Good news, bad news

[SeaCat]

Okay guys and gals, today was the old good news bad news drill. The good news.

My wife and I were aproved for the house we want to rent, with a small caveat. It is a rent to own. (Like that's really going to bother me right? ) So now we'll be moving at the end of the month. (Oh joys I get to pack for the next couple of weeks. Honey have you seen?????????)

The bad news:
There is now a Tropical Storm forming in the mid Atlantic with the name of Denise. (Denise the Menace anyone?) So far the forecasted tracks show it going to the west of Florida, which is just fine by me. (No hurricanes until after I move thank you very much, although it would simplify the move considerably if 90% of the furniture blew away, but I would want to pick what blew away.)

So the good news is I have new digs. The bad news is Jebbie might be getting a blow job.

Cat

 

[rgraham666]

Congrats Cat.

I'd pray for the storm to dissipate or miss Florida, but I'm an agnostic.

 

[velvetpie]

His name is Dennis, SeaCat. Make sure you get his name right or he might come looking for you ...

What part of the coast did you say you live on again? I'm in the Daytona area ...

 

[Kassiana]

Congrats Cat.

I'd pray for the storm to dissipate or miss Florida, but I'm an agnostic.

Me, too. I don't think storms or Miss Florida exist.

As one of my husband's buttons says, "Invertebrate Punster. Spinelessly incapable of resisting a pun."

 

[Guest]

Okay guys and gals, today was the old good news bad news drill. The good news.

My wife and I were aproved for the house we want to rent, with a small caveat. It is a rent to own. (Like that's really going to bother me right? ) So now we'll be moving at the end of the month. (Oh joys I get to pack for the next couple of weeks. Honey have you seen?????????)

The bad news:
There is now a Tropical Storm forming in the mid Atlantic with the name of Denise. (Denise the Menace anyone?) So far the forecasted tracks show it going to the west of Florida, which is just fine by me. (No hurricanes until after I move thank you very much, although it would simplify the move considerably if 90% of the furniture blew away, but I would want to pick what blew away.)

So the good news is I have new digs. The bad news is Jebbie might be getting a blow job.

Cat

This is good news! (Don't worry about the storm - not yet, anyway!)

But I'm so happy you found a new place - best wishes in the packing and moving nonsense!

 

[SeaCat]

Thanks all for the good wishes.

RG, I'll take Miss Florida by storm. (Thanks for the wishes.)

Velvet, I live in West Palm Beach.

Kass, Spineless can be good. You can get into all sorts of intersting positions that way.

SweetSub, Oh packing is too much of a joy. My mother always claimed it was the best way to clear out all the junk you gather while living in one place.

Cat

 

[Kassiana]

Kass, Spineless can be good. You can get into all sorts of intersting positions that way.

Well, regardless, don't get a spinectomy. They're hard to reverse.

 

[velvetpie]

Ah, West Palm. Never been there but would like to visit. I certainly hope that the hurricanes decide to pass us by this year. I had enough entertainment last year and am right now waiting for roofers to come by this week and put our new roof on.

Not fun ... nor funny!

 

[Weird Harold]

My mother always claimed it was the best way to clear out all the junk you gather while living in one place.

You mother must be related to Mark Twain -- at least I think it was he who said, "Two moves equals one fire" (or in your case, one hurricane.)

I hope you don't gt to compare the reduction in worldly goods between one move and one hurricane -- or a fire or any other disaster.

 

[JRaven]

When my husband and I moved into the house we're currently renting, it was just temporary. It's way too small for all the stuff we have. So, we left half the boxes unpacked.

It's been 9 years now. I still have about ten boxes that I no longer have any idea what's in them! I've looked for something, couldn't find it, bought a new one. And, no doubt, it's packed in one of those ten boxes.

Jenny

 

[BlackShanglan]

When my husband and I moved into the house we're currently renting, it was just temporary. It's way too small for all the stuff we have. So, we left half the boxes unpacked.

It's been 9 years now. I still have about ten boxes that I no longer have any idea what's in them! I've looked for something, couldn't find it, bought a new one. And, no doubt, it's packed in one of those ten boxes.

