Chasing Kanji - 感情を追って

An American's travel traumas
アメリカ人の旅行の外傷

Frankenstorm  

Hurricane Sandy was known as "Frankenstorm" all weekend long prior to her arrival. Pretty much all anyone talked about on Friday at work was how we would be affected come Monday. As it turns out, they had right to be concerned. We, on the other hand, remained aloof on the topic.

Saturday, the grocery store was a zoo. I didn't go, but one of my neighbors told me about it. Later that night, I grabbed a gallon of water to keep in the fridge from one of the corner stores.

Sunday, it was cloudy and drizzling. We learned that MTA decided to shut down all subways and buses. ALL subways and buses. Wow. So clearly, we weren't headed into work the next day.

Monday, the winds started to come as did the rain. Renn and I went out around 2pm to try to get in a potty break before the storm. We were successful, but we came back in relatively drenched. Sometime between lunch and the evening, we decided that we were under-prepared. Although we still weren't convinced anything would be seriously damaged in our neighborhood. So, we went to the store and bought peanut butter, jelly, canned soup, and some bread. (I made spaghetti for dinner and used half of a baguette for garlic bread - delicious!!)

Monday overnight the lights flickered regularly, and we received an courtesy call from the power company that our power might go out. So, we shut down as much as possible and filled the bathtub with water. This, I learned, is so you can still flush the toilet and - in dire cases - boil the water to drink it.

Now it's Tuesday. Still no public transportation, but the worst of the storm is over. We currently have power, although I'm not convinced it still can't go out. So, we are keeping our power use to a minimum. The system is very stressed as there are a lot of people/building without power including much of downtown Manhattan last time I checked.

All in all, our neighborhood was very fortunate compared to those that are under water. And it also seems like we'll have some extra canned soup for later.

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