Hurricane Irene!

We dodged the bullet on this one! We had a LOT of rain (about 6 1/2 - 7") and high winds last night, but even though the lights flickered quite a bit, we never lost power. Our sump pump was able to keep running, so our basement did not flood either. We did some quick calculations -- the sump pump continuously operated for over 12 hours from 10 PM - 10 AM (pumping every 2 1/2 to 4 minutes); pumped 10-12 gallons each time; this means we've pumped well over 2,500 gallons so far!! (And it's STILL pumping at 3 PM, just not nearly as frequently!) Glad it's pumping OUT and not flooding my basement!

However, there was a fair amount of damage in and around our community and town. Here are some shots from our drive today.

The main entrance to our community was blocked by an enormous tree that fell across the whole street, burying one car!






In the apartments near our house, we saw this large tree, which fell into the parking lot. Amazingly, it appears it fell between two cars, but didn't heavily damage either of them!!




Another tree blocking Montgomery Street in Laurel:




This one is a bit hard to see, but if you look closely, you'll see the bottoms of the guard rails are exposed. The side of the road washed out completely, and it's a VERY long drop to the stream below.




Miscellaneous shots around town:







A large pine tree took down power lines and a pole in west Laurel on Brooklyn Bridge Road:








Now the rain has stopped, but we've still got much stronger winds than I had expected. Let the clean-up begin......

My schizophrenic postings

I am woefully behind in posting blog updates, but have lots to share -- just haven't had lots of time to actually get around to doing the sharing!! So my next posts are going to bedated retroactively, just to keep events in chronological order. Hope I don't make y'all crazy trying to figure it out!!

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Why aren't they bald yet??

Just for kicks, I decided to photograph the dog hair swept up last Monday, Wednesday and Friday..... and here are the pictures:

Monday's sweep --


Wednesday's sweep PLUS Monday's in the background --


Friday's sweep --


Cumulative for five days --


And this is only the hair from the living room, dining room, kitchen and hallway; bedrooms are still carpeted -- and then there's still the stairs and the entire basement. There's enough hair to make an entire puppy!! So the question remains -- why on earth aren't these two bald yet??

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