Stormageddon

It’s been a weird day around here.

We here in upstate New York have suffered the remnants of Hurricane Sandy and lived to tell the tale.

All of the local schools were closed today – they made that decision last night.  Kind of a “just in case” thing, I guess.

It appears that none of the houses across the street from us has power – we’re all good, though.

I was walking the dog this morning and heard what sounded like a lawnmower running.  I was pretty sure it wasn’t a lawnmower because (a) it was not even 5 AM, (b) it was dark, and (c) it was raining.

I’ve never once seen anyone mowing a lawn under those conditions.  So I presumed it was a generator – and I looked closer and saw that there was no sign of any light in any of the houses on that street – except for the house with the lawnmower-generator sound.  Huh.

(Peeps walked by the same house on their afternoon walk and confirmed that yes, there was a generator running in the driveway.)

We walked a couple more blocks, then headed home – and we had to walk in the street at one point.  There was half a tree blocking the sidewalk.

I headed for work, and everything was in place there, but several people we deal with regularly are based in Manhattan.

From what I’ve seen on the news, New York City is underwater – or at least the parts that aren’t on fire, anyway.  Most of lower Manhattan – the financial district – the area I deal with – is flooded.

One guy is working from home – he’s fine.  He provided me with his cell number yesterday.

One guy took the train into the city (or should that be The City?) yesterday, then the trains stopped running.  He’s there until probably Wednesday.  I hope. That was the plan, anyway.

Emails to that firm have been bounced back to me – evidently the servers are down.  That can NOT be good, though hopefully they’ve planned for that eventuality.   I’m sure they’re fine – that’s just the kind of guys they are.

I haven’t heard from Peeps’s friends in New Jersey – they may have evacuated, since their neighborhood tends to flood if someone leaves the bathtub running too long.  I’m sure they’re just busy keeping their old dog (and themselves) calm.

So.

Were you in the path of The Storm?  How did you weather it?

(Heh.)

If not, what was the coverage like for the rest of the country?  Were there semi-hourly updates?  Discussions of “100-year floods?”  What have you heard?