Derek Ward

Hurricane Helene – Yeah, we didn’t get much from the storm. Some rain that came in intense bursts, some nasty wind (which treated us to watching a neighbor’s trash can roll down the street). Overall, not much in our vicinity. Not even a power flicker. So, the good news is that I didn’t have to use my big Ecoflows. Of course, that meant I didn’t get to use my big Ecoflows. As for other folks in my home county? It was the highest storm surge recorded in a lot of areas. Lot of flooding. Lot of damage. The pics coming out of Georgia, Tennessee, and North Carolina are scary. We were very lucky.

Visiting Relatives – Last weekend, The Wife, The Brother, Mom, and I trekked down to Okeechobee to visit relatives. This entailed me driving Mom’s new car – a Kia Carnival. Mom’s had Chrysler minivans for a long while, so it was a surprise when she announced her new one was a Kia. Still, it’s a smooth driving car, and The Wife even said if we had to get a second car, this one could be in the running. My only issue was how much was touch screen style stuff and less buttons/dials. Anyways, we had a good visit with family and went to visit the family grave site to visit Dad and my grandparents. We also stopped and looked at Okeechobee’s Cattlemen Square, which is a group of bronze statues depicting a cattle drive. If you’re in the town, you should go take a look.

Day Job – This is the last week of the current day job before I go back to my old position. This was definitely a learning experience. I’m not going to say that it was all bad, but I learned a lot of what I don’t want to be doing and what I do want to be doing for the remainder of my career.

We have Hurricane Helene passing us by as it strolls up to the Big Bend area. Hoping my friends up in the Tallahassee area come through alright.

While I’m satisfied with the majority of my preps, I was finding some odd holes. A couple were identified last time, but I never got around to filling those.

1. Portable Air Conditioner – we bought a portable AC, but it’s been living over at the rental. We really need a second one to either keep at Ward Manor or switch out with the one at the rental.
2. Long ladder – My first inclination for storm shutters is to hire one of the multitude of enterprising folks looking to make money by offering to put up shutters. However, Helene’s fast formation and uncertainty made the window of when to put up shutters very short – and the decision to hire someone to do it much shorter. I’d like a long ladder to do it myself in this sort of situation.
3. Another air mattress – The guidance we received was in the event of prolonged power outage, get everyone into the great room and just run electricity to there. Maybe a couple of other places if necessary. We thought we had two air mattresses, but in reality we only have one. Considering we have three humans living here? Yeah, we need another air mattress.
4. Small DVD Collection – Generally, we stream everything. We don’t have any DVDs. I have a small drive that The Brother gave me with some stuff on it. In the future, I will have my NAS with stuff that I can stream locally. I want to have a small collection of our “comfort shows” that we can play if we can’t stream.

I’m sure I will find more holes in my planning as I go along. These were the ones that became obvious this week.

Good news it looks like we’ll get a strong tropical storm, but not nearly the lashing those on the coast will be getting. May not see a whole lot of rain either. We’ll see what happens on the other side.