Ivan hits home

The following are photos that Cindy shared with me this evening of Hurricane Ivan's romp through Pensacola. Scary - and sad...

BTW, Happy Birthday Aunt Libby!

6010 Margaretta St. Granny and PawPaw's 

End of an era -  

another view 

Hurricane Ivan's destruction. CitiFinancial C3 call center in Pensacola - FORMER workplace of 300+ people, including my sister-in-law - Cindy.  

My own personal waterfall - and I have two more in the basement.  

Lucky lucky me - Ivan didn't want me to feel too left out - so he flooded me. Grrrr 

Thank God they're ok -

Hurricane Ivan came ashore near Gulf Shores, AL and beat the crap out of Pensacola. Stats currently being released state "About 364,969 of Gulf Power's 405,000 electric customers were without electricity Thursday." They are estimating a solid 3 wks before power is totally restored.

Everyone is alive and so far uninjured. My grandparents home had the roof caved in by their tree. It sounds like it is non-repairable. The end of an era, I suppose. It's hard to believe.

I look at the pictures on http://www.pensacolanewsjournal.com in their picture gallery and the devastation is nearly unbelievable. I can't imagine how much work is going to have to be done just to restore the infrastructure. Water, sewage, electricity, clear roadways - all those things we take for granted have to be cleared, restored or rebuilt.

Ivan is now headed here to Chattanooga - we have 4100 homes without power currently, but it seems like a normal rainstorm to me. Not much else going on so far. I'll head to the basement soon and make sure the sump pump is still working before I head to bed. I guarantee I'll sleep better than I did yesterday!

Labor Day Weekend

See the link at the left "Cherokee National Forest" if you want to see how I spent part of my Labor Day weekend.

I also have to put in a plug here for Shrek 2 - I laughed my head off all the way through it. Definitely a keeper, and also a candidate for the DVD collection.

Frances comes to visit!

She must've heard I was curious about her, so she's come to TN. grrr. It's been raining all day, with heavy rain expected between now and 11pm. The dam is at 4.2 ft, it floods at 18 ft and is expected to go to 19 ft by tomorrow afternoon. SO...lowlying areas will be VERY soggy by tomorrow. Yecch.

Everyone keep your fingers crossed that my sump pump doesn't go out! LOL BUT, I'd rather deal with this than what Florida's had the last month. God bless'em - we're getting off lucky, and we know it