Watching Ivan Needless to say, we've all been watching Hurricane Ivan around here. Various projections have changed dramatically over the last few days. Some had it hitting dead center to Orlando, then a day later, dead center to Tampa. Now, it's skirting much more to the west on current projections which is a good thing. A hell of a lot less landfall in Florida and less likelihood of us being majorly affected by it. I have to say I'm really done with the hurricane season this year. I'm sick of losing my weekends to storms, winds, rains, and the lot of it.
This morning's National Hurricane Center's latest track:
(blue circle is my area)
*fingers crossed that it either holds that path or moves even further west*
A House of Cards In a Storm As usual, everything falls apart. The ground slides out from under me. And I'm left on the shit end of someone's lies, abuse and bull.
I have been so upset today I can't even talk about it. Suffice to say that it's another point in my life where people are fucking me over - joyfully - and getting away with it because I can't do anything about it.
All the things the manager of the apartment promised (because of the mold situation and their utter lack of addressing the problem) she now states she never agreed to. All the ways that we were possibly going to just barely eek out a chance to move with only borrowing minimal money is pretty much shot to hell.
And we're now faced with pretty much being homeless. Because we'll never get approved at this point, never have the couple thousand to move, and we'll end up facing eviction in our current apartment because of her changing her mind and fucking us over.
To say that things are unbelievably bad with no way out is an understatement. To say I've spent the entire day crying wouldn't begin to sum the depth of just how bad I feel and how utterly, completely hopeless I am. I literally need about a thousand dollars in the next 24 hours or we'll be facing eviction. And we have no place to go and no chance of having the money to move even if we did.
I literally don't know what we're going to do. All I can think about is how desperately I want to die because I just can't take it anymore. I can't take all these years where I get beaten to the point of breaking without any better days and without any hope of the positive to come my way. I can't do it anymore, I really can't. The world hates me and wants to crush me so why don't I just let it kill me? It'd make things so much easier for everyone.
I'm back! Yeah! Ok, so we've been without cable for several days now, meaning no tv and no internet. We were couped up all weekend in the apartment with very little to do and nothing to watch to pass the time. (Can you say, "stir-crazy?" I knew that you could!) I can't even begin to tell you how sick of our dvd collection we are! What a long, loooooong weekend.
We had near-constant rain. Though mostly, it was light misting of rain. Constantly breezy winds with massive gusts that were both creepy and cool. Monday, we had some really, really heavy rains - the bands after it exiting the state were worse then when it was right over us. Many shingles are laying around the parking lot as well as more leaves, small branches and some medium-sized branches then seems possible. (Looking at it all, you'd think the big oaks would need to be bare for as much debris is everywhere, but they're not.) It doesn't seem like we had any water leaks in the apartment, and we never completely lost power. It would pop off for a second completely, but come right back on. Other times, it would brown out - everything getting really dim and flickery - but then come back. To say that it was a constant state of anxiety is an understatement.
Downed leaves and small branches everywhere coving all surfaces
The first couple days weren't bad. Friday and Saturday - days orginally in the strike timeline of the storm - we had normal weather. No clue that there was a massive hurricane over 400 miles wide just looming off the state. Problem is that it stalled out. Utterly. For hours. And so the timetables went from a Saturday strike to a Sunday night strike (for my area). Which meant that most of the state had already closed for Saturday afternoon. And stayed closed through today in many cases. Sunday brought the real dreary weather and massive bursts of wind. It was very hard to sleep through it all Saturday night into Sunday and Sunday night into Monday. The wind would blow so hard, the building would make these weird groans and creaks and it'd wake me up. All day Sunday, we just sat around. Watched some news and waited. And waited. And waited.
It's hard to see just how much of a mess it left. Scattering massive piles of wet leaves and branches all the way through the breezeway between buildings and piling up in front of people's doors.
The storm ended up not even exiting off the state until some time close to midnight. By that point, we had long since lost our cable and so had to try to discern the news status via our small bedroom tv which was barely pulling in about a channel and a half of local stations.
All day Monday, it rained and rained. Much harder rain then the previous days. We went out though, desperate to get out of the apartment. Discovered most everything was closed. From Barnes and Nobels (though not Borders who was doing a brisk business!) to the entire mall. Which was really bad of them, since I can tell you the roads were packed with people looking to go somewhere and get out of their homes too! The Lowes we passed was packed (the parking lot anyway), and I'm sure Home Depot was probably the same way. It was suprising what was and what was not open. Best Buy was (we nosed around there a bit), and so was the Super Target. But, many resturant weren't (surprising) and many retailers weren't either.
Some decent sized branches fell from the oak trees. People parked under them and took some dings because of it. We, smartly, moved our car to parking spaces where the trees didn't hang over into the lot.
My stomach was giving me hell yesterday. I was just sick to my stomach all day (and night). After hitting a few stores, we came home, had some late lunch and sat around the apartment some more. I called the cable company and got slack when I asked if we were getting credit for the downtime (because they hadn't started repairs yesterday and had no plans to). "We can't control the weather," I was informed. Yeah well, I can't either, but I'm still not paying for a service I am not receving I replied. To which he said yeah I would get a credit. Idiots. Sure, I understand you can't do anything about the hurricane, but you also can't expect me to pay for something I don't have. Bad thing is that I discovered you can't even access the things you've recored on you DVR (the "TiVO" type digital video recorder in our cable box) when there's no service. I guess since the box couldn't connect, it disables all the features of the box. Oh, the humorous thing? The message it gives you is "Advanced Functions Not Available." I guess programming is considered advanced then. Heh.
