Friday 4:00 p.m. Update

The news this afternoon continues to be bad. At 12:00 noon they broke into all the radio stations and announced that the eye is now headed for Grand Cayman and if there are no changes in direction, (and there have been three in just the last 24 hours) we get hit straight on by it Monday morning. The buildings all around are starting to get boarded up. We spent the whole morning and early afternoon at the college wrapping everything in garbage bags and moving everything to the two inner rooms. We did line up plywood for the college and tomorrow morning some workers are supposed to come nail it up.

We are now home and starting our own preparation. We have discovered to our dismay that the plywood left for us doesn't fit the downstairs windows so not only do we have an upstairs issue but also a downstairs one too. We will spend the rest of the day getting what we can together for the kit to be ready and as best we can the house. We are also going over to check out the librarians residence and see how secure it is. She is being evacuated by her husbands company so we would have the place. She also has hurricane shutters but at present no plywood for her patio doors. We are now reconsidering the college because it will be boarded up. If it does hit at category four which was what Ivan was then wherever we are will not be safe so we are trying to make safest decision possible.

We haven't gotten a cell phone yet and while that hasn't been an issue up until now, it means that at present we don't have ways of getting in touch with people here. Our little car is not going to stand a chance of there is any significant flooding so our biggest worry (besides getting through this) is that we will be trapped with no way of communicating with anyone.

As I type this Katie is talking with her sister Mel on windows live so Internet seems to be fine. We will keep updating throughout weekend until they turn off the power sometime Sunday before it arrives. Thanks for the e-mails with encouragement. Lets all hope that there is yet another change of track and it moves somewhere north or south of here and all we deal with is a tropical storm force winds and rain. Those on windows live watch for us and we can talk etc.