Good Night Irene

Hurricane Irene slammed into my city (Philadelphia,PA.) yesterday and most of last night...Being the ex-military man that I am...I was prepared for the contingency as we used to say....My wife and I made our trip to the Supermarket early yesterday morning...

We picked up TV dinners, canned goods, water, juices, snacks and batteries for flashlights...We made sure that we picked up any medications that we would need from their pharmacy. Our next stop was Lowe's..

We stopped at Lowes for plastic buckets in case their was any leakage from the ceiling. (It wasn't..) I had an idea of getting some sandbags to fortify the garage and the basement..but that was aborted...I came too late..
It seems several people had beat me to it...So I would have to cross my fingers or improvise...Another thing I learned from being in the military. (Never thought those disastor preparadeness exercises would ever come in handy.) We had first aid kits, flashlights, batteries, a working battery powered radio  ,buckets and plenty of food.  Our next and last stop was .....The Gas Station.  What if we had to evacuate??  Of course we didn't...but I was hearing reports that in New York City (which is being hit hard as I write this) they did have to evacuate parts of it... I wouldn't want to have to evacuate with next to no gas in the car...So off to Hess we went!.

After gassing up...It was home we went...I parked the car and we went inside...Thankfully, there was no power outage, unlike in other places... No flooding either.  The corner of my block has been known to flood under normal circumstances....It didn't last night.  We had power, cable (another surprise...Our cable has been known to go out if the wind blows too hard, which it was last night and early this morning.) and internet access all night.  We charged our phones immediately after getting home so that we would have access to the outside world just in case......

Then we waited!

Irene came with a fury!...High winds...Almost unending rain and it appears that it has passed as of this writing and we are all in one piece.  A soft wind is blowing.  There is light rain...but nothing like yesterday and early this morning... Good Night Irene and good riddance! Deuces Irene!