Mount St. Helens is waking up again!

Mount St. Helens VolcanoCam

I was 9 when this thing erupted and I was living in Seattle at the time. I was sooooo scared when it happened, and watching the news and getting info where ever I can has me a little shaky again. They say it won't be anything like what happened 24 years ago, but you never know. Mother nature is sure angry right now!

What a totally PISSY day

Why does everything have to happen at the same time? First I'm STILL having to deal with this damn hurricane in a way I didn't expect. Today I decided I'd wash a few loads of clothes and rest a while before going back to work tonite. First, after all the rain, it got in the door of my car and has messed something up. I literally have to break into my own car because the thing does "catch" to let me open the door. So after going thru the motions for 15 minutes to break into my car, I go to the ATM and get some money. No problem there. Well maybe except the idiot that decided to walk right in front of me as I inserted my card. So I goto Family Dollar to get some laundry detergent and deoderant. I walked that damn store for maybe 15 minutes looking for it. They have freight and L-carts of freight all over the place. A lawsuit waiting to happen. The lady looked at me twice and turned to finish talking to her friend about her trifling boyfriend. So having an ethnic moment I say with much attitude "damn do you sell deoderant????" "oh it's over there.....so girl, I told his ass I'm going over to that bitch house......" I get my deoderant from the measly selection and quickly pay and leave. I'm still so pissed from all the action that I passed right by the damn store to get cigarettes. And I was gonna quit today too.....

So now I get home and load up my clothes. My neighbor stops me and says "you know they went up on the price on the dryers to $1.50". I'm thinking great, rape us some more. Then she says that instead of an hour, her clothes stopped drying at 30 minutes. WTF?!?!?!? It takes an hour to dry clothes in those thimble-sized dryers, so it's now really $3 fucking dollars to dry my damn clothes. So now he makes us pay water bills.....at damn near $30 a month. That's just from taking a daily shower, no washer and dryer, and a kitchen faucet that gets fixed every two weeks. I'm holding out so hard from calling him and telling those deadbeat ass fuckers to kiss my shitty ass!!!!

I guess the only solace I have is sitting here with a cat sitting...or shall I say laying down on my shoulder fast asleep. I guess it's better than her standing on my shoulder with her butt in my face >:-|

One of many downed trees in my area. This is in a yard behind my grandmother's house. It was open a little from Frances, Jeanne finished it off. 

I survived Jeanne

Well I can say that it wasn't as bad as I thought. Power went off about 8:20am Sunday morning as expected. The funny part about that was I was talking to someone on AIM, and was like "yea I'm just waiting for the power to go out"....10 seconds later *POOF*. Power finally came back on about 4pm today (Monday). When the power went out the storm was in the neighboring county to the east, the rain had been going for a few hours and the wind was picking up. I just sat at the desk and watched this huge oak tree sway back and forth. It scared me enough to where I made myself an area in the closet and got some sleep. It got hot so I ended up in the bed. It was still cool in the house so it wasnt bad. I ended up working lastnite which wasnt bad, I didnt have to sit in the dark at home. some minor damage there, the mesh covering in the garden center was ripped off and that's about it. I've lost all my food in the fridge again so that's something I have to work with. When I drove to my mother's house, you can go down any given road and see downed tree limbs, here and there some huge trees are uprooted. Polk county got it really bad (again).

I never realized how important having electricity is to me (and internet)

I'm getting sick of this.

The storm has not made a north turn yet, so the newest advisory has it coming right over my head, the exact path of Frances. This is just too much I swear. And OMG it's still a cat2!!!

It's that time AGAIN

I'm getting bloody sick of all these hurricanes. The store closed early tonite and we were expected to work until around midnite or so, but the store manager got us out of there before 11:30pm without even finishing cleaning up. Still amazing that customers are pissed about it. It's getting windy with minimal rain. I think I'll sleep now simply because I may not be able to in a few hours.

Love your kids? Prove it by beating them.

This is old skool, and I have to sort of agree. I got my ass kicked as a kid. today as an adult I still have flashbacks if I'm getting ready to screw up. Kids today are kicking their parents' asses, and that's just wrong! It's time today's kids start getting their own switches from that tree out back.....

The worse luck in the world

Apparently I need to get out more. My cable totally went out yesterday for no apparent reason. The TV I guess I can deal with, but no cable light on my modem sends me thru some changes. I went to work lastnite with no service. Then I come home this morning to find a cab wrapped around a pole in front of my complex, and my side of the complex had no power. Apparently he was run off the road by someone. I'm surprised I got power back so soon cause the pole looked split. I haven't gone back out to see exactly what was done. Guess I shouldnt complain. I have power and internet and the A/C is on :-P

Let us welcome Jeannie. Of course it's way too early to be worried, but us weary Floridians are watching it i'm sure. Tell you the truth I'm bloody sick of all the storms. The rain is welcome, but I don't want a skylite in my whole 2nd story apartment. We'll see how this one plays out

Well here's Ivan. After watching it for almost a week after Frances, it seems that we lucked out on this monster. I haven't heard from my friend in the Cayman Islands, but from all the reports it looks like he got hit pretty severly. But we're not out of the woods yet as there's something else to worry about :-(

From where I drove, the damage is sporadic. Parts of downtown were flooded earlier, but I think that has subsided. I wish I could say the same for my neighborhood. I stay a few blocks away from a major shopping mall, and it's under water. This is a pic from in front of the mall down the main 8 lane street that passes in front of it. The rest of the pics can be seen below.

