My Hurricane Story

I survived Sandy with little more than toussled air and cold feet.

To put this in perspective, it is about 145 miles from my house to Atlantic City–where Sandy came ashore–and about 130 miles from New York City to Atlantic City.  New York City was on the NE side of the hurricane and I was on the WNW side.  New York got slammed and the tree in my front lawn lost some leaves.  Moral of the story, pick the correct side of the hurricane to be on, or you could get slammed.  As Sandy moved across Pennsylvania it came within 90 miles of my house.

We had winds all night and the non-stop storm reporting told me that we had 40mph sustained and 60mph gusts, but the absolute silence at 5am on Tuesday was all the sign I needed to know that the worst had past.  I did find a pristine, nearly complete roof shingle in the front yard and a few smaller shingle pieces in the back yard, but a quick color check told me that it wasn’t my roof.  No wonder the full shingle blew off the neighbors roof, it only had a single nail hole and that one was too close to the top edge.

I never did hear our rainfall total for the whole storm.  The weather maps kept changing as Sandy moved across the area and they would show the instantaneous rainfall totals, but no total, total rainfall.  It rained from late Saturday into Tuesday night at anything from torrential, sideways rain to gentle drizzle.  I’d guess at somewhere between 4-6", based on the sogginess of the ground.

And it got cold!  By Sunday night, the cold front from the west was upon us and boy, have my toes been cold since.  I guess I prefer a gradual cooling off period, like all of October?

I did get some soap made on Tuesday. Finally.  I’ve had all the ingredients for nearly two weeks and I had to throw out the goat milk and get more because it was taking me too long to get started.  I used the cold weather to cool down my goat milk and lye mixture and I made a 5lb batch of olive, palm, palm kernel, rice bran, coconut and shea butter soap with a mixture of tea tree oil and eucalyptus oil for fragrance.  I unwrapped the soap yesterday and it smells and looks really nice.  I was concerned that the eucalyptus smell was going to be too strong, but either some of the oil boiled off or it was well integrated into the soap itself.

When I was outside mixing my goat milk and lye I had a great idea.  Hurricane honeysuckle soap.  I collected enough rain water (hurricane) to use for a batch of honeysuckle soap.  The honeysuckle frangrance is a bit light on its own, but I haven’t found an alliterative alternative (oh, I like that alliteration too) to go with the ‘H’ in hurricane.

Today is the first day of NoJoMo, but I think it’s just a coincidence that I’m writing today.  I wouldn’t hold my breath that I’ll make it through the whole month, or even this whole week, but it does offer some suspense now, doesn’t it?

I voted last night.  I will be an election judge on Tuesday and so I won’t have a chance to vote that day.  Luckily, Maryland has early voting–who, in their right mind, could ever think that early voting is not a great idea?–so I can avoid an absentee ballot and still get my vote in.  I’ll keep my vote secret (ha! like my political views are a secret) until after Tuesday, but I will report that Maryland has questions on the ballot about gerrymandering (get a load of MD Cong Dist 3!), the Dream Act (allowing certain illegal aliens to attend MD colleges for in-state tuition), same sex marriage (any bets on whether MD is the first state in which gay marriage wins at the ballot box?) and expanded casino gambling (see my earlier question about "any bets"?).  Tuesday night would be exciting if Maryland wasn’t able to report vote totals so quickly.  I could be in bed by 10pm and still know the outcome.

That’s about all I’ve got.

Ender is out