We woke up to news that Irene had reached the east coast over night. While the storm has now been downgraded to a Category 1 storm, it has already left 160,000 without power as it slowly makes it's way up the east coast. The size of Europe, this hurricane is moving very slowly leaving time for mass destruction in it's wake.
We went to Home Depot yesterday, with the rest of New Jersey, in an attempt to secure our apartment from Irene's destruction. The scene included people wandering down isles looking dazed and confused. I believe half of the people had a plan and the other half were there because the news told them to be. Everyone cautiously examined their neighbor's cart to see if maybe the other cart had something they hadn't thought of. The most popular items were the obvious- copious amounts of bottled water and plastic wrap. Not wanting to be left out, for some reason we wound up with 5,000 square feet of plastic wrap. That's roughly 8x more square feet than our entire apartment. Most people had ply wood. We were the only ones with cinder blocks. The couple next to us were probably wondering what we were going to do with them as we wondered what they could possibly be doing with the ten simple red bricks they had in their cart. Who's to judge? None of us have ever done this before...
The next challenge was getting 20 tons of cinder block and 5000 square feet of plastic wrap (again for a 600 square feet apartment) into a nissan sentra. For a car that normally comes to mid calf when the door is open. I felt like a true low rider as the car now sank down to my ankles. Every little bump on our 10 mile an hour drive home felt mountainous as we cringed and prayed the tires didn't blow. We collapsed after unloading each brick from our double parked car, across the street, and down into our basement apartment.
We took all of the lights from the backyard, not wanting to come back to shattered glass after all the hard work we had done. Here's a before shot..
Our walk with the dog this morning was eerie. The weather still hasn't changed yet and the streets seemed empty. The people we did see had suitcases and were making their way out of the area.
Hoboken bars are on order to close this evening by 8pm and residents are under a strict order that no one is to be driving after 8pm. The entire subway system will be shut down at noon today. The first ordered stoppage of NYC transit ever for a natural disaster. Our only concern is the closure of the tunnels as we are hoping to get into NYC by noon.
As my first order of business is unpacking my suitcase of bathing suits and summer dresses from our vacation, and repacking it with clothes, supplies, and valuables to evacuate- everything still seems very surreal.
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