Uh-oh

That's the thing about living in the SE United States. California has it's earthquakes, the midwest it's cyclones and here we have hurricanes. At least with hurricanes, they don't exactly sneak up on you and occur out of a clear, blue sky, there's usually few days of advance warning/chaos/fretting. According to the Weather Channel, Hurricane Irene is set to make landfall in Florida overnight Thursday into Friday morning as a category 2 (or possibly 3) hurricane with winds up to 100 mph. I survived the bookend hurricanes of Katrina and Wilma in 2005 and it wasn't pretty. Hopefully, this will track out to sea, but you never know.

In their typical state of permanent positivism, the local Christian radio station here had locals call in to relate their good hurricane stories of years past. I know that can seem like an oxymoron, but two people actually did have such stories.

• One young mother called in to say that following one of the hurricanes the electricity was out over wide expanses of Florida. She recalled going outside with her family and staring up at the night sky with them and enjoying the view. You see, there is so much ambient light here across the region that often times you can't make out the stars in the sky or at best, very few of them like Polaris.
  
  



• One man spoke of being outside after a hurricane and preparing pancakes on his barbeque grill because it was his only means of cooking for his family. Then all of a sudden, these people who lived all around him but never really communicated with, known as "neighbors" began to show up in his driveway. He said actually had long, enjoyable conversations with them and he probably never would have gotten to know them had the hurricane not passed by.

Blogging might be spotty over the next few days, but if something really catches my eye, I'll be sure and try to post it.