The wind has picked up since I began typing this message. It's about 50mph sustained. It's getting noisy...

My computer is on a windward wall with the one small tree that may fall (a 40ft oak) so I'm moving it to a center room now, so bye for now.

Until after the storm, this has been a special report from PWN, The Pete Weather Network.

Let us know when you get electricity back, dude! On the news here, they're saying whole parishes down by you are out of power for maybe 3-4 weeks!!

Poor Pete. What a royal pain in the a** that must be. Nathan, did you have any problems where you live?

Gustav is coming to visit me tomorrow. It's supposed to rain all day - several inches expected. But I know....nothing compared to what you folks down there had to endure.

It wasn't bad by us at all, Mon. I made Hurricanes (the drink) and we played cards till 2 in the morn ... it was a great party. Had some awesome BBQ ribs too. mmmm ... can't wait for those leftovers.

The fortune-tellers and navel-gazers (meterologists! ) were predicting a fairly hard hit on Shreveport, but fortunately, they were mistaken. We had 50 mph winds all one night and a fair amt of rain. Kept me up, but that was the only damage ... I'm about 4 hrs north of the gulf. So, the storm has to be pretty serious for us to get anything dangerous.

Pete, of course, is MUCH closer to the water (like a stone's throw). The news reports are that many are and will be without power for weeks longer. The governor says that's unacceptable, but I don't what he thinks he's gonna do about it!??!

Ya'll know how to party down there! Call me when the next natural disaster heads your way; I'll be right over.

And why wait to eat the leftovers? Have them for breakfast - that's what I do. Love cold pizza or spaghetti with my orange juice. Wakes up the mouth. Ribs would work too, plus give your tongue some exercise from all that finger licking.

like my tongue needs MORE exercising!!!

Hey!

Four days in the super-humid heat without benefit of fans. Need I say more?

I'm glad I boarded up so completely, because something large and heavy (ironically, a boarded-up window and its frame ) hit my bedroom window with enough force to crack both layers of plywood. My piano's in that room so I feel lucky! A tree "fell" (more like "slowly tipped over and gently came to rest on") my house. Besides that, I and everything I own are just fine. (My neighbor lost his giant attic window which nearly gored my piano room.)

The storm tracked just north of my town, hence I never saw the SE wind (the strongest) instead, the wind was from the NW (a land breeze). Areas just to my north and east had much higher wind. The peak wind gust here was a "mere" 105mph; a bit to the east, 125mph, quite a difference. A 100mph wind is just at that threshold of where things started getting ripped apart, there was a lot of crashing noise on the street and a few moments where the air was darkened with debris.

The storm was also extremely brief as hurricanes go. From beginning to end the whole event transpired in perhaps 3 hours. The highest sustained wind was less than 80mph and the highest gust was short of 110mph. (I estimate from the type of wind damage we saw, classic cat1/2 stuff. Trees down, a few windows blown out, major damage to the power grid, mobile homes de-roofed, a couple stronger houses' roofs went missing. That mobile home I mentioned in an earlier post was indeed blown over.

It could have been much worse!

Now...how the HELL am I going to get all those screws out?!?

Thank God for sleeping pills.

Don't tell me you used these one-way safety screws !???

Good to hear you came away relatively unscathed. It must be scary but I guess people over there get a bit stoic about it and don't worry too much once they are well prepared.

I wish I'd had some after Katrina. There was one night in particular where it was impossible to sleep, cause there wasn't even the slightest stir of a breeze (this was the night after the storm). After that, it was still disgusting, but never quite as bad as that night with no breeze.

Welcome back.

Stoic is a good word for it. We don't panic, most of us are prepared enough, but an alarmingly large number of coastal dwellers are way to complacent. They are always the ones to die first.

And NO, I may have less carpentering ability in my whole body than most have in their morning coffee, but I did not use safety screws!

Ah yes, sleep (lack of it) is what really wears you down after the power goes out. Hot, HUMID!!! and the outside is pitch black punctuated with the odd police siren. Not very snuggly.

It's good to be back, luckily my piano seemed ok after the spike in humidity. Normally it goes badly out of tune after hurricanes.


Segue to Ike!