As everyone else in the world knows, Hurricane Irene hit the coast of North Carolina (where I currently reside) pretty hard. The hurricane left a path of destruction: a few people were killed, massive flooding, collapsed piers, fallen trees and thousands of homes with no power, no water, and (gasp) no internet!
I live 65 miles away from the coast, which is still pretty close considering the size of Ms. Irene. However, I have to say that I was pretty lucky. My town was not evacuated, but still we were told to expect power outages and mild flooding. So, we took precautions and stocked up on canned foods, water, candles, batteries and made sure our phones and laptops were fully charged. The rain started at approximately 1 PM on Friday, which was sooner than expected. The gusty winds began on Friday at around 8 PM and from then on, they got stronger and stronger. Surprisingly, my nerves were still not fraught by then. For a person who freaks out at the sight of a firefly, I am proud to report that I kept my cool at all times. Well, mostly. I mean, it is certainly disturbing to look out your window and see huge limbs of trees lying on the ground and to be woken up by the wind violently shaking your windows. The power kept going on and off all night. So much so, that we unplugged valuable appliances. Things continued like this well into Saturday afternoon. It was scary at times, and we lost a lot of shingles from our roof and even part of the outside wall of the back of the house, which caused the water to come in through the attic. Late on Saturday afternoon, when the rain and wind were gone, we went outside and I could not believe my eyes. Lots of fallen trees in my street and no one had power, except us and a few other neighbors. I guess we had a guardian angel looking after us. Unfortunately, for those with a morbid sense of curiosity, I didn’t take any pictures of the damage around my neighborhood mostly because I’m lazy. On second thought, entirely because I am lazy.
And now it’s bright and sunny out and I am sitting here on my bed with my laptop on top of my lap (so that’s why it’s called laptop, huh?) writing this post when I’m supposed to be doing a school assignment or preparing lesson plans for school, or grading a pre-test, which are all chores I should have done on Saturday in the first place. Oh, well. I still have tomorrow. Oh, didn’t you know? I have no school tomorrow since half the county is flooded and still without power. That means another day to procrastinate and one more day of work in the last week before summer vacation.
Everyone have a great post-hurricane week! I’m going to go procrastinate some more now.
M
Everything Happens For a Reason 