In Which I Get Up Close And Personal With A Big Windy Thing / Tuesday, August 30, 2005
Ok, so this is a pretty special post. Most important thing first: Everyone is alive. The only injury got by anyone was a black eye for me which I got today cleaning up the mess!
It all started on Sunday (Joe's birthday - he said he's not going to have any more of those!) Joe and I had to get everything that could possibly turn into a missile in the garage. We also had to go out and get water, batteries, food that wouldn't go bad, etc. Not as easy as it sounds, been as everyone wants all that stuff. In the evening I realised I forgot one major necessity: beer! So just as the first belts of rain came in I dashed out to get some, along with about six other blokes doing exactly the same thing!
Monday morning at about 5:30 there was a very loud bang which woke everyone up, we got dressed and went to see what it was. A tree had hit the house. Fortunately on the side of the house no one was in, and it hit on the corner so it only made a few little holes, and one big one. Had it fallen two metres to the left it would have gone straight through the wall and window and left a huge hole in the side of the house. As it was it's just a new skylight. (pictures are at
http://www.geocities.com/peterspencer10/damage ) Joe wanted to get up on the roof and fix it right then. I explained to him the 100mph gusts were enough to blow a tree over, and they would definatly be enough to blow a man on top of a ladder over, even if I was holding it at the bottom. So we just went back to bed. The power cut out at about 7 in the morning. We all slept, but not too great, it was all a little worrying. There's an awful lot of trees around the house...
I got up and walked around the neighbourhood once it had died down. There was about 10 trees down that I could see, only the one at our place hit anything. The garden was more leaves and branches than grass. We were all kind of in shock from the night before, so we didn't do much. There were lots of hummingbirds about, cheeping away, they're very cute.
Last night we tried to sleep, but with no electricity there's no a/c. it was about 80 degrees last night, we got about 5 hours sleep.
It was 99 degrees today, so I got up as soon as the sun was up (I'd been awake since four anyhow) and started cleaning up. Joe got up at around eight, and we went to see if we could get some food from somewhere. McDonalds. Beggers can't be choosers. We had breakfast, went back and worked for a few more hours, the power came on so I watched the news. I was exausted, I hadn't had much sleep and working in 99 degree weather, as well as giving myself a black eye had kind of taken it out of me. Still we realised our situation wasn't that bad compared to what happend an hour down the road in New Orleans, and two hours down the road in Gulfport.
The neighbours came over at around 12 o'clock to help tidy up the yard. That was a godsend. She has like seven sons, we had the garden cleared in half an hour! It would've taken three days to clear that stuff up if it was just me and Joe.
The hurricane is looking like it's one of the worst to hit the states in a long while. New Orleans is still suffering. The levee has been breeched in two places and the pumps aren't working that well (some of them aren't working at all) if you want to check out the latest
http://www.cnn.com/ is a good place to go.
Anyhow, that's it. The other news is that we went into have another sonogram a couple of days ago, the picture is on the bottom there. He's looking very cute! We decided on Toby by the way.
No Idea when I'll be back, the airport I would be flying out of would be New Orleans. We can't even get to it, and I think it may be under water anyhow. So things may be delayed a little longer.
/Hopped!
4:58 PM
>>>
In Which I Find Out The Gender Of Our Baby / Friday, August 05, 2005
It's a boy!!!!
We went to get the sonogram today. I wouldn't have had any idea what I was looking at if it wasn't for the lady pointing things out. I definatly saw a little hand (which seemed to be punching Ash), and his little fella. There's a picture of the sonogram, and the first of an avalanche of baby photos which will no doubt be filling up you inboxes pretty darn soon, here:
http://www.geocities.com/peterspencer10/baby.html It's not really that interesting to look at, unless you've never seen one before. Of course it's very interesting and exciting to me! He seems to spend a lot of his time ducking and diving and kicking and punching. Just like.... You guessed it, Jackie Chan! All I have to do is send him to a chinese circus training school and wait twenty years and after his first three movies he'll be minted enough to look after me and Ash! Excellent!
Well that's the exciting news. We've moved back down to Baton Rouge, not much has really changed down here. Dianne and Joe are getting a swimming pool (just like this one
http://www.leisurepoolsusa.com/leisure_pools_moroccan_style_%20fiberglass_pool.htm) built, Dave Willa and Norm have moved from next door, the reasons are far too personal for me to go blabbing (blogging?) on about on here. I'm back here shovelling dirt with Joe again. I swear we've put an extra couple of inches on the whole property altogether! It all looks very nice though, all that dirt we shifted before I left has now turned into some lovely flower beds, and all the dirt we're shifting now should make some more lovely flower beds, so it's not like it's a waste of time!
The drive down was alright, I had some trouble at a drive thru (trailers aren't made for dive thrus in case you're wondering...) and going over 80 is a bit wobbly, apart from tha no problem. We left Annandale at about 3:oo in the afternoon on Sunday and arrived here at about 10pm on Monday.
Oh, about the move: If you ever try and get a trailer (or truck) reserved from U-Haul, get it for at least the day before. I it wasn't for our friend Tammie we would've never have got out of Annandale. See, if you reserve a trailer with U-Haul, you don't actually reserve a trailer. You might get a trailer, but it's subject to availibility. So basically if they have one you can get one. What's the point in the reservation part of it? Also even if the do have trailers then you might not be able to get one if you are moving 1200 miles away, but you can get one if you are just moving across town. Who do you think needs it more? Ash and I were trying to figure out how to drive to Baton Rouge and back (and back again) before the 4th of August. It just can't be done.
So that was catastrophe number one. Catastrophe numbers 2 - 1001 are caused by our landlord. We got an email from him saying that the apartment was a complete wreck when he got there and he had to hire a cleaning crew in to clean it. Apparently this cost him $1000. To clean a one bedroom flat, which is about 800 square foot. Dianne gets a cleaning crew into her house every two weeks for $120. it's a four bedroom 3000 square foot house. We got the carpets cleaned and fixed up. He also told me over the phone that if he had the time he would clean the flat up himself.
Thanks to his inactivity as far as the next tenants were concerned (we asked him to call them but he never bothered) they decided they were going to move somewhere else. They were supposed to be moving in on the first, instead we had to find someone on Thursday night to move in as soon as possible. (The only way we could do that is by paying $350 of the rent and offering it for $650) so they were moving in on the fourth. that gave him four days, enough time to clean up an apartment, right? Obviously because he did it. Apparently. The guy is a skinflint. He says he was going to get us a new refridgerator and he never got it because one never came along cheap enough. You expect me to believe that he offered to splash out $1000 bucks (or two an a half brand new refridgerators) on cleaning the apartment bull poopies.
So I guess I have to email him back about this. Stealing from a young couple who are about to have their first child, people who trusted him. Is there anything lower? Well of course there is but it's still pretty low.
All that bad stuff doesn't really matter in the scale of things though, I'm going to have a son! Ash wants to call him Noah, I like Toby or Benjiman. Let me not sway your judgement on this, which name do you like more? (answers on an email please)
/Hopped!
10:34 PM
>>>