A few thoughts on the hurricane:
We were watching the news yesterday as the cameras panned north-south-east-west across the devastation this thing left in its wake. It’s pretty much the same footage you see on the news every time a hurricane hits. Not to belittle it, but it’s true. Anyway, we saw that George Bush was walking around and I couldn’t help but wonder when he would blurt out something like “we’re going to get the terrorists who did this to our country.”
As you may or may not know, Stephanie and I spent 6 nights at Captiva/Sanibel island for our honeymoon just two weeks ago, a small island just off the coast of Fort Myers. The news said that there are 160 residential houses on Captiva and roughly 100 more on Sanibel. Guess how many of those houses were damaged on Capitva? 160. Of the 160 damaged, 30% were destroyed. Let me tell you, these were just run-of-the-mill ranches on Captiva, either. Most of these are multi-million dollar mansions. Not anymore. Oh yeah, Captiva was also split into two different islands after the hurricane. Wow.
Of course, the local weathermen/women up here in New England were frothing at the mouth at the thought of any abnormal weather that might arrive, so as usual, they stammered and just about jumped up and down and told us we were really in for very heavy winds and enormous amounts of rainfall yesterday morning. We fall for this every time – it’s like the Blitz. Naturally, yesterday rolled around and we got a rainstorm and that’s about all. There was some minor flooding in the southeast part of the state, but other than that, nothing. All the local meteorologists are now back on their zoloft, I guess, quietly and bitterly back to forecasting partly sunny days in the mid-80’s.
One other quick note: my IPod might have a brain. Took a drive on Sunday morning, a cloudy, gloomy day and it played cloudy gloomy, acoustic songs, all right in a row. Interesting. Today it clearly had classic rock on its mind:
Guns N Roses – Don’t Cry
Jimi Hendrix – Fire
The Faces – Borstal Boys
Autumn Defense – Circles
Bottle Rockets – Gravity Fails
Bruce Springsteen – Spirit In The Night
Song now playing: Nick Lowe – “Heart of the City”