We lost power last night, Sunday September 11, 2017, at 8:11pm, courtesy of Hurricane IRMA. I was in bed by 8:30 with one bedroom window open. The wind was pretty much howling by then. I was asleep before 9pm. I woke at 1:45 am, fired up the computer (wearing the blue blocker goggles that I put on at 6pm each day to improve my body’s production of melatonin), and learned that the eye of the storm was already north of Tampa. I did NOT get back to sleep again until about 3:30 or 4:00am and slept till six — it was still too dark to see then. I rested for 45 minutes till it got light. At first glance everything at Indian Lake Estates looked just fine … <\/p>\n
But when I looked out the office window I saw that a big tree had fallen towards the pool cage. Amazingly, there was no damage at all; it missed the screened-in-structure literally by inches. And I learned that the pool cage was not as flimsy a structure as it looked. There were four to five inch thick branches that had been broken off by the fall and were resting atop the pool cage. There was not even a small tear in the screening anywhere. Even more amazingly though this big tree fell just 12 feet from my open bedroom window I did not hear a thing. The noise might have been drowned out by the storm and the wind. <\/p>\n
Several power and phone lines and poles in our backyard alone are either completely on the ground or close to it so it seems likely that we will not have power back for at least two to three weeks. Right now I have my Sequoia parked half way in the garage with the engine running. My laptop is charging via an inverter plugged into one cigarette lighter and my cell phone charger in another. But here is potentially the best news: I have a 1500 watt inverter hooked up to the engine. It is running my large GE Profile refrigerator\/freezer. The fridge (3.5 amps) is on and (possibly …) getting colder by the minute. When it cools down completely Jim and I will move all the food from our other fridge and from the stand-alone freezer to the functioning unit in the kitchen. My plan is to keep the car running for most of the day and then turn it off at 10pm and then on again the next morning. I am hoping that a gas station or two in town will re-open before the car runs out of gas. TJ, my chiropractor, who is quite mechanically minded, said that the car should be fine idling for many hours as long as it does not overheat. He suggested checking the temperature gauge every half our or so. If you know for sure that there is a flaw in my plan, please leave a comment. <\/p>\n
Just checked the fridge\/freezer unit seems to be working perfectly with the lights on the the temperatures dropping nicely. The wind has largely abated here and the skies are brightening. Rainfall here was far less than predicted. The pool only rose about four inches last night after we let some water out in the late afternoon. <\/p>\n
Jen and Erik and Maya are fine and without power at their home in nearby Frostproof, a suburb (if you will) of Lake Wales. Jim’s family –wife, daughter, and grandson — are safe in a shelter in Melbourne; the shelter is currently without power. There is no news on Jim’s house or the state of his neighborhood yet. <\/p>\n
If you need to reach us best would be my cell phone at 863-221-2372. I have no clue when Fed-Ex or UPS will begin working. I will keep you updated on the blog. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Stuff <\/p>\n
We lost power last night, Sunday September 11, 2017, at 8:11pm, courtesy of Hurricane IRMA. I was in bed by 8:30 with one bedroom window open. The wind was pretty much howling by then. I was asleep before 9pm. I woke at 1:45 am, fired up the computer (wearing the blue blocker goggles that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[625],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-625","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50139\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdsasart-blog.com\/baa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}