Hurricane Preparations

Now that I think of it, I do have something else to add before I close the door on Irene and the month of August. I have to say a word about how I prepared for the storm.

I started preparing the way everyone else does - I panicked! :-D Then, once that was done, I moved everything outside that could conceivably blow away in 90-mph winds - lawn chairs, garbage cans, et. al. - to the basement and the garage into Then I went into action and started making and storing as much ice as possible from our automatic ice maker to put in a huge cooler to store frozen foods should the power go out. Some people in my hometown of West Caldwell did indeed lose electricity. I filled as many plastic bottles as I could with water should the water system fail, as it did in nearby West Orange. And I also put batteries in my portable stereo but did not use it until the storm began to avoid running low on power. In short, I did everything I could to keep my mother and me comfortable in the event of a disaster that, for us, didn't happen.

I'm holding onto all that ice, I'm keeping the lawn chairs in the basement, and I just might buy more batteries. Katia may be coming next week! :-o

While Irene Was In

A couple of stories you might have missed while Hurricane Irene blew by:

*Al Sharpton's MSNBC show finally has a name. It's called "Politics Nation with Al Sharpton." Now there's a new question about his show: "How long will it last?"

*Muammar el-Qaddafi has fled Tripoli and is on the run. He might be hiding in a rathole like Saddam Hussein did. Or, he might have made his way to the other end of the African continent and begun writing poetry and living as a businessman.

*The Justice Department actually did the right thing for a change. It's going to try to stop the monopolistic AT&T/T-Mobile merger.

*The New Meadowlands Stadium in New Jersey is now the MetLife Stadium. Yeah, it was only a matter of time . . ..

*Eric Cantor wants to offset expenditures on disaster relief for victims of Hurricane Irene with cuts elsewhere. In other words, he, at last check, is still a schmuck.

After The Storm

I'm back, and even though nothing happened to my mother and me as a result of Hurricane Irene, the storm did plenty of damage in my neighborhood as well as other parts of New Jersey.

My house escaped damages and power failures, though the electricity did flicker a bit the day after the hurricane passed (August 29) while the electric company was working nearby. It seems two trees fell and took down electrical wires on either end of the avenue behind ours, cutting it off both directions. The electric company and the police department worked together to clean up the mess. Both trees were cleared and both sets of wires were restored in less than a day. All I had to clean up were tree branches in the backyard.

The Passaic River, a major river in New Jersey that goes around the town I live in, flooded to historic proportions. Two car dealerships in the next town were flooded, as well as much of that same next town. U.S. Route 46 (which only goes through New Jersey despite its federal designation) crosses the Passaic four times because the river flows in an upside-down double-U pattern, and so that highway is closed at many points.

While the flooding and the power failures are bad and historically so, it could have been worse. In Vermont, which Irene hit after being downgraded to a tropical storm, whole towns have been cut off by the kind of flooding no one in Vermont would have ever expected. After all, no one expected the only landlocked state in New England to be affected by a tropical storm.

New weather patterns - possibly caused by climate change - are becoming the new normal. Irene was the first hurricane to make landfall in New Jersey since 1903, when the Wright Brothers were busy inventing the canceled flight. We might not have to wait another 108 years for that to happen again. Thanks to a new storm forming in the Atlantic as a I type (more on that later) it could happen again as early as next week!

Hiatus Announcement

I am announcing, for the first time since a fan broke on my old personal computer in April and got a new PC a couple of weeks later, that I am putting my blog on hiatus due to Hurricane Irene and the possibility of a power failure that could last for a couple of days, but also due to the fact that I need a break for a brief time. I've been burned out somewhat, and I was already writing smaller entries this week. I had planned to unwind this week, but, ironically, Irene has me all wound up - more so than before this time last week.

Assuming my power stays on - there's a fifty-fifty chance of that - I'll make a brief report on Wednesday, August 31, reporting what happened to my area as the result of Irene. (Even if my house is unscathed, many other in my area very well may be.) But apart from updating my Music Video Of the Week feature every Friday (assuming I have power by next Friday), I'll probably stay off until some time after Labor Day, even if I don't lose electricity.

And if the power at my house does go off and stay off for a long time, I might not be posting at all in September unless my local library is online.

