Late night wrap up

As darkness fell the sound of drills and saws slowly wound down. There is a strange calm about people around us almost a sense of false bravado behind which is real concern that this one is going to be Ivan all over again or perhaps even worse. We weren't here for Ivan and so that makes it all the more scary for us. We have no sense that hey I survived Ivan, I can survive this.

We caught a bit of the evening news when we were at Elsa's securing our ride to go park our vehicle and the news was pointing out something we had seen, even though the supermarkets and hardware stores were chaotic it was organized chaos and people are appearing to be calm. The sense that we are all in this together is quite strong and you see a lot of people going out of their way to help others just as Lonny went out of his way to help us this morning. The lessons of Ivan have definitely been learned as everyone is getting ready. The traffic today was much heavier than we have seen in a while and it seemed like the whole Island was out and about. Yet as the evening wore on there is a sense we are all just in full on waiting mode. For us it is even stronger since we have no car anymore and while we have our bikes as the weather worsens tomorrow we will really just be hunkering down here and watching the clock.

We have taken all the paintings off the walls and moved everything into cabinets so there are no loose items downstairs except our hurricane tubs which we will close up and move last. We have one full tub of food, one with 11 gallons of water and a third with items like batteries, bleach, flashlights, radio, tools, gloves, boots, tarps etc. We will also move the generator last up the stairs. When Katie's parents visited last month they brought a hurricane kit from Costco which will be invaluable as well. We wrote out a list of things for tomorrow that we want to do as the day progresses. We expect to have power and Internet until late and will blog as much as we can until we feel we have to unplug everything and pack it up. As the storm approaches though, the connection may be slow as we have wireless Internet not a land line. There are three towers on the Island and who knows if Westar keeps them up and running or pulls them down well ahead of the storm.

Katie couldn't bear the thought of the cats being downstairs tonight and convinced me that they needed to get to know the upstairs before the freight train blows through tomorrow night and scares them all to pieces. It was really just an excuse to get them closer to us so she can play with them but that's OK its a nice distraction.

Tonight we made our steak and corn on the cob. We actually watched a few episodes of Scrubs on the portable DVD player to get our minds off what is happening. Tomorrow we eat the chicken from our freezer. If we are going to lose use of the refrigerator and freezer for a while we need to empty it out so big meals tomorrow for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

What we have realized today is that we are really invested in this place. We believe in why we are here and we feel encouraged by the changes we have helped bring about at the college and the people we have gotten to work with. Both of us realize we now view this as our home and we cant just leave it even with what we now face.

The last 60 hours (really since Noon Thursday) getting the college ready have seemed like a month, its hard to remember what we were doing Wednesday that we thought was so important. The waiting part is a double edged sword. It gives us more than enough time to prepare here and at the college but it also is mentally draining because you cant keep yourself psyched up and prepared all the time. The truth is we are scared and this is not an adventure or exciting or anything that three days ago, a lifetime ago, we might have thought. We want it over but we want it not to happen at all, one of life's little ironies.