Those of you who've had a TV on for the past week know that hurricane Irma hit Florida with quite a punch, although a last minute deviation spared some places a worse blow than they were predicted to get. Maybe, though, you didn't know that Tropical Storm Irma decided to pay a visit to the state of Georgia after having her way in Florida.
I live near Atlanta so one of the doors Irma knocked at was mine!
Let me remind those of you who don't know--I'm from Minnesota. I was born there and lived most of my life there. We don't get tropical storms in Minneapolis. Ask me to deal with a 31 inch snowfall. I'll bitch about it, but I can handle it. Ask me when it's safe or unsafe to drive onto the lake. These are the weather issues I'm accustomed to dealing with. I had zero clue what to do for a tropical storm, remnant of a full-fledged hurricane.
I did know enough to buy bottled water and I have some battery-operated lanterns complete with extra batteries. We also had food that could last a while without spoiling, although it would have meant eating a lot of fruit.
And I was able to work from home on Monday which was a blessing because I didn't want to try to drive through wind gusts of 70 mph. (I'm not sure it ever reached that high, but it might have.)
The rain started the night before, and while there were some gusts, it wasn't too bad. Even Monday, it seemed mostly okay. Sure, it was pouring most of the day and yeah the wind was incredible. I spent a lot of time hoping none of my trees came down. Overall, though, it was okay.
Until the power went out.
I'm not cutout for pioneer life. I tried to knit, but the lantern light wasn't bright enough and I made a mistake. I tried to fix it, but I fear I made it worse in the near-dark. Too dark to read. Can't read on my iPad because I'll run the battery down. No TV, no computer, no phone because I have one bar inside my house and there's that pesky battery thing again. I finally went and took a nap.
Dinner was cold Szechuan and then more sitting around until I was like, okay, might as well go to bed. For real. Now I know why in the olden days they got up with the light and went to bed when it got dark.
The true test was Tuesday morning when I woke up to no coffee!!! The horrors! This was the first thing I rectified when I got to work.
I heard on the news that this is the first tropical storm to reach Atlanta since 1995 or 1996. I hope it's at least that long before I have to go through something like this again! Still, I know how lucky I am and how unlucky others were. Keeping the peeps who've dealt with worse in my thoughts.
