I hope this blog post finds you well

The Weather Channel is in Savannah. They're broadcasting from a spot that I used to drive past every day before my office moved from the touristy side of town to the industrial side of town. They're here because of the storm, Tropical Storm or Hurricane Debbie, which is coming into town and bringing a lot of rain. I've been through storms before, in middle school when I lived in Georgia, and more recently in Hawai'i and here in coastal Georgia. I mean, when I was in college, I went to Outback Steakhouse during Hurricane Floyd. (In all fairness, at this time, the Outback Steakhouse was one of the few restaurants that gave free refills on drinks (one of the others being Ruby Tuesday.) Combined with the free bread that they give you, the Outback right outside Rutgers University, was always crowded with college students looking just to sit there, eat bread, and drink soda. But during the hurricane, they couldn't close until the state officially declared a state of emergency. So we went there, drank our soda, ate our bread, and watched the water rise on the freeway next to the restaurant until we felt that we had to leave because we weren't sure if we could make it in my roommate's little Nissan.)

So in my past, I've never really treated storms seriously. I've never really prepped, or at least not seriously prepped. I'll buy water. During the first hurricane warning in Hawai'i, I got some plastic sheeting in case I had to cover the windows. And the reason I don't take storms seriously is because every time there's a storm warning where I've lived, it's never been as bad as they said it would be. (Except for Hurricane Floyd, which flooded my basement with four feet of water, destroyed all my old Nintendo and Commodore 64 stuff, and ruined the homes of many of my co-workers. But I was nine floors up in an apartment, drinking Mountain Dew and playing video games. So I wasn't really aware of the danger of the situation until I tried to drive home to see my parents and found the roads impassible due to the flooding.)

But this time is different. Or at least it feels different. I've started to prep more seriously. I have a go bag ready. Even though the flooding has already started, and I doubt my car would make it very far. (Although I think that electric cars are better at driving in standing water than gas cars, or at least there's less chance of them being damaged from being underwater, or something like that. I don't know much about cars.)

So I sort of have a plan. If I have to evacuate, I've got stuff ready for me and the boys. I'm ready to drive inland, find the nearest Hampton Inn, and demand they honor my Hilton diamond status. But I have a feeling I won't be going anywhere for a couple of days.

The rain is really coming down. The roads were already flooded on my way home from work. And even though the school district has already canceled the next two days, I'm pretty sure we might be out for longer than that. Many of the schools here are quite old, and I doubt that they will fare well in a storm of this magnitude. I expect a lot of flooding. I expect the party patio to be underwater by the end of tonight. I hope that my new non-party patio TV survives.

I filled up a five-gallon jug of water. Now I have five gallons of room-temperature Brita water, ready in case something goes wrong. I have a good supply of staple foods: beef fried rice, wheat thins AND triscuits, mild cheddar cheese, and meatballs.

What concerns me is my soda supply. I have 4 liters of full-strength soda, which will not last me two days. I might have to rob a store to replenish my soda supply. But I'll cross that bridge when the time comes. A man's got to do what a man's got to do to survive.

I don't expect there to be any real damage to my home, at least nothing major, but it feels like it's going to be worse than expected, which is the opposite of how it normally goes. It feels like there's going to be a longer time out of school than just the two days that we've been given so far. It feels like my backyard is going to be underwater for a good long while. Hopefully, that will be the worst of the damage. My house is on the top of a little hill, so my front yard slopes down away from the house, as does my backyard. So my house should be fairly well protected.

I've got the movie dungeon upstairs to escape flooding if I need to. But still... Maybe I've been watching too much of the Weather Channel. Maybe my new meds are making me paranoid. I don't know. I just feel weird about this one. I feel that I have to prepare more than I have done so far. I want to go down to my garage, set up sawhorses, and put everything up off the ground. Even though I know that the driveway slopes down, so it will take a lot of water for my garage to flood. But like I said, this one feels different. This feels like the first real storm I've been in in a while. But I've made it through every other one. I don't see why I won't make it through this one. I just hope it doesn't end up being as bad as I think it will. I don't have enough soda to survive an extended stay indoors. You can never underestimate how much soda you need. You always need more. Precious soda, giver of life.