Everything is going to be FINE

Hi everyone, we're fine... just got DSL back about an hour ago, so this is my first foray onto the internets in quite a while. We got power back at 4 this morning, but it went out again for an hour or so presumably while they got some more customers up and running... I now have successfully cleaned out the fridge and freezer ("If in doubt, throw it out!") and got rid of all the stuff that thawed or spoiled during the outage. The upside, I now have an extremely clean fridge.

As for our house, we are counting our karma points big time, since no trees hit us. We did lose the top of one of our huge coastal cedars, and it hit the front lawn, embedding a branch into the ground VERY deep (Rick tried to pull it out, but after digging, it still wouldn't budge... scary how deep it went! I can't wait to actually dig it up to see how far it went into the ground). On the bright side, myself and my family will have cedar boughs to decorate with for the holidays.

I just talked to Secret Squirrel's hubby, and their work-in-progress house sustained a bit of damage, but not as much as what could have happened considering the 120 mph gusts we got. Their current house survived okay, but they are still without power.

I took a ride with my parents yesterday afternoon to check on a house that belongs to a friend of the family... they live on Sandridge close to 227th, which looked like a war zone when we drove up there. When we got to the driveway, we couldn't drive 10 feet onto the driveway because a giant tree blocked our path... ALONG WITH 18 OTHER BIG TREES. We're not talking little alders, either, but big ol' hemlocks that I could hardly hug. We went over, under and through the trees on foot, only to find that his house was untouched. Yikes.

This storm was frightening in its power... I drove around with the fam on Monday afternoon (dumb, yes, but all in the name of science) and the Columbia River had BREAKERS coming ashore. I have NEVER seen that in my lifetime, and I have seen a lot of big storms on the river. My brother was actually able to sit down into the wind when he went to the beach. I just looked at the Daily Astorian slide show of the damage that Crashcourse posted (thanks for that... by the way, your mom's house looks fine, I drove by today and no high water), and they got it much worse than we did. Regardless, we had no communications and there was no information getting to the radio stations until yesterday afternoon. I'm kind of pissed about that, almost pissed enough to do the old letter-to-the-editor thing about it. Our Emergency Management Center did not do a very good job. There was a wopping one shelter available, and there was no information about where people could get their oxygen tanks refilled... isn't this peninsula mostly retired folks??? Lots of ball-dropping on that part. I personally know of one Ham radio operator who has been on the radio nearly nonstop trying to get information to Astoria (because all the lines are down to get across the river), but the radio said nothing. Hmmmm...

Anyhoo, we're all fine, my family is good (although my uncle had to use our shower today because they are waiting for power), and I am typing on a charging laptop (we exhausted the battery last night watching Spiderman 2). Can't wait for school tomorrow, should be some stories to tell and hear.