July 09, 2005
HUNKER DOWN!
Well, Dennis is officially, officially here.
The strongest band of showers yet is passing through Bloomingdale and Valrico at the moment. I'm guessing there are gusts of 25 mph.
Where was I when it hit? At the grocery store, of course.
I would have been home in time to beat the monsoon, but The Slowest Woman In The World And Her Daughter And Her Daughter's Two Friends were taking forever to check out and get out of the goddamn store.
I stood there, and so did a handful of other shoppers, literally, for two minutes waiting for each of them to weigh themselves on the scale by the door. Couldn't move their cart, of course, until they were all done.
So, that meant I had to unload all the groceries in a downpour.
Jackass.
Our neighborhood is remarkably dry, despite the downpour. The "dry pond" in the back has some standing water from neighborhood drainage, but not too much.
Although Publix was crowded, there isn't much in the way of visible hysteria. As I pulled out of my neighborhood onto Culbreath Road, there was a neon green "ESTATE SALE" sign in the ground outside the development ajacent to ours. When I rolled back through a half-hour later, the sign read, "ESTATE SALE, 1/2 OFF!"
The message: There may be cataclysm afoot, but we still have heirloom product to move.
Down the road a bit, I noticed some recycling bins that hadn't been picked up, loaded to the brim with beer bottles. They'll make a tasty batch of projectiles if the wind picks up.
The projection still takes the eye far to the west of us, but at the moment, it doesn't really matter. We're getting enough wind and rain to get our attention. Both of our mothers have called to inquire if they should take plants and stuff off their porches, since a twister not far away lifted off someone's screen enclosure. That's how casual everything is as this point here.
yeah...It's 7pm and now the wind is beginning to pick up quite a bit. I was at the store this morning and the mood was indeed casual...still, to be on the safe side, I grabbed some candles and water. Hell, you never know. A transformer that blew at 6am woke me up...Instinctively and half asleep I got up and grabbed a flashlight and made sure the cats were inside and okay. And by the way..."hunker down" is, like, so 2004. ;-)
The newscasters and Jeb need to come up with a new catch phrase.