Ray's House of Love (Volume II)

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NeuroFizz

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Schools cancelled for today. The University closes at noon (so I have to give my 8:00a.m lecture). Irene chruns in this evening although the wind and rain will start earlier. The eye is supposed to pass by us sometime Saturday morning, so it should be a restless night tonight. I feel bad for those people up-coast and beyond. This one may save its worst for the upper East Coast.

Stay safe, Pandora. Same to all the AWers to the north.

I'll give occasional updates unless the power goes out.
 

Grrarrgh

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Stay safe, Neuro, and everyone else in the path of this thing.
 

NeuroFizz

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We still have power but the rain and wind are getting intense. The kids will sleep with me (king sized bed) and we'll put a movie on, hoping the power stays around long enough to get through the whole thing, or until the kids fall asleep.
 

NeuroFizz

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We are nearly into the worst of it but still have power. Two angels are asleep in my bed. I doubt I'll doze off soon. Even though we are west of the eye, both the wind and rain are extremely impressive. I am amazed by how much these pine trees can bend.
 

NeuroFizz

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Irene is mostly gone, but she keeps hanging around with strong wind gusts. The kids slept through the worst last night. I don't know about damage to the outside of the house, but the inside is just fine. The backyard is littered with downed branches, some large, and two of my fruit trees are uprooted (my favorite cherry tree and one of my apple trees). I think (hope) I can salvage both. No flooding where we are, but I suspect there are problems in some areas of town.

This is a huge system, so for everyone up north, expect intensity and a really long duration. Irene is a bitch.

I'm baking a sheet cake (classic white) to celebrate Irene's departure. I have butter cream frosting to top it off.

Pandora...are you okay? Do you need anything? Cake?

Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers. I'm forwarding them all northward.
 

pandora1983

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Pandora is a'ight. Sorry Ive been mia. Friday was my Uncles funeral so Irene was a minimal worry. Plus I grew up here in southeast NC so hurricanes are second nature to me. I did a little extra shopping but I didnt even tape up the windows this time.
My boss is still tres psychotic so Im still job hunting. Thats all the update there is from Pandora.

Maryn...did inspiration strike you whilst you were in the tshirt?
 

Maryn

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We cut our vacation short to escape Irene. The drive was pretty bad at times, but that wasn't her, just the heavy rains and wind preceding her. Made it home safe, but way too many hours of the trip were going 15-30 miles an hour with flashers.

Is there still any cake?

I have two marine biology questions, Fizz, about stuff I saw on the beach. Is it okay to pick your mind some time?

Everybody come help me unload the car. (We decided it can wait. We're wiped out.)

Maryn, home
 

Maryn

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Oh, I was all me-me-me there. [Blushes] Pandora, I'm sorry to hear of your loss, too, and hope the job hunt is going well. What sort of work do you hope to find, if that's not too nosy?

Maryn, often too nosy, so it's okay to say MYOB
 

NeuroFizz

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Sorry for your loss PanD. I hope you had a chance to say a proper goodbye.

Ask away, Maryn.

Good weekend with the kids in spite of Irene. I'll be moving into a Residence Inn for a week while the workers sand, refinish, and triple polyurethane my hardwood floors. They have to do the entire downstairs. Insurance covers it all (including the hotel). But it is another chapter in the overall inconvenience of the repairs--the damage ocurred over six weeks ago and there is still quite a bit of work to do.
 
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sassandgroove

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Pandora I am sorry about your uncle. I hope you find a good job soon.
Fizz sorry you have to be inconvienienced. I like hotels but I am not sure I'd like it so close to home.
 

Maryn

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Whew, AW's back.

Fizzy, even when insurance pays, it's a huge inconvenience to be away from your home and your stuff--and you've been inconvenienced six weeks already! I hope you keep busy and the time passes quickly. Or that you become a huge fan of hotel porn and it passes even quicker. (Bill the insurer.)

The place where we spent Saturday night was hard hit, although not the hotel itself. If we had not left quite early, we would have been waylaid by the NY Thruway's multiple closures between here and there, although I like to think we'd have made it home via back roads by now. Ever since we got lost following a closure of the Thruway by politicized Native Americans, we always carry a good state map.

Marine biology question one:
Just past high tide, on the Atlantic side of Cape Cod, we saw hundreds, possibly low thousands, of grape-sized clear gel thingies. They had no color. Some remained grape-shaped, a slightly elongated sphere, while others flattened like the glass beads you buy in crafts stores to hold your flowers in place in the vase. (This image is quite close to the appearance of the flat ones, except they looked wetter and were never clumped together.)

The largest had faintly ridged exteriors going from one axis to the other, like a pumpkin, which minimized their rolling when a wave reached them. Large or small, we could find no other features. No specks, cloudy areas, irregularity in shape. Nothing, just these gelatinous blobs. One woman, asking others what they might be, said she'd pinched one and it felt slimy and did not sting.

Some kind of egg sacs? What kind of fish--or mermaid? The mystical, magical source of flower-arrangement glass blobs?

Maryn, puzzled
 

Maryn

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Ding-ding-ding-ding! No more calls, please. We have a winner!

I hit google images for sea gooseberry and found several that fit the larger ones to a T. Maybe the sand as background rendered me unable to see the interior details? That or the salt coating my glasses, which was quite the annoyance. (Everyone else either wore contacts or doesn't need glasses.)

The other question, I'll probably need to locate the bag of 'beach findings' and photograph. It's the vertebra of... something. Almost big enough to fit my pinkie through the opening, but not quite. The Kid, to whom it belongs, says her initial research suggests it's not mammalian and is probably a fish. From what I remember of bone-in salmon, that seems likely.

You know what's neat? Almost any question that comes up in my ordinary life, stuff that has nothing to do with my writing, someone here at AW can answer. I'm not always at ease asking, but when I do, I'm never disappointed.

Maryn, who loves AW
 

Maryn

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The tiara suits you. And the banner-sash thing matches your eyes.

Maryn, envisioning this and chuckling
 

NeuroFizz

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...and I thought you were kidding when you said I had to take off my pants. Good thing the banner-sash is a long one.

[change the mental picture much? Probably for the worse.]
 
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