Farewell, Irene

And that's about it! Irene turned out to be much friendlier than everyone feared. We suffered no real damage here, and most of our neighbors had a similar experience. A quick tour of the neighborhood showed branches everywhere and the occasional tree down, but I couldn't find any examples of damage to homes. From what I could tell, the only areas that flooded were right by the shore.

Transit in the NY metro area remains down, and will probably stay that way through tomorrow at least. Reports from friends and coworkers in the city suggest that damage was limited in there as well.

So, we are feeling relieved. This was a good practice run for the next big storm!

Irene is here!

We made it through the night with no adverse circumstances, although one neighbor lost a big tree. Our trees came through unscathed, and even the sunflowers are still up. But the main body of the storm is just now arriving, so we are not done yet. The wind is definitely picking up again out there.

Many on Long Island have lost power, but our neighborhood is still online. Crossing our fingers there. We had some heavy rain last night, but no flooding.

Irene's center is now predicted to pass directly over my office in Queens. I wonder how the Olmsted Center will do with that?

Update: LIPower says that out of 617,612 customers in Suffolk County, 206,997 are currently without power. Our power lines are still up, but we've had about five brownouts in the last hour. I suppose it's inevitable we will be added to the outage list at some point.

Irene's coming

As you may have heard, we are about to be smacked by Mother Nature. As I type this, just after 11pm Saturday, we can see the beginning of Hurricane Irene forming outside.

It's been calm here today, even with the mandatory evacuation of the south half of Patchogue (not our half, fortunately). There were a few little rain showers, but nothing to stop us from getting everything ready. Or at least as ready as we can be -- it's hard to know what to expect.

The forecast has changed from time to time. At the moment they are saying that Irene won't even be a Category 1 hurricane by the time it gets to us, merely a strong tropical storm. But those in charge are very worried about the slow speed of this storm, meaning it will be dumping lots of water. We are bracing for extended power outages and possible flooding. Unlike New Orleans, we're above sea level -- slightly -- and the island has a good pitch down to the bay. We also have the benefit of Fire Island between us and the storm, which we all hope will absorb a lot of the storm surge.

Still, what can you do but prepare as best you can and deal with things as they come up. Before I left the office Friday, we moved all the computers away from the windows and covered everything as well as possible.

My office is in a low-lying area, so it may well be flooded. Also, they've never really fixed the roof after last year's tornado drove several trees through it. Unfortunately we ran out of tarps, and had to cover documents with whatever we had at hand.

Naturally even a hurricane is no excuse to let any deadlines slip!

We spent most of the day today preparing everything here at home. Our garage sometimes has minor flooding issues, so I had to make some improvised dams. The Chevy gets to stay in the garage since it doesn't have comprehensive insurance.

Harriet also gets to stay in the garage. No insurance on her either.

Ami planted sunflowers that did really well this year. We will miss them. I'm also very worried about all the new plants I put in this spring, including some great (and expensive) trees.

The main body of the storm is supposed to hit us tomorrow around 8am. Right now it is raining lightly, with a light wind moving directly west. The clouds are moving much more rapidly. It's kind of eerie to feel such a little wind while the clouds race past silently. We are east of the projected center, and the storm is rotating counterclockwise. So the wind starts out east to west, then it will shift around from the south and end up west to east as the bottom of the storm comes up.

If we still have internet access, we'll give another update tomorrow during the day. If communications go out, don't worry, I am pretty sure we'll be fine here. We have lots of water, batteries, and enough food storage to last through several hurricane seasons (thanks Marge). So we'll try to put something up as soon as possible. Here we go!

we. are. back.

It's been awhile, but we have returned home at last to the pleasant shores of Long Island. Ami and the chilluns were away almost the entire summer. I did come back for a few weeks in the middle for employment purposes. At that point I thought about posting a post, but my activities at the time were pretty unremarkable (work. come home. watch part of a movie, consume ice cream. sleep. repeat).

This grand trek to the Western US was split into several phases. After our arrival in SLC and a few days with my parents, we headed to Idaho for Phase 1: McCall, with a quick but great stop en route to see my cousin John.

None of the extended Anderson family lives in Idaho, but that didn't stop them from renting not one, not two, but three large cabins. (And with all the little Anderson descendants around, we were all just fine with that much space.)

So, lots of great cousin time. This was helped by the plethora of Legos stocked in one of the cabins.


















Not sure if you can see, but Ellie is building a giant tower composed entirely of Lego heads. Sort of an eerie Lego totem pole. Approved!

Two of these cabins were right on Payette Lake, and with powerboats supplied by the Barnes and Hepworth contingents, there was much watersporting.


















Ellie loved it, as we all expected, and continually lobbied for the boat to go ever faster. I was impressed with Nico, though, who overcame his usual reluctance for such activities and rode the tube several times. By the end he was really enjoying it. My favorite part: I was riding with Ami and Ellie, and we hit an enormous bump. I looked over and both my companions were gone -- thrown off the tube. But after a split second, Ellie landed right back in her spot and hung on! She must have bounced more than five feet. Ami was not so lucky that time. Ha!

Ellie also tried out wakeboarding and enjoyed that as well, although she has some practicing to do in that department. Suffice it to say that she has now learned to let go of the rope after you hit the water.

When they weren't on the boat (or crashing through the wake of the boat), the kids spent most of their time on the beach.


















Nico created the crater that Ellie and Brit are standing in. It came to hold some kind of mystical significance for all the kids, though I never figured out exactly what it was.


















It wasn't all watersports, though. We also kicked around McCall, which is a great little town, and one day took a hike in the nearby mountains with the Barnes and B. Ray the Intrepid.
















I say "Intrepid," because it turned out we were all a little crazy for trying this hike. The rivers were raging and the snow was high, and there were downed trees all over the place. We forged ahead for some distance until the trail became impassable. Beautiful scenery up there -- we don't really get that in New York.





















































Toward the end we celebrated the 4th of July by viewing the fireworks out on the lake.























And then we drove to Utah for Phase 2! To be continued...