Hi Everyone!
I'm glad to check in from my friend's computer on the mainland (it's a PC, but she's really a great person so I can't complain...). We're starting our second night here after leaving our home in Key Biscayne (a barrier island SE of Miami) yesterday morning. What a wonderful thing to have electricity - we have A/C, TV, hot meals, cold beer (for which my husband gives thanks), great company, comfy beds, showers, and a snug refuge for our pets.
Are we lucky on two counts:
- if Frances had come ashore just 25-30 miles further south, Miami-Dade's millions would have gotten clobbered with lots of rain, wind, and storm surge. Here, about 10 miles south of downtown, we're getting steady but not heavy rain and good puffs of wind.
- the local television and stations, to whom EVERYONE I know with power has been glued since at least Tuesday, are showing hurricane updates and stories 24/7. Since Frances is HUGE (about the size of Texas), that means hardly anyone in the entire state saw Dubya speak at he convention Thursday night. Newscasts have been allocating 5 minutes max to other news every hour for days, and this storm is at least 24 hr from clearing out. Unbelievable!
I give Mother Nature credit for derailing Bush's attempt to maximize the Florida vote on the coattails of his boy Mel Martinez's win in the Republican primary for US Senate to replace Bob Graham.
I camped out in front of our TV at home Tuesday night watching and waiting on news of the forecast path of the storm, and was more than irritated when updates were interspersed with LIVE! coverage of Jenna and Not Jenna (anyone else think they look - and have the IQs of - Sporty and Posh Spice?), and the Stepfordian icon that is Laura Bush. Those "speeches" achieved a new low in TV broadcasting, and got me even more cranky than usual when seeing that ilk.
Enough political commentary:
Let me take this opportunity to wish everyone in central Florida on both coasts and the interior good luck as Hurricane Frances comes through. It's going to be a long, wet, and wild slog at least through Labor Day excluding cleanup.
My island house was about 1 mile from the edge of the northern eye wall of Hurricane Andrew in 1992, and it took us one week just to clean out the garden, plus more weeks to replace the flooded wooden floors with tile. However, we did not have any wind damage to our 1951 concrete-block cottage (except a few shingles off), and were incredibly relieved and lucky.
Quite an intense experience! We hope to head home tomorrow, and I'll post again if (or once) we have power.
Oh, one more thing ... the award for the stupidest comment I've heard in ages (and that's saying something these days) was uttered today by Mara Giulani, Mayor of Broward County. She described Hurricane Frances as "Mother Nature terrorism". Ugh. I nominate that for "Jeers" in Bill from Portland Maine's next C&J!