Salmon and Souvlaki

The sun is shining and we are enjoying a gentle breeze.

The front porch is back on the front porch.

We are considering ourselves very blessed to still have power as many people around us (even just a block or two away) lost power as well as something like 640,000 households around Baltimore.

The clouds finally left us mid-afternoon.  We were covered by the clouds of Hurricane Irene from Friday night until Sunday afternoon.  That was one massive storm.

Anyone around here – if you need ice, we have TONS!  So give us a call and you can come get it!

We lost power for just a few seconds at 11:45 pm.

Everything in our house  is fine.

The rain is basically gone.  It’s still very windy so we haven’t been outside.  From what we can see, there’s little to no damage.

We are grateful.  Thanks for your prayers.

That’s a fairly ominous title, isn’t it?  This is just my last blog post before signing off for the night.  In case you’re wondering why I’ve been just sitting around blogging for the past hour, it’s because Ellie is sleeping and Nik is at a retirement party for one of his co-workers.  So I’m writing away, posting some tonight and scheduling a few to post early next week.

And yes, you read that right, a party as the hurricane approaches.  Why not?  It’s really not all that bad out there yet.

It’s been raining steadily since midday.  For a few hours, it was actually a quite comforting rain to me because it felt like an Alaskan rain storm.  In Baltimore, most of the rain we get comes in the form of crazy thunderstorms that come suddenly, dump a bunch of rain, and then go away quickly.  But this felt like one of those Alaskan days where the clouds move in and the rain is here to stay.  I liked it.

Now, however, the rain is coming down in sheets and the wind is really getting stronger.  The dogwoods outside my window are moving pretty wildly.  The worst is supposed to hit us in about 3 hours and last until morning.

This weekend, we were scheduled to have a neighborhood association pool party, a foodie potluck (which we were hosting), the retirement party, church, and our annual church picnic.  Instead, Nik’s at the party and other than that, everything else got canceled/postponed and we’re staying home.

We’ve got batteries in our flashlights, tons of ice in the freezer, the bathtub full of water, gallons and gallons of drinking water around, and a plan for what to eat first if the power goes out.

As my friend Julie says, we’ll be glad if this is all for naught.  But if not, we’ll be glad we’ve done it all.

Thanks for your prayers everyone.  See you on the other side of Hurricane Irene.

Over and out.

Everything’s off the basement floor.  Most of the outside stuff is secured.  We’re making a bunch of ice as we speak.  We see the clouds coming ahead of the worst of the storm. We’ll blog as we can, although if we lose power, then no more blogging until it comes back. Thanks for your prayers everyone.