backyard) got hit pretty hard.

We did what we could to prepare--had non-perishable foods, bottled water for drinking, bathtub full of water for flushing toilets, and secured everything that was outside.  All we could do was sit here and wait.  We had rain that was pretty heavy, but clearly nothing compared to other areas.  The wind was crazy at times, particularly during the night when it woke us up--several hours after we thought it was all over.  But, all things considered, it was not that bad for us.

We lost power around 12:30pm on Sunday and it was back on at 4:30 Monday afternoon.  So, 28 hours with no power or running water.  We will certainly be investing in a generator soon.  The worst "damage" from the storm was to our refrigerator, since we lost a fair amount of food.  But, even that wasn't a huge deal.

Here are the few obligatory fallen tree pics from our yard:

One tree down, but note the one leaning in the upper left corner 

That tree that was leaning in the previous picture?  Yup, it fell down too.