Hurricane Irene

The hurricane is gone and everything is drying out.  We’ve been without power since 10:00 am on Sunday morning and they’re saying one or two more days before it’s on (I’m writing this from work.) 

The preparations were simple:

1)      Fill the tub with water.  This allows us to have water for flushing toilets, washing dishes and eliminating bed-head.

2)      Take down the swings.  You don’t want any metal chains flying around in 60 mph winds.

3)      Flip the picnic table over (that’s where it’s going to end up anyway.)

4)      Take down all the little things like the flag, the hanging plants on the front porch, the hummingbird feeder and bring in the garden gnome.

5)      Do the dishes and laundry.  We have a private well and when the power goes out we have no water.  I hate starting a power outage while I’m already “in the red” so to speak.

6)      Candle and flashlight check.

7)      Get the Coleman stove ready to go.

8)  And of course, get some shelf-stable food and fill a few jugs of drinking water.

9)  Relax and watch the family panic.

It wasn't until late afternoon that I had to make the hardest decision of all: what foods to put in the cooler (on ice) and what foods to let go bad.  I just bought the strawberries and blueberries so those go in the cooler.  The milk is half gone and the jug is huge, let it die.  I did this until the cooler was full.  Goodbye Ah-So sauce.  I always say that losing power in the winter is better than losing it in the summer.  For starters, the windows are already shut and the house doesn’t turn into a stuffy oven when you close them all.  Second, the wood stove heats the house.  Third, I just throw all our food out onto the back deck and pack it in snow.  I’ve never lost any food during a blizzard.  These summer outages just suck!

The kids enjoyed watching the storm.  The trees whipping back and forth, rain coming down in sheets and branches falling from the sky.  My daughter didn't quite get the no electricity thing.  I told her she couldn't watch a DVD on the living room TV because the TV & DVD player won't work without electricity.  She said, "That's OK, I'll just watch it on the other TV."   OK, you go for it.  Let me know how that works out.

The poor dog suffered more than anyone though.  He came downstairs at one point dressed in a pink bathrobe and his head was covered in hair clips.  My daughter really shouldn’t be left alone with animals.  She killed a parrot when she was four.

After the storm was over my cat was very upset about all the branches in the yard and I think he wanted me to go out and pick them up right away.  He looked very stressed and spent an excessive amount of time seeking affection.  I think he needed a kitty Xanax, so I administered a healthy dose of catnip and he was off in another world for most of the afternoon.

By 8:30 pm the kids were tucked into the pull-out bed and my wife was right next to them on the couch.  I headed upstairs and crashed by 9:00.  The rain had stopped, the air was dry and the wind was still blowing at about 20 or 30 mph.  I opened all the windows and it felt like October.  I loved it!  I had the best nights sleep I've had in a very long time.

This morning I had the option to go to work or use a vacation day and stay home.  I believe another day in that house with my wife and kids would have put me in the nut house.  So here I sit eating microwave popcorn and surrounded by the glow of electricity.  Unfortunately I have to leave in a couple hours and return to my primitive shack full of restless natives.  Maybe I'll bring home a wild animal and we'll cook it over a fire in the back yard.

Last Night's Dream!

It was hard to walk; my toes hurt.  I looked down and was shocked to find that my toenails had grown three inches!  I couldn’t find any scissors or nail clippers, and as a result I was forced to rejoin the Army (the one I parted company with in 1997.)  This time my recruitment was a little different.  I didn’t have to go through basic training again and I got to bring plenty of personal items; like real socks instead of those non-stretch, thick, scratchy, green, produced by lowest bidder wool ones.  Any way, I was being trained for a new job.  On my first day I met my instructor.  He was a sergeant, an E-5 for those “in the know” and on the very first day we went on a combat mission.  I was a little concerned because I still didn’t know what the hell my job was or what my training was going to entail.  I showed up with all my gear, body armor, weapons and a small OD green box about the size of a toaster that contained several smaller OD green boxes.  For those who aren’t “in the know,” OD means olive drab.  It’s a universal Army term/acronym used to describe that wonderful color that all veterans love to hate.  As the helicopter lifted off I was seated on the left side by the large sliding door.  There was also a pilot, copilot and another passenger seated to my right.  There were several other helicopters flying on both sides of us but we were the only one flying backwards.  I began to question the pilot’s abilities.  He turned us around right about the same time the explosions started.  They were distant, but I could still feel the concussion resonating through the metal frame of the helicopter.  I looked at our semi-confused aviator and realized that the pilot was my sergeant/instructor who never trained me on what to do with this stupid little box sitting on my lap.  In the real Army, E-5s don’t fly anything, and I seamed to be aware of this in my dream too.  He somehow got us to the objective without crashing and we set down in a dirt field next to some third world houses on the edge of a small city; the kind of small city where the main streets double as open sewers. 