Thanks for following my blog, and I hope I won't be gone for long. I may not be back for awhile, but, to quote my favorite female athlete Janet Evans, who turns forty tomorrow (I just wanted to get that in! :-D), I'll still be around.

Preparing For Irene

I'm ferociously trying to to everything I normally do that requires electricity before Hurricane Irene hits New Jersey on Sunday. I'm astonished at the precautions being taken. All of Cape May County on the state's southern tip between the Atlantic Ocean and Delaware Bay is being evacuated, and the entire New York City rapid transit system shuts down Saturday until further notice. I'm impressed that people are preparing for Irene and doing everything possible in advance to minimize the damage. But all of the storage of supplies, all of the battening down of various hatches, and all of the tree limb cutting probably won't keep the experience of Irene from being a possibly catastrophic experience that we will remember - and clean up from - for a long time.

Some good news: Irene may be weaker than expected when it hits the New York area, and it may make landfall on Long Island farther east from the city then previously expected. In West Caldwell, New Jersey, where I live, about four inches of rain are expected with winds at 55 miles an hour. Thank goodness my mother and I live on higher ground.

Various Possible Effects Of Irene

I had been looking on the bright side of Hurricane Irene's impact on the greater New York area this Sunday, but it's turning out there is no bright side. It could be the most powerful and destructive hurricane to hit my neck of the woods since 1938. To give you an idea of how long ago that was, my parents hadn't been born yet and the hottest young actress in Hollywood was Hepburn. Not Audrey, Katharine. And if I'm not mistaken, she got caught in that storm while in Connecticut.

Here's an idea of what you can expect as a result of Irene:

Hyperlocal news sites, including the ones I work for, might go out of business.

The U.S. Open may have to be delayed . . . until the middle of October.

Your cousin in Florida might encourage you to move down there, where it's safer.

Portable toilet rentals could figuratively go through the roof.

Trees could go through the roof . . . and into the living room.

Don't plan on seeing the latest Helen Mirren movie opening Wednesday . . . unless your local movie theater has a bicycle generator for the projector.

The Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial dedication in Washington this weekend will be remembered by "I Have a Nightmare" headlines.

The forks of Long Island will become separate islands, and Fire Island could just be plain put out.

If Fire Island sinks into the sea, expect Pat Robertson to refer to it as God's retribution against gays.

People with active Facebook pages are suddenly going to have no social life.

Coffee houses will have nothing but acoustic musicians . . . and rappers are going to have to go back to human beat box members.

We can forget the new fall television season . . . and that might be a good thing.

Rain water collected in any trash cans that don't blow away is suddenly going to taste good.

With the power out for possibly a month, you might have to cultivate new habits, such as reading a book or talking to your relatives.

If you don't recall seeing such a huge lake near your house before, that's because you never did. But if the edge of a new lake is right along your backyard, your property values might suddenly increase. (Okay, so there's one bright side . . ..)

Cities will look like Berlin after the war . . . except Newark, which already does. That will look more like Hiroshima after the bomb.

As for Labor Day weekend . . . then we're gonna party like it's 1899!

Earthquakes and Hurricanes and Power Failures, Oh My!

More like, oh no.

I had just gotten off the Internet yesterday afternoon when I heard a rumbling noise that sounded like a truck was passing by, and I quickly learned that it was a tremor in the earth that was centered near Richmond, Virginia that shook the entire East Coast. It was the lead story on the PBS NewsHour Tuesday evening, and the earthquake became a constant source of gossip online. Not much damage was done, so everyone laughed it off.

They won't be laughing off Hurricane Irene so easily.

Hurricane Irene, the ninth named tropical storm of the 2011 hurricane season, is expected to make landfall in North Carolina sometime early Saturday and run along the East Coast and possibly affect New York City - severely - on Sunday. The current forecast for northern New Jersey is for "heavy rain and wind" on Sunday, but to leave it at that that would be like calling Pearl Harbor a skirmish, as this storm is turning out to be so huge and powerful.

The good news is that it should be gone almost as soon as it appears. The bad news is that I may be out of commission for a couple of days or so, depending on whether the power goes out and how long it stays out. I'll keep you posted.