Blowin' in the Wind

I know that we had to be prepared, but after today's "storm", Irene was the most overhyped Hurricane ever.  On Friday, as I was working my half day from home, I got three phone calls from my dad, and finally decided maybe it was a good idea to go to Associated for some groceries.  But instead of buying water and non-perishables, I thought it was more critical to buy ice cream, yogurt, and swiss cheese (oh and Diet Coke and Sprite Zero.)  The supermarket was like a zoo, you'd think we'd be trapped for weeks the way people were stocking up.  Anyway, they didn't have the chips I wanted, so I dropped the bags off at home and headed back out to Trade Fair.  I did then to decide to buy a 3 liter bottle of water amongst the panic, the chips (though still not the ones I wanted - apparently there is a shortage of Baked Tostitos Scoops during hurricane season), and some more totally unnecessary perishable items.  In the evening, Dave didn't feel so hot so we went to C Town to buy orange juice (we have 3 supermarkets within a 3 block radius in case you were wondering.)  The lines were absolutely insane again so we gave up.

Yesterday morning we were still awaiting the storm, which wasn't coming until the evening now, so we decided to take a walk around 11 am.  Realizing we only had one dinky flashlight, we thought it might be a good idea to see what the local 99 cent stores still had in stock.  We bought some more batteries, water, and lighters (we have about 75 candles thanks to a bag of tealights and the fact that my mother-in-law now works for a candle company), but had no luck finding a battery-powered radio.  After coming home, we did actually realize that our alarm clock takes batteries (duhhh), so we headed back out and bought a 9V.  It had started raining lightly at this point, but the 99 Cent stores all still had long lines of people buying duct tape and saying "I can't believe you don't have any flashlights left??"  The storm was coming in a few hours, I mean really.

We anxiously awaited this pain in the ass by playing Xbox games (ilomilo, The Beatles: Rock Band (I still have to write that out properly), some make-your-own-Bobblehead-that-looks-nothing-like-you game on Kinect labs), Scattergories, cooked, did my nails, tweezed my eyebrows, and watched Party Down.  I also read two magazines from my tremendous pile and finished The Hunger Games (disappointment, sorry peeps.)  It had been raining at a normal level until the middle of the night when I heard it coming down hard. Then this morning it was seriously like nothing?!?  When Dave and I headed out to take a walk around 1:30 pm today, the ground was actually dry!!  We went up to 30th, had brunch (all of the brunch places were open and packed), and walked back.  It's still a bit windy and the sky is gray/grey? but the temperature is pleasant. There were some fallen branches but nothing crazy.  Here are a few photos of the most extensive damage we saw -

Not bad at all

Unless you own this car

I like the effort Duane, you've finally impressed me

I HAD to get Parmesan cheese (we made bolognese and chicken parm this weekend so obviously it was necessary.)  This was the bread aisle in C Town today.

There were leftover Toast R Cakes which I just still can't believe.

Anyway, I guess I should give a shout out to the Earthquake as well. I had my headphones on when that started, so I couldn't hear people discussing anything, and I literally thought the skin on my butt was twitching. After about ten seconds of that I got up and everybody was like "Uh, do you feel that?" I made the smart decision to switch from heels to flip flops, grab my bag, and head to our safety point on the floor. Most of us decided to go down the 80 flights of steps (which I actually did once before when I worked on the 41st floor during the blackout.) Me and my jelly legs got to go home after that, so thank you Earthquake! Why Irene couldn't show up on a weekday, and instead faked us out during my only Fire Island weekend which was totally non-refundable, is still beyond me.

So, I started reading books again, yeah! I also joined a book club in which we just discussed "Gun, With Occasional Music", and I hated it. Next, I'm going to read the book I suggested for the September meeting but lost in the vote which is Rob Sheffield's "Talking to Girls About Duran Duran."  Now that I have finally started using my eReader, I think the thing is absolutely amazing.  And, I took out the latest book out from the Queens library digitally - it simply expires after 21 days and wipes from the device, so easy!!  I also need to read "Super Sad True Love Story" as that's next for the book club, and the second book in The Hunger Games trilogy even though I'm still disappointed by the first.  Where was all this sexual tension I kept hearing about???  Unless it's in books two and three, the Twilight series blows these out of the water.