I guess I’d better get the grass cut today, what with the hurricane coming and all. Not that I’ll be feeling the effects of it. Last I saw, we’re pretty certain to get “a shower” tomorrow, unless Irene turns west a little. If I get lucky, it’ll all stay east of here. Good luck to you folks in Irene’s path, though. They sure do a good job of scaring people, so it’s hard to tell if this is all just fear mongering. The big hassle, I guess, isn’t the wind (this will be a fairly tame storm in that respect), but the flooding. Flooding in a place with underground rat tubes like the NYC subway system would definitely be a bummer. I really wouldn’t wanna be around to see what washes up out of there.

Around here, this can’t help but remind us of the great “Labor Day Storm” of 1998. That was neither hurricane nor tornado, but a derecho, which is a straight-line storm with hurricane-force wind. Basically, a wall of wind. And it had a “supercell thunderstorm” embedded in it.

Where we were living at the time, we had no power for two weeks. It was hot and humid and we had no a/c. No refrigerator, either (what came out of the fridge when the power finally came back on was probably a lot like what’s gonna come up out of the NYC subway). That gotta pretty f*cking old after a while.

It was pretty surreal, driving around trying to get from one place to another. We are a city of trees, and they were all on the ground blocking the streets. They said we lost “tens of thousands” of trees. All I know is, it was quite a mess.

Funny, I don’t recall a clamoring to keep the government out of our lives when it came to cleaning up the storm damage. Of course, those were different times. “Pre-9/11” and all.

Anyhow, I hope everybody stays high and dry. Or at least high.

And may all your derechos be with cheese.