Starting to get breezy. You could fly a nice kite with this. We resecured a couple things, moved some boxes around and are basically getting settled in for the storm. Brandy is making cookies. I’m going to clean out my car and bring in the GPS and stuff. Unfortunately, only one of the three cars can be in the garage. The other two will have to take their chances.

After the car stuff, I think that is the last outdoor stuff we’re going to be attempting barring anything unexpected. Then we’ll hunker down and watch the live coverage of the storm while eating cookies and such until the power goes out. After that, we’ll play chess by candlelight while listening to the radio and the small battery powered TV… and eat cookies.

This one is going to be about as bad as Frances. For Frances we ran to New Orleans. For some reason this time we are still here. Gulp. Seems everybody still is. Nobody is leaving. (And they haven’t actually called for evacuation of our specific location, just the barrier islands near here and mobile homes and the like.) Oh well. We’ll be OK I think. But the next 24 hours are going to probably get a bit hairy!

Local noon news just came on. Channel 9 out of Orlando. Chief Weather Dude Tom Terry. I quote his opening statement…

This storm is going to be serious. We’ve already talked a lot about that. This storm is:

#1: About the same size as Frances with the windfield.
#2: This storm is going to be stronger than Frances.
#3: This storm is going to make landfall a little further North than where Frances hit.

Yummy! It is still forecast to make landfall 20 or 30 miles south of us. That is actually a little further away than they were forecasting yesterday, when they were putting landfall right near us. They are saying it may strengthen to a Cat 4 too. But they have it further south, which is good. But it could still shift.

Oh well, time to clean that car. And eat cookies.