Jenny

*laugh* I like the image.

I think that the sovereign rules of moving are (1) you will always lose at least one box and (2) you will always pack at least one box of trash or items you ought simply to have thrown out.

If you are very, very good, those will turn out to be the same box.

Shanglan

 

[shereads]

What better way for the Dark Comedy Gods to top a four-hurricane summer in Florida than with the Earliest Developing Hurricane in Recorded History.


CUE LIEUTENANT DAN, CLINGING TO MAST AND SHAKING FIST AT GOD:

"You call this a storm?"


Congratulations twice, SDog. Once on the new digs, and again on it being a rent-to-own. Owning is nice after hurricane season. During the season, I'm always nostalgic for my days as a renter.

 

[shereads]

Other good news/bad news:

Good news: when an old dog goes deaf, she's no longer bothered by 4th of July fireworks. Sleeps right through it.

Bad news: when an old dog goes deaf, your car can be broken into and the dog sleeps right through it.



Farging bastages! How did they know that every 2 years or so, I get tired of seeing the world through the distorted lenses of $12 sunglasses, and invest in a GOOD pair of sunglasses, which I end up owning for less than two weeks? The only things of value in the car were a ten-day-old pair of super-cool Revos that I loved like a brother; three quarters, and the crappy stereo that I never worried about because, seriously, who would bother to steal such a crappy stereo?

Bad news: they got the sunglasses, the quarters, and the face-plate of the crappy stereo, and they wrecked the body of the stereo trying to pull it loose.

Good news: apparently, the sound of the dog's snoring frightened the thieves away before they could scoop up my six dimes.

 

[shereads]

More good news (follow-up to previous post): If Miami gets a direct hit from a Cat 3 next week (which seems likely, because the TV weather men aren't concerned about this one at all), and if my car is damaged, the repairs plus today's break-in could exceed my deductible!

 

[R. Richard]

I used to live on the East coast. Now I live in the West and I really miss the hurricane warnings; every chance I get!

 

[BlackShanglan]

My parents lived in Charleston when Hugo hit. My father was out of town, and my mother very wisely got out of town herself (and came to stay with me). I still remember the sort of awed horror one felt at hearing them tell the evacuating populace not to stop until they hit Columbia (half the width of the state inland). They weren't kidding either. My parents knew several people who stayed in the city during the storm, and not one of them now looks at that decision as anything but sheer idiocy.

I can still remember the first drive I took out to the city after the hurricane. It was enough to break your heart. The devastation even in the forests along the interstate highway was stunning.

Shanglan

 

[R. Richard]

My parents lived in Charleston when Hugo hit. My father was out of town, and my mother very wisely got out of town herself (and came to stay with me). I still remember the sort of awed horror one felt at hearing them tell the evacuating populace not to stop until they hit Columbia (half the width of the state inland). They weren't kidding either. My parents knew several people who stayed in the city during the storm, and not one of them now looks at that decision as anything but sheer idiocy.

I can still remember the first drive I took out to the city after the hurricane. It was enough to break your heart. The devastation even in the forests along the interstate highway was stunning.

Shanglan

I lived in North Charleston post Hugo. Every home in the area where I lived had one or (usually) more tree stumps courtesy of Hugo. The people who lived next door said that both power and water were out for nearly a week and they took showers in the back yard in the almost daily rains that follwed Hugo for several days. It did not sound like fun.

 

[Liar]

Good for you, Cat.

Um... what is a 'rent to own' thingy?

 

[BlackShanglan]

I lived in North Charleston post Hugo. Every home in the area where I lived had one or (usually) more tree stumps courtesy of Hugo. The people who lived next door said that both power and water were out for nearly a week and they took showers in the back yard in the almost daily rains that follwed Hugo for several days. It did not sound like fun.