We slid the doors open and the pilot looked back at me and over the sound of the turbine engines yelled “you’re up!”  I must have looked confused because and said, “You’re the expert on the X-99, so use it!” and he pointed at the small OD green box in my lap.  I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I had just now learned the name of this stupid thing and that I didn’t know if it was used to buff shoes or teleport aliens.  That’s when the woman appeared outside the door of the helicopter.  She was gross to say the least and was walking toward the helicopter at an unsteady pace.  She started to reach into a large bag that she had over her shoulder and when she was about 10 feet from the helicopter she took a bomb out of her bag.  All my military training tells me that I should have grabbed my rifle and turned her into dog-chow, but I didn’t.  I sat there clueless, clutching my X-99 with one hand and reaching over to slide the left-side door shut with the other.  Hey, I didn’t want her to throw that thing inside with me.  Instead, she threw it on top of the helicopter, between the rotor blades and the roof.  I screamed for the pilot to fly straight up in hopes that it would fall off and gravity would take it back to the ground.  We took off and were about 100 feet up and perpendicular with the ground when there was a massive explosion.  We spun around several times and crashed nose first back into the field. 

The pilot and copilot were crushed to death and my cohort to my right was alive but pinned inside and couldn’t move.  I got out but couldn’t find my rifle.  I un-holstered my pistol and started to take aim at the local people surrounding the wreckage.  The guy inside obviously didn’t want to be left out of the assault and started to fire off random insults at the locals.  He yelled, “You're all just pissed 'cause your moms have bigger dicks than you!” and “You bastards are so dirty you have to wipe your feet before you go outside!”  While I appreciated the effort, it didn’t help much and besides, I don’t think they understood English.  He continued his barrage of insults as I began shooting the scariest aggressors.  First, a mother and child that were shooting at me, then a guy on a roof.  There were others moving in and I got surrounded from behind.  I stood up just in time to look down and watch as my chest exploded from behind.  That’s when I woke up.  It was 3:15 in the morning.

Needless to say I was a bit sweaty and wasn’t about to fall back to sleep any time soon.  But when I did, I found myself going into a building to make a huge financial investment. It was a bright and sunny day and when I drove up to the building I thought it was a place where I could buy stock.  When I walked up to the desk inside I asked to buy one million shares of Microsoft stock (talk about a nightmare!)  The people looked at me, tossed me a copy of the Wall Street Journal and went back to their work.  This was apparently a place that only sold investment news papers.  I didn’t want to look like a complete idiot so I took the paper.  I had to pay for the newspaper in the next room which was a restaurant.  There were about twenty people in line and I said, “Screw this!”  But I couldn’t return the paper because I had already left the first room with it.  I went back to the restaurant and took a stroll through their outdoor patio, where I hopped the fence and cut through a garden.  In the garden I saw the coolest thing.  It was a very small (about the size of a soda can) black chihuahua with the head of a Gremlin.  Yeah, a Gremlin, just like in the movie.  It was inside of a gourd and was half done eating it when I grabbed it by the scruff of its neck.  It was vicious!  I suppose I would be too if somebody grabbed me during dinner.  I put it in a Tupperware box that “just happened” to be there and took off for my car.  A guy working in the garden said I couldn’t do that but I took off anyway and by the time I found my car it was pitch black outside.  Weird, seeing how it was like…noontime when I got out of my car.  There was just one obstacle left in my way, two half drunk teenage boys who wanted my gremlin.  I think they worked there because they looked like gardeners.   They approached me as I was getting in my car and started to threaten me.  I grabbed a gallon of rotten milk I kept in my back seat just for emergencies (doesn’t everyone?) and splashed it all over them. I got in my car and tore out of the parking lot just as one of the teenagers who was running along side me unloaded a fire extinguisher into my left ear.  I screamed out the window, “You missed me!” as loud as I could, just so he wouldn't have the satisfaction of not missing me.  I drove for a few minutes and realized I was on the bus route I took to school as a kid.  I followed it even though it goes nowhere near where I live now (not even the same state.)  I looked at my fuel gage.  It was almost on empty. I had lost my wallet.  I had no cash.  The alarm went off just in time to avoid this crisis.

I woke up physically exhausted and starving.  I don’t know what was in last night’s potatoes au gratin but there’s no way in hell I’m eating those leftovers tonight!

Who's to blame?

I have to say, I agree with Mark Cuban 100%
http://www.thepostgame.com/blog/daily-take/201108/did-mark-cuban-predict-market-crash

Why?

So I've had my About.me page for less than one business week and my Twitter page has been bombarded. Unfortunately it's all by fake accounts for porn sites.  I can already see how usefulless this thing is going to be.

