Irene

We survived Irene!

I am very happy and feel incredibly blessed to report that we survived the hurricane. So many people are still trying to deal with the effects of the storm. My heart goes out to them and I'm praying that they recover and resume life quickly.

I think most of the hype of the storm came from the news anchors. I know that they needed to make it seem serious so citizens would heed the warnings, but it was almost a little much.

In any case, it worked for my boss. He's a great guy, but was definitely very cautious about the storm.

So Thursday night, he sent 2 of my co-workers out for supplies (water, batteries, flashlights, candles, etc). Since one of my co-workers is the Hubster, I whispered to him to get some stuff for us while he was at the stores.

He called me an hour and a half later to say that Walmart was out of water, candles, flashlights, and batteries.

Wait, what?

So I left work soon after and headed to CVS to grab a prescription refill. Since I was there, I figured I should stock up on the essentials for my hurricane kit. I bought water (3 cases and 4 gallon bottles), pop tarts, applesauce, shampoo, razors, and eye drops. You know, the essentials.

Friday morning my boss declared that we were going to *secure* the building and go home to make sure that our houses would be okay. So after an hour of putting the laptops in giant plastic bags and moving everything away from the windows, we left for home.

It was nice, really. The Hubster and I had some lunch at a cute deli and sat outside by a pond. We went to the bank, ran some other errands, and got to hang out together in the afternoon. We capped the day off by going out to dinner and sitting on a patio listening to a free outdoor concert.

Saturday morning we woke up and it was kind of cloudy out. Paul decided that we should stock up on beer and ice (more essentials) and we kind of hunkered down at home. It was so nice. We played some board games, watched the news, and waited for Irene to rain down.

And oh, did the rain come.

I don't think we slept between the hours of 2 and 6. We checked on the house and basement. We watched the news and prayed that the tornado warnings weren't really going to hit the house. I fell asleep at 6 out of pure exhaustion and woke up around 9 and found that there wasn't really any damage, it was still just very windy out.

By Saturday night, though, we had lost power and the sun was shining. So we made the best of it - we ordered pizza and read books and played games by candlelight. It was so nice though - we wanted to conserve our phone batteries, so we really were able to talk and laugh and connect without tv and blogs and facebook and regular life.

Thankfully our power was restored late Monday evening and I invited some of my old co-workers over if they need to take hot showers or just refresh for a few minutes. My one day of a cold shower was not so fun - I can't imagine what close to a week feels like. And the power companies are estimating some people won't have power until Sept 4!!

All in all it was a good weekend spent together. I have to admit that it was good *together* time and we had some fun too.

Now we're heading out this weekend to Deep Creek Lake. We rented an awesome cabin with my in-laws and I can't wait to spend some time with my most favorite people in the world!