Aftermath pictures

I survived my first hurricane....Hurricane Frances. Being in hurricane force winds is not fun but at the same time it's almost surreal. I lost power on Sunday about 12:50pm. At the time it really wasnt that windy when the transformer blew, but it didnt bother me, as there was an approaching hurricane. I spent most of the day sitting around. I tried to catch up on some reading assignments but just couldnt stay focused. I was totally exhaused but I couldnt sleep, so I listened to the radio. One call I just cant forget is a guy who didn't have power. He calls the radio station, states his area and he had no power for (at the time) about 4 hours or so. He also stated he drove around his neighborhood (bad idea), he saw no "major damage" and it was only raining. Then he goes into his rant and says "it's not fair". WTF??? Apparently his argument was that why wasnt the electric company out on a pole giving him his electricity in the 40mph+ sustained winds?? I had to LOL when the DJ quickly hung up on him, and spent about 10 minutes calling him different kinds of idiots.

Fast forward to about 8pm. With what was forcasted for the weather, it was already planned for me to be to work. At that time it was only raining with some gusts, but nothing we wouldnt see in an afternoon thunderstorm. My manager was running late, so I decided to drive around to avoid getting sleepy to see how things were. I was amazed that some gas stations were open. Those foreigners know when to cash in on opportunity, and each open station i passed was packed. Sporadic outages, I didnt see anything drastic, such as big trees down, but this is only about a 5 mile area i was in. We basically had a skeleton crew at work, two managers and five associates. Wasn't much to do, but I was able to maintain my weekly hours (these days I can't afford to miss any hours for ANYTHING).

About 11pm is when things got real ugly. Most of the day the worst thing I saw from my living room window was wind gusts, alot of foilage. Now things were looking like what you'd see on TV, horizontal rain. The front doors of the building was buckling under the pressure of the wind. I'm no meteorologist, but I could take a guess and say those were strong tropical storm winds, 50 or 60 miles per hour. It was wicked!!! At this point I feel like an idiot for being so dedicated to my job, but I didn't have power so I felt better to be at work anyway. In any case, we are getting the back end of the storm now, and it was totally different from what went on in the beginning. The rain was coming down in sheets, very very heavy and VERY VERY WINDY. You can hear it pounding the roof almost all nite. When I came home I made a beeline, and being it was still dark I was limited to what I can see. The pond across the street from work has started flowing in the street. Vulnerable flood areas are underwater by many feet.

I have to try and get rest, but I hope to get pictures if it isnt still too dangerous outside.

I'm still here. I haven't lost power, but a few times it made my APC beep, the CATV acted funny a couple of times. I have my A/C on full blast so if the power does go out it will be relatively cool in here. At the moment it's raining outside, a little bit of wind, but the worse of the storm is coming, as noted by my graphic. viewer call-ins from the Lake Wales area state that it's really deteriorating, alot of trees and power lines down, a lady had part of a tree come in her window. I really hoped this thing would weaken more before getting here, God help us

Hurricane Frances comes to visit

This storm is already causing problems, and i'm on the West coast of the state. The above link shows what just happened to my grandmother's house. This is not going to be a good weekend.....

The storm is moving in. This is a snapshot from CNN showing some boats being knocked around. I'm not sure exactly where they are, all i know this is West Palm Beach. They showed some pretty dramatic footage of a nice sized pleasure boat coming in, a lady ran from it, apparently this boat lost an engine, but the fact I cant understand, what were they doing out on the waters anyway? This storm has been public knowledge for days, so what is their excuse?

Hurricane Frances

I'm getting impatient now with this storm. I know that sounds crazy, but the watching and waiting is killing me. I'm already impatient when it comes to waiting, but this is just too much. Apparently I'm not the only one, as the lady on the news just said the exact same thing. I wish it would speed up for this reason, and for the simple fact that it's moving so slow and the rains along with it, the flooding is going to be a major issue, especially in my neighborhood. a quick 10 minute storm puts a few of the roads under water, even though it takes a few hours to drain. With this storm, it could take days or even weeks to clear out. I guess the term "up the creek without a paddle" wont sound too stupid right now.

Ahh the joy of being a college student. For the last hour I've been doing some assigned reading from The Wadsworth Handbook and I just had to find a break after reading 6 chapters. I guess that means I need to stop procrastinating. I still havent completed my reading for my Sociology class, and haven't even begun reading for my Management class (waiting on my book). I've managed to avoid having to do a Thesis on anything, but my number has been called. This actually might be fun!