Hurricane Ike

Today will be spent boarding up the big picture window, filling containers with water, clearing the deck and yard, cleaing the house in case MIL needs to stay with us. Cell phones and iPod are charged, we've laid in enough cat and dog food, peanut butter and tuna fish for a week. We have batteries, although I'm not sure if they fit the lanterns or radio... we've had a typical Gulf-coast laissez-faire attitude to hurricane prep, even post-Katrina. There ARE plenty of candles; the supermarket had a close-out sale on Shabbat candles last month, so I stocked up.
Ike is approaching and the latest path projections bring it right through our hometown, so we can't brush it off any longer.
Hurricanes were exciting adventures as a kid. Carla rip-roared through here when I was 10 in 1962, keeping me out of school for days, reading and playing Scrabble by flashlight on pallets in the living room , watching the tall Oaks bending at improbable angles in the gale, wading through two feet deep water in the yard when the eye passed over us and all was still. I was awed by the destruction only later, when we drove down to what was left of the bars and beach houses along Galveston Bay. People searched for the remains of a bar whose walls were rumored to have been papered with dollar bills. The miles of driftwood along the beach hid snakes, Daddy said, so we were careful.
Shabbat Shalom everyone. Be safe.