Hurricane Irene

As you may know, we are preparing here in the Northeast for Hurricane Irene.  Living in Rhode Island, it's not something we see all that often.  The National Weather Service is and has been calling for wide spread power outages, which may mean that I will be offline for several days, and possibly weeks. 

We will be preparing later on today, into tomorrow morning for this major event by tying down the grill, and garbage barrels and just picking up any items in the yard that have the potential to become flying projectiles. 

I have a feeling that we will, once again, be saying hello to "Murphy's Law".  Having just finished revamping all of our garden beds, planting new items, and laying down new mulch, all I can do is shake my head and laugh at this point. 

After having already gone through 2 major disasters last year, first the fire, then the historic flooding, I have become quite familiar with how insurance companies, and claims work.  Having said that, I have gone through every room in our house, and all around the perimeter of our home taking pictures... Dozens of pictures.  We have backed up all our computers on my little external hard drive.  Now aside from a few errands that we need to do, all we can do is sit, wait, and hope for the best. 

Respectful. 

Yes, we are respectful of the power behind a hurricane.  My husband and I are not the panicking type, so I will say, that we are looking forward to heading out Saturday, down to the beaches and checking out the waves, and then again heading out when all is over to see what the storm leaves us with. 

If you're in one of the extreme threat level areas, there are a few things you may want to make sure are down, before Irene is bearing down on you...

1.  Fill your vehicles up with gas.
2.  Hit the ATM and get some cash to have on hand.  If there are wide spread power outages, Debit terminals will not be working.
3.  Make sure you have water. 
4.  Stock up on the right foods.  You don't want to be stocking up on items like Milk and cheese if we loose power.
5.  Look around your yard, tie down items like garbage cans and grills.  Pick up loose boards, or potted plants. 
6.  Make sure you have a bag of toiletries / clothing ready if you're in an evacuation area. 
7.  Take photos of your rooms and properties with a digital camera... if something does happen to your belongings or property you will already have pictures of the items.
8.  Back up photos and computer work. 
9.  When filling water bottles to freeze, remember that water expands as it freezes, so only fill your bottles three quarters of the way full.  When it freezes, the ice won't crack the bottle.