Hurricane Irene

Whenever ill weather strikes, New Englanders glue themselves to the tube 24/7. Then, we all delight in discussing how useless and pointless the coverage was after the fact. New Englanders also love to complain that a storm wasn't "bad," as if they truly wanted complete and total annihilation. "Now that's a storm," they say. Worthy enough for a t-shirt, like the "I Survived Hurricane Bob" craze. We start trying to one-up each other, "in the blizzard of '78 I went days with my food in the snow" or "a tree fell over the driveway and I was stuck for ages" or "we bailed out the basement with a coffee can..."

Ridiculous.

But I'm a New Englander and a born Cape Codder. As in, born at Cape Cod Hospital and lived in the area all my life Cape Codder. And we're the worst offenders. Sure enough, I had my eyes stuck to the weather channel morning, noon, and night - even before the storm.

Sure enough, we were well prepared. I went grocery shopping on Tuesday. Thursday, we stayed up late cleaning the yard. Yup, up until midnight putting lumber in the basement, securing the garages, taking down the swings, and trashing the trash. We gassed up the chainsaws and the trucks.

Sunday, the storm was upon us. First thing in the morning, we lost a huge maple in the backyard. Thank god the boat was safe at Mike's work... it fell right on its normal parking space - just barely missing the playground, a tractor, and the skid steere. Mike was able to cut up some of it right then. But he was nervous about another old tree, perched precariously atop the hill next to the garage. It was primed to take out the garage and really taking a beating from the winds. Some of its higher limbs cracked and hung by some miracle of something.

Meanwhile, out front, a huge limb came off the locust, taking out the power lines to the house and ripping the box right off the outside wall. (This is a tree that Nstar cut off half of a few years ago. Now it's all lopsided and it still took out the power lines. Thanks, Nstar.) Luckily, we still had power for quite some time after that. And then our luck ran out - off by 3pm.

And it's still off. Now I'm regretting that huge food shopping trip. According to the National Food Inspection folks, food in an unopened fridge with no power is good only for 4 hours. Here we are at over 24 with a possibly 8 day wait ahead of us. Thank god for phones, or I would have never been able to check the weather. 

Goodbye to Yet Another Eyesore

As promised, Mike and our neighbor Dana finished the drywall on Saturday and got it all primed.
Of course I was supposed to paint on Sunday... but unfortunately there were a couple cracks that Mike had filled in on Saturday that weren't completely cured yet. I am, however, planning on painting tonight - no ifs ands or butts. I'm hoping I have enough of the base blue leftover from the last time I painted this room to cover it. I really should just go down and get another gallon - but I honestly don't feel like spending the cash, so I'm going to try and stretch what I've got. At least I have plenty of glaze and light blue for the sponging.

If you look in the above pic out the french doors, you'll see a locust tree - I think that's what it is. Half of it is already down in this pic. Anyway - the tree is basically located on where the edge of the porch will be... so it had to come down.

I spent most of the day carrying logs back to the woodpile... in between the rain showers that is. Mike, after finishing the drywall, came out to take down the second tree.

So he tied one end of the rope to the tree and another to a telephone pole on the other side of the yard.

What you can't see in this pic is the electrical wires just over Mike's head. But he was confident that the tree wasn't tall enough to hit the wires. Me? I'm never entirely confident about these things - being a bad judge of distance and all. So Mike cut into the tree while I pulled on the rope. And sure enough, it just barely missed the wires.

I thought it was wicked close but Mike just replied, "It's only close if the wires are swinging." Oh my god.

So here's a cool pic of the tree down. Mike cut up the whole thing while I continued to bring logs to the wood pile. At the end of the day we loaded all the brush into his truck for a Sunday dump run and raked the yard. (Cause I had when you take a tree down and then there's stupid sticks all over the place.... Stupid Sticks - great band name. First album: "All Over the Place")