The winds have definitely picked up and all the palm trees are swaying around. It is a bit disconcerting since the eye of Dean is still 400 miles away. We made a trip to get gasoline and oil for the generator. The first gas station was already out of gas but we were able to find gas at the second station we went to with Kathleen. That station was out of oil so we will not be able to use our generator but have worked out a barter agreement with Kathleen and Keith that we will bring our gas and cook with them after the storm has passed.
Hurley's, the closest grocery store, was going to be open until 3 today but it has decided to only stay open till noon as we are already seeing the effects of the storm.
I asked our neighbor, Kathleen, whether or not we needed to hunker down in the bathroom during the storm (like one would during a tornado) or if it would be safe to be walking around the house since she had indicated that they were not going to raise any of their furniture until the water actually started coming into the house. It was reassuring to hear her say that, since we had boarded up the house, we would be safe walking around, unless our roof went.
The internet has started to slow down so we aren't sure how much longer we will have an internet connection. We haven't seen five bars since yesterday and are now moving between three and four bars (three is the minimum you need for a connection). We are now going to do the last of the preparations and will try to update the blog at least one more time.
It is sad that we were never able to do the grand tour of the house before Dean, but here are some pictures of the outside of the house now that it is all boarded up. Top to Bottom: The front of our unit (the complex has two of these units facing each other), the front of our place (we are the window/door on the left), and the back of our place (you can see the top of our patio doors and our upstairs window). Being one of the middle two units helps with everything (i.e. flooding and wind); our unit only got three inches of flooding in Ivan while some of them got almost a foot.
