"But you're better then normal, You're abnormal." - Fry, Futurama

 

A guy selling ice for eight bucks a bag. Probably illegal, but what the heck, if I really needed ice I’d have bought some, and been happy about it. Me? I’ve got principles. I’d sell it for six.

Work was incredibly efficient this week – it being easy to get lots done when (on most days) you’re the only guy in the office. There is much less of a line at the coffee bar, and you’re always first in line at the copier and printer.

I actually got very much caught up at work, yet managed to take off early every day to come home to shingle my roof. Shingling is a very silly looking word, yet the actions of shingling allow one to ponder on the mysteries of life, since putting one shingle down is much like putting all of the rest of them down.

As to lessons I learned during the hurricane that I pondered on the roof:

I like frosty-cold beers that are at exactly 34.4°Faherenheit, served in a mug that has been frozen to at least 8°Faherenheit. The hurricane taught me that warm ones that had been in the bottom of a fridge for two days are okay, too.

FEMA is utterly, well, a Federal Bureaucracy. More good was done by Home Despot® and your local grocery store than FEMA ever thought of. An example: when giving away ice and water, where do you select to give it away? A parking lot of a store where people already go to get food and that’s easy to get in and out of? Maybe one that doesn’t have power? No, not if you’re FEMA. If you’re FEMA, you pick City Hall, a building whose location is known only to the Mayor and the Planning Department. Because in an emergency, you really need to have the building permit people involved. I could go on and on about FEMA. But I won’t.

Speaking of FEMA, don’t I qualify for a FEMA charge card that I can spend on beer and video games?

Don’t shingle when it’s really hot.

Don’t even think that anyone is going to help you during a disaster. The best you can do is to plan and have a closet full of Pez®, beer, chocolate treats and water so you don’t become part of the problem. We were set up for a month of really hideous living, but fortunately the power came back on 66 hours later. We were lucky, being in the first 20% of people to have power restored. Our neighbors went nearly another week, and I think they got desperate enough that they ate some family pets. Dunno, it was that or take-out. (The restaurants came back up pretty quickly.)

You can cook a hot dog over a scented candle, but it often ends up tasting like jasmine-hot dog.

Get your shingles early, before the rush.

There is a reason that folks during the Revolutionary Era spent weeks reading Plato. There was also a reason they had an average of seventeen kids. Not much else to do at night.

If your child has a birthday during a hurricane, tell them that it’s “good for their character.”

Most people like to have a gas can full of gas, me, I like to have a spare car full of gas.

No one checks to see if your registration is current on your pickup that you never drive just after a hurricane.

The whole “four-way-stop” at dead traffic lights is over-rated. I think the law of the jungle should apply. The guy with the crappiest car goes first.

I really don’t need electricity. I could get by with just enough for my fridge. And my television. And my computer. And my air conditioning. And the coffee maker. And the lights. And the blender. Don’t really need all that much electricity.

When the power comes back on after 66 hours, you feel just like turning everything on for the heck of it, turn on the A/C and then prop the windows wide open. Turn the oven to 475 empty. Dunno why, but it feels nice.

So, things are getting normal, quickly here. I’ve still got fence to build, siding to put on, and a roof to finish, a three-year-old listening to Yanni (why??) a dog sleeping in a trash can, and a frog in the pool.

But that’s as normal as it ever gets around here.

More to come.