I'm Okay

I just got my power and cable back this evening. The only thing still not working is my phone (I have to use my cell phone to make calls). My house has some damage -- the roof has missing shingles (causing some leaks) and my gate and part of my fence blew down -- but it came through very well. We are all fine -- just really stressed out. We are very fortunate, because a lot of people lost their homes and even their lives.

About riding the storm out...let me just say that while I've been through hurricanes before, this one was by far the most frightening. At the height of the storm, I stayed in the hallway behind a mattress. I did a lot of praying. I had to keep finding radio stations that were still on the air, because one after the other would lose their transmitters. The walls vibrated and you could hear a constant roar outside, with gusts that would whistle and howl.

After the storm, the power, water, phone and cable were out. In previous storms, we never lost water and phone service. I hoped that the cable would stay up so I could check in here, but it didn't. We got the water back after a couple of days. We got the power back a couple of hours ago and the cable came back about a half hour ago.

My town was hit very hard by this storm. I can't go back to work until some repairs are done at my workplace. While I'm doing okay, a lot of people are truly hurting right now. It's really sad.

I'm kind of overwhelmed right now after being offline for a week. Thank you for your comments and emails -- I may be a bit slow in responding but I appreciate them.