So....that's really about that in a nutshell. Did I mention how boring it was? What a shitty excuse for a Labor Day Weekend! Luckily, we came through it undamaged and unscathed, though our mental state was a bit shakey for awhile there. Let's not even talk about Hurricane Ivan yet, who's lingering out there as a catagory four storm which is heading in this general direction on a course for about next weekend. Sorry, Texas, Mexico and other Gulf states, but this one's yours. We've already taken two in a row. I don't want it to hit anyone, but damned if I want it to hit us. Again. So I'm hoping for a turn, a miss of the state and a drift into the Gulf to find some other state. We've had enough this year already.
Anyway, that's that for now. I've got a lot to check up on and want to go relax with a nice hot shower. Thanks everyone for the well-wishes.
Couldn't Load Blogger! Bah! I can't get blogger to load so I can't update my journal. I don't know why or what the hell's going on with them, but it utterly won't load. It just says, "Loading...." and never does anything. I don't even get a timeout notice from the site. It's infuriating!
Anyway, the winds have been howling all night. And the storm is inching its way closer to us:
(I'm in the yellow circle area)
The trees are already throwing branches and debris all over the parking lot:
And you can just hear the wind blow so hard......gust and then settle down. Neighboring counties to the west have lost power and cable just recently, so I might be next. So I had wanted to give one more update for the time being.
We're hanging in there. We have all day and into the night yet to deal with this. Frances is only moving like 7mph Oh, up to 9mph now at the moment, so it's still a lot of hurry up and wait. But the winds have definately been howling all night, though not much rain yet where I am. Inland more is getting rain from what I understand, but not us yet.
Keep wishing us luck guys, we're in for a long ride still and the worst is yet to come.
*The forecasters say it's now directly heading our way. Expect hurricane force winds. Oh, this will be fun. It's going to exit just north of me. Right near where my mom lives. Can I say panicked now?
(by the way, if I can't get this to load next time, check out my livejournal for another update, pending I can give one!)
edit 4:25pm: It seems that it timed out, so I'm editing and republishing. The power flickered off while it was publishing and I haven't turned my pc back on. Love has an old laptop with a battery I'm using at the moment. The power has been browning out, but not gone out and clearly, the cable is still on as well. The rain is coming in small bursts, but not anything hard yet. Truly, it's the wind still that's creepy sounding and making an absolute mess of everything. It alternates from moments of calm to moments of surprising intensity and the world feels charged; poised on edge like its waiting to crack.
Slowest Moving Storm Ever Ugh. Besides stalling out for hours this afternoon, it's still only traveling at like 5mph. Which means that not only is it huge, but it's going so slow that it's causing MASSIVE flooding because it's sitting in one place for so long.
Frances is expected to lose power as it crosses the state toward the Tampa Bay area late today, dropping to a tropical storm. But forecasters said it could drench isolated areas with as much as 20 inches of rain, causing serious flooding in numerous west and central Florida counties.
It's just so slow. And it's gone from being a Saturday evening thing, to a Sunday morning thing, to a Sunday afternoon thing to now possibly a Sunday night/Monday morning thing. Ugh. Way to ruin an ENTIRE three day weekend.
Hurricane Frances brought rain squalls, wind gusts and power outages to the Tampa Bay area Saturday night, offering a wet prelude to a miserable Labor Day weekend.
With Frances forecast to take a full 24 hours to cross Florida, tropical storm force winds and drenching rains are expected to stay until early Monday. That could leave some spots with a foot or more of rain.
Just how long can a person sit around their apartment, in the middle of the eventual exit path of a hurricane, with everything closed around them and each and every local channel pre-empting programming to talk about how IT'S NOT YET HERE BUT IT'S [EVENTUALLY] COMING OUR WAY. How many times can you hear that it's going to be rainy and windy for the next 24 solid hours? Ugh.
Closures and cancellations across the region will be widespread today, from Tampa International Airport to the Tampa Bay Devil Rays game. Residents began preparing Saturday for a long stretch indoors.
Managers at Blockbuster video stores described heavy business, with some people renting six or seven videos at a time to get them through the storm.
Scott and Gaby Gramling of St. Petersburg visited a Lowe's Home Improvement Warehouse to buy supplies. But their purchases had nothing to do with storm preparations.
"I don't want to get cabin fever," said Scott Gramling. "We're going to get socked in with the rain. So this is the time to do the indoor projects. It's my "Honey do' list."
Walt Disney World was closed Saturday because that was the original predicted time to hit central Florida. Turns out nothing much happened today except that during Labor Day Weekend, the parks sat empty. Now they're closing for an unprecidented second day in a row since Sunday is the newly revised ETA. Pending on how long Frances is in the area, they may or may not have time to clean up prior to a scheduled 9am open time for Monday. I think the world as we know it has ended. Disney closed for two days back-to-back with rumors that the dry spell will continue into day three.
Of course that's not the only thing that's closed. All the Labor day events, fireworks, concerts and such have been cancelled with no rain date yet announced. Though, in a bit of irony, the showings of Gone with the Wind scheduled as part of the Summer Classics Film Festival have been rescheduled for Saturday, Sept. 11th and Sunday, Sept. 12th. Pending of course that Florida itself isn't gone with the wind.
