After the Storm

The remnants of Hurrican Ike came through Central Ohio yesterday. It's quite a mess, but I feel very lucky to be here and not on the coast where it caused more serious damage. We got no rain, just wind gusts of up to 75 miles an hour. Trees, branches, chimneys, power lines, etc down all over the place. Over 260,000 people without power. I worked yesterday until 5:00; the worst of the wind came through between 4 and 5, I think, but it was still insane walking home. My skin was coated in dirt and debris by the time I'd walked six blocks. I had to cross to the opposite side of the street twice because there were power lines down on the sidewalk. Everyone was sitting on porches calling out greetings and warnings to the people walking by; a little old man told me to go home, I said I was on my way.

Amazingly, my building never lost power. I'd left windows open, and the wind had slammed doors shut and blown papers around and scared poor Lucky. He met me at the door with his tail all uncurled and a very unhappy look on his face, but everything was intact, and we walked out to make sure nothing had fallen on my car, and it too was fine. One of the trees out front is split into three pieces, one standing upright, one fallen toward the sidewalk, one fallen backward onto the brick privacy wall we used to climb last summer.

I was getting ready for work this morning when I got a call from one of my bosses. Our office has no power, so I got to stay home. I took Lucky for a long walk and surveyed the mess in the neighborhood, then I came up to Cup o' Joe, and am going to try to get some work done on grad school applications. I think I came up with a third recommender this weekend; I'll have to ask her, but I think it'll work. She's a client of mine now, and although she doesn't know my writing, she is an English professor, and she can speak about my personality and work ethic and my current self; my other recommenders are college professors from my undergrad, so that's been quite awhile.