Me, Myself, and Irene

Maybe the titular movie wasn’t the greatest romcom of all time, but how often do I get an excuse to depict Rene Zellweger's sour face?

Hurricane Irene is coming! Aside from imperiling my vegetable garden, it threatens to flood the cellar again…and that’s Curio City’s warehouse. Yes, all of my merchandise is at least a few inches off the floor. But I don’t have enough room to raise up my shipping supplies, and we have 22 years worth of personal detritus piled up down there. A flood would be a massive inconvenience at the very least. We raised our water heater a few inches off the floor after the last flood, so perhaps that won’t go out again. I’m hoping that most of Irene’s rainfall will run off the surface. Our cellar only floods when the water table rises too high.

Heavy, wind-blown rain eventually saturates our chimney and leaks through my ceiling…and that’s Curio City’s office. Ordinarily that only happens after several days of sustained storms, and Irene should blow through here in 24 hours or less – not enough time to soak through bricks. Capping, lining, and re-pointing the chimney is too expensive to ever happen. So I have a bucket.

I’m mostly worried about power outages. Curio City is hosted elsewhere, so business won’t be interrupted. My ability to monitor and process sales, OTOH, would be. My laptop’s battery is worn out, so I can’t use it at all without a cord…and we wouldn’t have Internet access anyway. The prospect of being housebound without any electronic entertainment is much more frightening than being cut off from Curio City for a short time. The state’s main utility is warning that some areas could be without electricity for up to a week. Fortunately, my town’s nonprofit municipal power company only has a few thousand customers and can respond very quickly. Even if the lights do go out, I don’t expect them to stay out for long.