Thursday, August 25, 2011

Oh, the weather outside is frightful....

Now, let me first say, I have been through some weather!  I remember floods growing up on the coast of New Jersey that kept my dad stuck at work for days.  My baby (at the time) brother was only a few days old when we had to evacuate from one of those.  There were epic blizzards; I remember one in my senior year that kept us all out of school for a solid week!  Countless Nor'easters.  When my SO and I moved to Florida a tornado ripped through and dropped a tree straight through our second bedroom....  We'd been there about two weeks.  And plenty of hurricanes.
So a couple of days ago I added earthquake to my 'Natural Disasters Survived' list.  That was definitely the most bizarre experience I've ever had.  I had no idea what was going on!  I live in the "basement" of my apartment building, which means that half of my place is underground.  So when everything started shaking I knew rationally that it wasn't the kids going crazy shaking the house down, but it was my first thought nonetheless.  My second irrational thought was that the maintenance guy was taking out a tree (he'd been trimming branches at the time) and the roots were under the building.  With the size of our building, and especially our location in it, neither theory made sense.  I didn't learn until a few hours later that it was an earthquake, and, for the east coast quite a large one. 
Now they're saying this will be the worst hurricane to hit the east coast in decades!  My mother-in-law called asking if we've got enough water, batteries, eggs, etc.  There are so many other things I'd rather do with my weekend than spend it stuck in the house with no power.  I'm not sure how hyped up I should be over this storm.  We do live right at the intersection of the Lehigh and Delaware Rivers, so flooding could be a serious concern.  I guess we'll just have to weather it out, eh?