surly sandy

well, hurricane/superstorm sandy/frankenstorm has come and gone.  matt and i and our house survived.  we lost power last night around 9:30pm, right when the storm was at its strongest, it seems.  the wind was unbelieveable.  i slept terribly, even though i put in earplugs to drown out the noise.  earplugs seem to have an opposite effect on me - i end up being in my own head, unable to turn my thoughts off, or listening to my heartbeat and my breathing.  i never sleep well with earplugs in.  eventually (probably around 11:30) i fell asleep, but i'm pretty sure i was up once an hour.  i finally got out of bed at 6 because i could no longer get comfortable.  i went downstairs a lit a fire in our woodburning stove and just snuggled with padfoot until matt woke up sometime around 7:30. 

i ended up coming in to work.  septa is still shut down, so i drove.  the roads were fine and traffic was very light.  work is super slow.  most of the insurance companies are closed so we can't arrange for any discharges.  and i think people are still too scared to go home, especially if they don't have power.  i'm hoping that we'll be able to go home early, because right now i have pretty much nothing to do.  it sort of seems a little silly to be here.  but at least i'm not burning a vacation day that i can use for paid maternity leave!

matt's office is still closed, so he's at home, holding down the fort.  i think he was going to try get our garage door open so we can get my car out of the garage. 

i called peco (our electric company) a little bit ago and their message says that their crews are out evaluating the situation and they won't have any updates or estimates until after 4pm.  so i guess we'll try to call back then.  i really hope we can get it turned back on soon.  we have a 40-gallon gas water heater, so as long as we keep our showers short, we should have enough hot water for the next couple of days.  worse comes to worse, we are going home this weekend for a wedding, and we weren't planning to go until saturday, but maybe we'll pack up padfoot and head home a night early. 

we have no damage to the house, thank goodness.  there are a few branches down in our front yard, but nothing significant. 

hopefully any of you in the path of the storm have come through relatively unscathed!

on another note, as i sat at home watching the wind and rain, i realized that exactly 2 years ago, hurricane tomas made landfall on st. lucia during our honeymoon.  so starting next year, matt and i will be going into hiding on october 29th, as it is clearly not our day for weather!