h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Yesterday we were having heavy rains. Last night the wind kicked in. Some of the gusts were so strong I feared they would blow my house off its foundations.

This morning I read the news on AOL.com, and saw that half a million people in Pennsylvania, Neew jersey, New Yor, and Connecticut lost their power from the store. There were gusts clocked at 70 miles an hour .

I haven't been down to the river yet, but it's probably overflowing its banks. I'm a little higher than some of the other houses in the neighborhood, but technically all of us are in a floodplain.

Good luck paul!



Jab

hope it doesn't come close to your front door Paul

A few more days of heavy rain could bring the water almost up to my street.

DmitriGeorgheni lives in Pennsylvania, and I hope he is all right. If he has lost his power, he can't come online to tell us how he is.

*waves from the safety of North Carolina*

I moved about four years ago, down to NC. I haven't heard from the Philly folks (I'll have to ask Elektra when she gets home if she's heard from her brother in New Jersey).

We've only had light rain, and no wind to speak of.

It has been a bit windy here, in Ottawa, the last few days but only a bit of rain.

I guess my paltry complaint about the blade on my passenger-side wiper ripping off and trying to find someone to put on new wipers on a Sunday evening seems a bit "nothing-ish" compared to flooding...

Are your feet still dry Paul?

*brings a spare oar and another *

Noodles!

I'm not awake yet

Yeah, but a broken wiper blade can be dangerous. Glad you got it fixed.

Update: Today is the third straight day of rain and wind. The river rose another six inches, and has swallowed the lower parking lot of the apartment building next door. Six more inches will bring it into my trailer park. We are, after all, in a floodplain. There's a chance the rain will stop around midnight, but even if it does, the river could rise further because of rain that has fallen upstream.
Good luck to your relatives in NewJersey, Dmitri.

Didn't get the wiper blade fixed. Went to Canadian Tire and bought them but the shop was closed so the nice man in the Automotive Department came out to help me. Neither one of use could get the blade off so I tore the blade part off and drove the few blocks home using just the rubber base which worked just fine (passenger side, luckily).

I still can't get the blade off and the flimsy plastic lever broke off. I will take it in to my mechanic and get him to change it.

Of course, every wiper manufacturer has a different system of attaching them and unless you hand onto the packaging fro a year or so, you have no idea how to remove the damn things.

oh Paul - I'm thinking of you. It must be so stressful - knowing there is nothing you can do. Can you take some of your irreplaceable stuff to a dry place, in case the worst happens? There have been terrible pictures of flooded homes in the UK over the last couple of years. I'm hoping the rain stops before too long.

Lanzababy

, Paul. Am I to understand that you live in a trailer park? (If so, good thing you aren't in a tornado alley.)

Mudhooks, I sympathize. I thought I was the only person who couldn't figure out how to change a wiper blade. It does seem they make it unnecessarily complicated. (But then, I'm the fool who used to carry a manual typewriter into the shop because I was too handicapped to figure out how to change the ribbon...)

Yes, I'm in a trailer park. On the upside, we never get flooded basements, because we don't have any basements to flood.

I'm at a fairly high elevation. I doubt that the floodwaters will get to me, but I worry about some of my neighbors who are so near the river.

Yes, it's a trailer park. The closest that a tornado has ever come to us was about 6 miles away at the Longwood Tennis Club in Brookline. The tornado picked up a clubhouse that a kid ran into for shelter, and threw it on the ground, killing the kid. We're nestled into a hollow. I worry more about floods than windstorms here....

May the floodwaters quickly recede.

In the meantime, here's a bit of Johnny Cash:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91OIaPRrDts

And I will keep my trailer park jokes to myself, seein' as how I'm livin' in North Ca'lina...

mmm - I can't see Paul humming that over the next hour or so Dmitri

See, Paul, this would be when an ark park would be the place to live.

Seriously... I hope everything settles down. Unfortunately, I live a bit too far away to help with bailing and I don't have a spare room to offer (and we are a bit far away).

Tom Russell and Iris Dement singing "Big Water" (not, as this person has it "This Old River").

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aV1fB-sroBY

You're both mean - Paul hasn't got speakers with his PC anyway - so he's lucky!