It's raining here right now...

just normal summer afternoon/evening Central Florida thunderstorms. No big deal actually- a lightning strike here, a brief tornado there- just your run-of-the-mill weather. And Florida is generally wonderful; after living through seven winters in Illinois I would be hard pressed to give up the pleasure of a January evening in shorts & shirt sleeves. However...

As most of you are aware we had a major hurricane pass through just a short time ago. Lots of damage, loss of life. There are areas, the places that were worst hit, that still don't have power back. Not many, and I am not trying to criticize anyone- It's just a fact of life that hurricanes can do amazing amounts of damage.

And today my family began to take a serious look at Hurricane Frances. It's not supposed to be here until Saturday, but if you looked at the projected path you'd see where it black line crosses the right coast of Florida? That's just a few miles south of me.

The problem is, as we were reminded with Charlie, that no matter how good the science is (and it's pretty darn good these days), there's still no way to absolutely tell were that great mass of water & heat is going. Charlie was expected to hit the Tampa area. Thousands of people evacuated to Central Florida, Orlando. Charlie decided to jig at the last minute, and Tampa got through with very little trouble. But all those people that went to O-town walked into the path of a major hurricane.

SO, the problem is deciding what to do. We could leave- close up the house, pack a few things and go, um, ha-ha. Yeah. Well, I've got two kids in Tallahassee. So north & west. That's far enough inland that we should be fairly safe.

But nobody will know for sure until the last minute. And to me, strictly my personal opinion, that makes the whole thing a crap shoot. If I lived on a barrier island, yes, I'd get the heck off of it and get inland. But I'm about five miles inland, with pretty good drainage. There's always the potential of wind damage. But there's the potential of wind damage almost every evening this time of year.

As I write this there is a family crisis going on. Another storm, right here, right now. So my priorities are taking a jig, and I'm going a different way than previously forecast. Ciao-