Indeed. Our house (a renter at the time) came through quite well, but the one up the street was sliced like cake by a pair of loblolly pines. My mother's digs, out on James Island, were out of power for quite some time - I seem to think it was a month or more. She got accustomed to coming home from work to cook a can of soup over a charcoal grill. Fortunately the home was in a larger development with underground wiring. Once the power folks made it to the entrance and reconnected thing there, everyone's power was up at once.

Shanglan

 

[shereads]

My parents lived in Charleston when Hugo hit. My father was out of town, and my mother very wisely got out of town herself (and came to stay with me). I still remember the sort of awed horror one felt at hearing them tell the evacuating populace not to stop until they hit Columbia (half the width of the state inland). They weren't kidding either. My parents knew several people who stayed in the city during the storm, and not one of them now looks at that decision as anything but sheer idiocy.

Unfortunately, it's not practical or even possible for people near the coast to evacuate every time we're advised that a hit is probable. It's idiocy not to seek safety, but exactly where safety can be found is still someone's best guess, right up until the last critical minutes. Too often last summer and during Andrew a dozen years ago, the predictged path was wrong.

The morning before Hurricane Andrew, the Florida Keys were ordered to evacuate; by that afternoon, the storm was more accurately predicted to be heading farther north, and the Keys turned out to be one of the few safe places in South Florida that night. Refugees from the Keys who obeyed the evac order drove into the storm, not out of it.

In Miami, at the far northern edge of Andrew's final path of destruction, I spent the morning worried about a friend in the Keys who was refusing to evacuate and leave his business to looters; by late afternoon, we were hearing that we were the target, not the Keys. With hours to spare, I decided to join the exodus out of the city and ended up in an 8-hour traffic jam that took me all of 160 miles. Most working people don't have the luxury of leaving town until a hurricane warning is definite (and "definite" is relative as so many people learned last summer, when storm paths wriggled around like a kid's crayon scribbles.) Anyone would love to leave here at the first hint of a hurricane watch, before the airports close and the highways are jammed and the hotels and gas stations out of everything, but try being absent from work or school the next day - not once per summer, but every time there's a false alarm in your city because of a slightly-off forecast.

People with houses in the coastal flood zone who took shelter with friends in the western suberbs put themselves in as much danger as they'd have been in at home. Historically, the farther inland you could take shelter, the safer you'd be during a hurricane. The rules have all been broken, by Andrew and since then.

Those of us who were driving out that afternoon, when Andrew was finally, officially, coming our way with the eye scheduled to make land late that night, were told to leave the east coast and drive west; the computer models showed Andrew following the Atlantic coastline. I was lucky that the snail's pace of northbound traffic on one of our two north-bound evacuation routes kept me from making the west-bound exit before the radio announced that Andrew was now expected to CROSS the state, east-to-west, and that all of us evacuees must now head north a.s.a.p.

Packed fender-to-fender with eight lanes of north-bound traffic plus the makeshift lanes of cars using the grass medians, all of whom had to somehow merge with other traffic at each of the low bridges that dot the Turnpike - and with new traffic edging in at every entrance ramp, I knew it would take no more than a few overheated engines or other minor road emergencies to trap tens of thousands of us in our cars, in the Everglades, below sea level and in the dark, when Andrew crossed the peninsula a few hours later.

My own car was close to over-heating, from the strain of creeping along with the A/C on (it was a miserably hot August day, sunny and strangely breezeless). It was drinking fuel like crazy. If I had needed help, I'd have been at the mercy of panicked families whose own vehicles were crammed with as many people and personal belongings as they could bring.

I had a dog and a cage with 2 lovebirds in the car, and had to take the whole posse with me on a quarter-mile hike to use a restroom. Men, you are so lucky that you can just stroll a few feet from the car, face the shrubbery and do what nature wants done. Except for that day, when standing near the shrubbery exposed you to a bumper crop of mosquitos.

By the time I found a motel that had one empty room, I didn't care that I had only gone 160 miles and that the hurricane could still change back to its original path and follow me up the coast. It had added an hour to the trip every time I took an exit to be turned away at a motel. I would have slept in the lobby if there hadn't been a room. In fact, the clerk first told me he was all booked up, but he must have safed one room for the Most Deranged Looking Refugee, 'cause no sooner did I start stammering and crying than he suddenly remembered he had one left, after all.

