It's the season's first Hurricane Day!

[aruan]

Well, okay, maybe a little pre-seasonal, but it's still a party!

For those not native to South Florida, Hurricane Days are the day after the storm has swept through and, of course provided that your house is still standing, you choose to celebrate life, liberty, and the outage of power by breaking out your patio grill and cooking everything that threatens to go bad in the refrigerator. Usually this involves a whole block or family of folks, and the menu can be prepared for ahead of time or, as we found ourselves this morning, consisting of whatever you've got to cook or else.

Since there was no actual hurricane (knock on wood), we kicked off this annual event upon finding our refrigerator half defrosted when we woke up. Breakfast was a personal-size DiGiorno Chicken Supreme Pizza, some Hillshire Farms mini hotdogs and creamed spinach, and I claimed the lone remaining Strawberry & Cream Toaster Strudel for my own. Lunch will probably be Lean Cuisine Three Cheese Rigatoni and Hot Pockets. I can't wait.

No, really!

*g* Hurricane Day without the lack of air conditioning (plumb inconvenient, that hurricane season falls during the hottest months of the year)! It's like a holiday only less loud and with fewer drunk people.

Also, y'all need to go check out what Sheila's been up to and, like, shower her with your chosen form of adoration.

Comments

[giddyupnow.livejournal.com]

Hee! Sounds like the equivalent of we here do after riots... Except it's also a time to admire the lovely new major electronic appliances that your neighbors managed to loot... ;-)

Hurricanes. Huh. Have you ever been through any major ones, out of curiosity? What are they like?

[gjstruthseeker.livejournal.com]

Well, now that you asked, one of my favorite stories to tell to anyone who sleeps in my vicinity and is worried about waking me up is that I slept right clear through a little storm called Hurricane Andrew back in '92. Now, we weren't exactly living in Southeast Dade County at the time, thankfully, but there was still property damage, downed trees and power lines, severe winds, flung about patio furniture and coconuts - my parents didn't sleep all night, and stared at me oddly when I came out of my room rubbing my eyes the next morning, pouting about sleeping through it all. My room that had a wall entire made up of a sliding glass door, no less.

So that was a pretty big one. I've been here for all the major ones since 1990, though I don't really remember any of the other ones by name. But we've had flooding where we were up to our knees in the street (which my brother and I went out to play in, thank you :), we've had huge trees with huge root structures dumped into the middle of the street, we've had people lose entire roofs (all it takes is one open/broken window, really), power lines being down are a general rule so it's an average of two-three days without power, but all of this is for a respectable-sized storm, Category Three or above. We haven't been hit hard in years (again, more knocking on wood). They're calling for ugly things this season, but they did the same thing for last season, too, and we didn't even so much as see uncharacteristic amounts of rain, so take it as you will. Mostly, we just make a good time of it, set out the candles and put up plywood the day before, make sure there aren't too many perishables in the fridge and take in our dogs. What *can* you do, really, you know? But we usually make a time of it, otherwise you concentrate on the scariness and, well, no thanks, the news does that well enough. I could kiss our local weatherman, Roland Steadham - the man is the antithesis of a drama queen, and a very intelligent, level-headed one at that. He's gotten this county through a lot.

So yes, memorable weather experience, preferably not when y'all are in town. Storms don't usually start until late August or September though, so don't expect anything interesting. ;) Hee. It's like my coming to California and being disappointed by the lack of earthquakes. But I can understand natural disaster novelty. *g*