Thor turned 7 months old. He got neutered mid month but that has not slowed him down any. He also got a microchip. He was just a pound and a half shy of 70 pounds the morning of the surgery. We had to watch him very closely the first 10 days but now he is 16 days post surgery and healed.
Wayne had a birthday about a week ago. He is over the hill plus a year. He worked on his day but brought home a couple cards that co-workers had given him. They are nice. He also got a card from his mom and my parents. I didn't even make him a cake.
The week leading up to hurricane Irene was interesting...actually the whole month has been interesting weather wise. There was a fire in the Great Dismal Swamp in Virginia (I suppose it is out now since the hurricane dumped a lot of water). It was a LONG ways away...down by Norfolk but when the wind was out of the south it would blow the smoke this way. One Saturday morning I went out to go grocery shopping and was wondering what all the smoke was. Wherever I went in town the smoke was just as bad. It wasn't until later that I found out the swamp was on fire. There were 2 or 3 days that the smoke was so bad that you had to limit outdoor activities. Then on Tuesday the 23rd there was an earthquake. The epicenter was in Virginia too and it was 5.8 on the Richter scale. It shook us pretty good. By this time we knew that we needed to start preparing for the impending hurricane.
We started considering buying a generator. It didn't take us long to decide that we NEEDED one. Wayne wanted it least 7000- 8000 watts but Lowe's was all out. We checked in Waldorf too but they were out too. The next day (Wed) I called the Home Depot in Waldorf and they said they had one on the floor and 2 up on a shelf. When we got there the one on the floor was gone so we asked if they still had the ones on the shelf (it was up high and needed a forklift to get them down). There was another couple who wanted the same generator so we got one of the last 2. Waldorf is a 50 minute drive from our house. Then on Thursday we decided we needed a chainsaw. Wayne was told to buy Stihl or Husqueverna so I compared prices and the Stihl was a bit less expensive and is supposed to be the better saw. I found out they sell them at the John Deere dealer so I drove down there that afternoon while Wayne was at work. I also bought 4 extension cords for the generator and was looking for gas cans. By this time it was about time for Michael to leave for institute. He called me and said he needed to leave 10 minutes ago so I had to hurry home. As I was driving home the weather was deteriorating and I was listening to the radio and they said we were under a tornado warning. I got home and told Michael I didn't want him to go out in the weather and he said that the people he carpooled with had cancelled anyway. This ended up being a blessing in disguise because our ward called an Emergency Ward Council meeting and Michael is in the Elder's Quorum Presidency so he had to go.
I was having problems finding 5 gallon gas cans so Diane told me to try the auto parts store. I found the last 2 at Advance Auto Parts on Friday morning. We spent the rest of the day on Friday laying out our stuff and getting ready for it to hit. I figured we would lose power about 6pm on Saturday and was VERY disappointed when we lost it much earlier. I was in the middle of doing our laundry. Luckily for us it was only out for 2 hours and then came back on. While the power was out I took a few short videos of the storm. Make sure your speakers are on for the first one. I am out of the front porch and you can really hear the wind and rain.
They were both taken around 1pm on Saturday the 27th. The one of the rain was a bit before 1 and the one of the trees was taken a bit after 1.
The hurricane was something else. I don't care to ever go through one again and it was only a category 1. The eye went through about 11:30pm. We were down in the basement in the front bedroom. Michael's bedroom is downstairs already. After the eye went through it quieted down a lot but I was very surprised at how loud it all was. Our power went out about 8pm and we thought it would be off for 3-5 days. We were VERY surprised when it came back on at 6pm Sunday. The wind didn't really calm down until Monday but by Sunday mid morning the sun was starting to peek out. I took a few still photos too. This first one was taken at about the same time as the second video.
We are also helping our neighbors with their downed tree (although so far it has only been Mon) They worked on it yesterday but we had missionaries for dinner so were busy. They didn't work on it today but we did yard work. I had a lot of small branches to pick up before I could mow. Our lawn is VERY green now :)
The rest of this week I will spend getting ready to fly out on Saturday. Rusty has a scan next week and then an appointment the week after and mom wanted me there for those 2 things. I don't have a return ticket yet but I will probably be there for most the month of September.
So it is been a busy month. We had fires, earthquakes, tornadoes, and hurricanes. PLEASE DON'T SEND ANY OTHER NATURAL DISASTERS!!
No comments:
Post a Comment