I stayed for two days before I found the courage to turn off the godawful news - and leave behind electricity and hot showers for the foreseekable future - I knew I had been lucky to be out of it, but I also knew it had been a gamble.

I won't evacuate again, even though my friends who stayed here told me how terrified they were, and swore they'd never take that risk again. Their experience with Andrew didn't do them much good last year, when the predicted paths of our hurricanes once again sent a lot of evacuees into the path of the storms - including patients at a VA hospital in the Florida Keys, who were flown to what was supposed to be safety in coastal Alabama. That storm missed the Keys altogether and headed for - tada!! - coastal Alabama.



I don't like the idea of huddling in a dark closest under a mattress in case the roof goes, but that could happen if I evacuate and the forecasts are wrong. So I'll stay here.

 

[BlackShanglan]

I do beg your pardon, Shereads. I realize on looking back that that was a very bad way to phrase things. I didn't intend to suggest what it clearly does suggest. Please accept my very humble apologies.

 

[SeaCat]

Cant,

Rent to own in this case means at least half of the rent each month is put into the bank as the downpayment on the house.

Cat

 

[shereads]

I do beg your pardon, Shereads. I realize on looking back that that was a very bad way to phrase things. I didn't intend to suggest what it clearly does suggest. Please accept my very humble apologies.

No, honey, I didn't take offense! I know dozens of people who've said the same thing, and I didn't take what your family said as an insult. They're right, if only the forecasts made it possible to be in the right place at the right time. When the roof lifts off the house and rebar from the construction site a half-mile away is raining into the living room, people who distrusted the forecast or waited too late to leave will regret it without a doubt. Post traumatic stress syndrome is a common reaction to people who survive in the path of a killer storm, and I wouldn't encourage anyone to try it.

I'm just reliviing the memory and venting. If I sounded defensive about your post, I didn't mean it that way at all.

 

[SeaCat]

I have had the dubios joy of going through three (3) hurricanes so far. Bob on Cape cod 14 years ago, (Cat.2) and the two last year. As the second hurricane approached last year, (Jean) many of the people who lived in West Palm beach decided to evacuate at the last minute. Too many of them were caught on the highways, in the traffic jams, when the storm made landfall and slashed across the state. What amazed me was how after the storm many of them started threatening to sue the state and anyone else they could find for putting their lives in danger because they were caught in the traffic jams. (Could it have been because they didn't decide to leave until the last minute?)

I must admit that after going through the hurricanes last year, and 23 years of Nor'easters I much prefer the hurricanes. Yes they are a lot more destructive at first but when they're gone the loss of power is just an inconvenience. In New England if you lose power for a week they add another column to the newspapers. Found Frozen.

If Dennis decides to pay me a visit I know my wife, the cats and myself will be safe. The building we live in is built incredibly strong and we will be spending the time during the storm in the hospital. For after the storm I have plenty of food, (Almost three months worth,) a gas grill and a gas stove with plenty of gas, lamps, and of course a nifty, quiet little generator. Now all I need is a tattoo gun so I can put a tattoo of a hurricane cloud on my shoulder with the names of the hurricanes I have been through. (By the time I'm done the names will most likely run down my arm. )

Cat

 

[R. Richard]

I would like to hijack this thread to insert a tip from my time in North Charleston. We were threatened by yet another hurricane and people who could not leave were preparing for the worst. I got home from work to find the neighbors in pretty good shape except no matches. There were no matches avaiable anywhere in the Charelston area.

I told the neighbors I would be back in 15 minutes with all the matches they needed and drove off. They tried to talk me out of it, but I wouldn't listen. I drove down to a local store, made a few purchases and drove home.

The neighbors were waiting and I put my vehicle in the garage and went back out with the several poly bags I had purchased. In each bag was a pair of el cheapo lighters, guaranteed for 2500 lights each. I passed lighters around saying, "Here are 2500 matches, enjoy!"

Try it, you will like it!