HEY! ANYBODY MISS ME YET?

Apologies for my enforced absence folks.

Sandy roared through Reading/Berks Monday, Monday night and into Tuesday. And while we made out far better than places like Atlantic City and Staten Island it was not without incident.

We still have a ton of folks without power, trees down, lines down across streets and back roads etc.

More locally very late Monday night when the wind was building to a great crescendo there was a loud crack and thud followed by loss of the TeeVee and internet. Moments later the power was out all over the neighborhood.

And remained out for about 15 hours.

Now, that is nothing more than a trifle, a nuisance and annoying in the grand scheme of things. Get out the flashlights and candles. UNTIL one has to be at work 5:30 the next morning and the coffeepot just will not work no matter how much you cuss at and threaten it.

Fortunately the nearest Wawa is on a different grid section than us and they had hot coffee, lots of it. So any further violence was averted.

But back to the crack and thud.

Twas our neighbors tree falling into our yard taking down the cable (and therefore internet) lines, leaving the phone line lying on the ground but still working, and did a dandy number or our power lines. Ripped out the neutral/ground and left it hanging there. The rest of it barely hanging there.

When the power came back on to the neighborhood we found we still had enough connection that we could shower, keep the food from spoiling, cook meals

and make COFFEE

This did not ease the communication woes, however. Internet and TeeVee was still down. Cell phone service was spotty at best. And local radio isn't worth shit for getting and real unbiased news. Plus their playlist is stuck somewhere in the 90's (they play it at work, it's the only station they get. I told my boss you know a station needs updating when you realize it isn't deja vu after all you really WERE listening to this very same song when you were unloading boxes at Spencer gifts in 1985).

So from Monday until late yesterday I was completely out of the news loop. And because of my crazy schedule at the Big Box Retailer I didn't have a chance to get anywhere else to watch the news or read the internet.

Meanwhile the tree remain perched on our electric wires.

Halloween night the neighborhood decided despite the problems we were going to proceed with the annual Halloween fire. Got the candy and s'mores makin's for the trick or treaters. Beer for their parents.

Plenty for us as well.

Held it at the neighbors this year since I had an early work start the next morning. So I left a note on our door

HALLOWEENERS!

The goods are across the street at the Halloween Fire!

C'mon over!

Our first customer was the lady from the electric company who was looking for us and followed the sign.

She and her partner had been sent by HQ in Ohio to sort stuff out, working their way east through Pennsylvania and on into Jersey.

We're from the electric company, we're here to help.

They took a look at our situation and declared both ours and our neighbors yard danger zones, off limits to people, children and small animals (look, if the squirrels can't read the friggin' signs and get zapped it's their own damned fault. Just means the neighborhood redtail will get a hot meal for a change) until the tree is removed because it could snap the wires at any minute and send them discharging into the standing water. Said hopefully will be there sometime next week.

We thanked her and offered her and her partner a beer even though they were "on duty".

They were sorely tempted I'm here to say.

So back to the fire. Had a good number of Halloweeners including one group from a number of blocks away whose kids were insisting they had to find the house that had the fire and s'mores last year.

Back to work Thursday Big Box Retailer continued to be busy with people buying stuff for the NEXT storm (just in case) and replacing the perishables they bought Sunday and lost when their power went out.

Why would you buy frozen foods and perishables when you know a storm is coming that will likely knock out your power destroy the food and keep you from being able to cook it anyway? And batteries, we were selling out of D batteries faster than we could restock them.

Friday morning the chain saws started at 6:00. No kidding they so startled our neighbor up 2 doors up he thought something ne'er-do-well in the Texas chainsaw vein was going on and was about to call the cops.

By 8:00 the tree was off the lines.

By 4:00 we had TeeVee and internet back.

I turned on the TeeVee and was startled to see how bad things were in Staten Island. Eerily similar to Katrina (with less loss of life) but back then they wanted to lynch the President for the federal response. Obama, of course, is getting a pass on it.

And the Benghazi morass continues to deepen.

And Obama gets a pass on it.

Unemployment ticks up (yeah, we'll leave all the numbers shenanigans out of it), higher now than when Obama took office.

And he gets a pass on it.

ANY OTHER PRESIDENT, REPUBLICAN OR DEMOCRAT, wouldn't show his face nn public with these kind of events, let alone be able to keep an election as close as this one seems to be.

So don't forget to vote on Tuesday.

And I'm voting as revenge. Revenge on the man who has so badly damaged this Country We Love. Throw his lazy ignorant incompetent ass out, and all his sycophantic cronies in the administration and Congress.

Let that fucker's name be added to the unemployment rolls, like so many of ours have been for so long.

And let's set things right.

Runnin' through this business of life
Rarely time if I'm needed to
Ain't so funny when things ain't feelin' right
Then daddy's hand helps to see me through
Sweet as sugar, love won't wash away
Rain or shine, it's always here to stay
All these years you and I've spent together
All this, we just couldn't stand the weather

Like a train that stops at every station
We all deal with trials and tribulations
Fear hangs the fellow that ties up his years
Entangled in yellow and cries all his tears
Changes come before we can grow
Learn to see them before we're too old
Don't just take me for tryin' to be heavy
Understand, it's time to get ready for the storm

(oh yeah, the yard made out just fine. No long term psychological trauma from being declared a danger zone for three days)


EPASEZ: We figgered by now you had Jeremiah Johnson'd ur way to Idaho