Busy, busy, busy!

I'm still spending most of my free time crafting speeches for my Speechcrafters Class.  This Thursday I have to do a three-bullet informative speech about anything I want. I have the floor for three minutes.  I'm going to talk about the infamous "Prince of Nigeria" e-mail scam.  I was delving into the history and immediately found two interesting things. 1) Nigeria is a constitutional democracy and has no monarchy whatsoever.  Odd, since there are about 28 Nigerian princes on LinkedIn right now.  2) This scam used to be a fax machine scam in the '80s and before that it was a letter writing scam and can be traced back to the 1920s!  Who knew?

The bug bites are just about gone. Yaaaaaa!

I normally don't blog about my kids unless it's something interesting, cool or funny.  With that in mind, we took them to an outdoor survival class last weekend.  It was basically a half day class designed to teach them what to do if they get lost in the woods.

All the exercises were about keeping them warm, dry and increasing their chances of getting found.  Here's a picture of my daughter's final test.

She found a high spot (to prevent being flooded in the rain) under a tree (to keep her dry) and made a small bench out of dry leaves and branches to keep her off the cold ground (if it were winter time and not 90 degrees.)  She then blew on her whistle three times (universal sign of distress) every minute until the teacher got there.  GOOD JOB!

We went to a small nature museum, after a picnic lunch, and found this interesting thing:

Can you guess what it is?  I'll put the answer at the bottom of this post.

We stopped at this cool country store.  It was a 200 year old, 3 story barn.  This is what I imagine when I think of a New England country store.  They had home-made onion & peach salsa!

Later that night my wife found this HUGE frog in our garden.  He was there to eat the beetles and he had a reservation.  We let him stay the night.

On Sunday morning my daughter's pony, Scout came out of the closet...

Monday found me back at work and doing a series of environmental inspections through Keen and into Brattleboro, Vermont.

Downtown Brattleboro...

That brings us up to today, which has been filled with speech writing, grant contract amendment writing, customer service voice mails to answer and e-mail questions to reply to.  By this time tomorrow the week will be more than half over.

Oh, and for those who made it all the way to the end...that odd thing in my hand was a tooth from a sperm whale.

About.me

OK, I finally broke down and did one of these.  It feels like shameless self promotion.
http://about.me/deanorobinson

Friday Motivation

Well it's Friday once again and I'm counting the hours, minutes and seconds until I can walk ever so briskly out the of my cubicle, down three flights of stairs, out the lobby, through the parking lot, creep across downtown Concord, merge onto I 93 and dive 40 minutes to get home...to relax.  By relax I mean do the kid's dishes, fold some laundry, cut the lawn, fix three broken screens, maybe stain the back deck and write my next speech for my Speechcrafters class.

It's Friday so I'm just going to dream a little.

Hmmmmmmmmm, if you hit the lottery, what are the first three purchases you would make?

Here's mine:

I'd upgrade my 9 year old car to one of these...

and I'd update my 15 year old kayak to one of these...

and I'd probably move someplace like this...

In fact, if I try really hard, I can see it in my head...

Ah, thank you Friday for another dream to help get me through the afternoon.

Weekend events

I know, I promised that I would post pics on Monday but...I lied.

So I took Friday off and went kayaking.  I chose a tidal river right on the seacoast and these two cute little ducklings (on the concrete ramp) came to give me a send off.

The river was moving at about 6 knots and I paddled against it for about 30 minutes.

Then I stopped and just floated up river with the current, steering the boat only when I needed to.  I went up river several miles and through two towns.  It was very relaxing.  At 11ish I pulled the boat out onto a small island and had lunch.  By 1 pm the tide was all the way in and I was able to paddle home with little effort at all. 

Later that night I invited as many friends as I could to come sit around the fire-pit to drink, eat and swap war stories.  I provided chips while others brought some baked goods.

It's a nice feeling when everybody drives to your house for the night.  It shows that they like spending time with you.  I have good friends.  One of my buddies from high school showed up who I've only seen about three times in the past 20 years. I loved catching up.  We wrapped it up at about 1:30 in the morning and I didn't get out of bed until 10 am the next day.  Totally worth it!

The next day I awoke to find that my ankles and calves had been dined upon my something.  These are the worse bug bites I've ever had.  There are so many it looks like a rash, but it isn't.  They are just 100s of tiny bug bites. I wore socks, shoes and bug spray too!  Itches like hell!  WTF!

That's all I have today.  I have to work on my speech for Speechcrafters.  Thursday is "Ice Breaker" day and I have to come up with a speech to describe myself to all the other people in the class.  I actually have an opening, body and a closing.   I'm doing a practice run in about 30 minutes with a mentor and then I have Wednesday to polish it up.

Wish me luck!

Anyone want to share their weekend experiences?