Normality restored.. kinda...

So... we can leave the house now. Nevermind that driving down our road, which usually is pretty close to offroading anyway, is more like a wild African safari now. Been chillin w/ my sister and Andre... he's the closest thing to a childhood friend that I have, so that's been good. Ok, so now that things are returning to normal, I have very little to write about... so I'm going to stop writing... now.

Hurricane aftermath

I hate this hurricane. Remember how I told you that we missed the worst part of things? Ie. The winds, etc? Well, guess what we got instead. Rain. BUCKETS of rain. Now, this might not seem like such a bad thing, but you have to remember two things: 1) we live on a mountain. 2) The mountain is made of dirt. Now, I'm sure that as a child at some point, you played with a hose and a big pile of dirt or sand… Now, I want you to think back to how easily the water cut channels through the mound, taking much of it along for the ride, dumping it all someplace downstream. Remember? Well, "“someplace downstream" turned out to be our TV room. Twice. Having to un-flood and un-mud two rather large rooms in a house during a hurricane is not something I'’d wish on anyone. Especially when both the electricity and water have been locked off. Ever had to go out during a hurricane to your neighbour'’s house in order to catch buckets of water from a trickle running off of their roof so you could mop mud out of your house? Lightning has never been so frightening as when I was completely soaked, standing in a puddle of water, holding a large bucket of water on my head. But then, life'’s an adventure, right? As it stands now, We'’re prisoners in our own house. We have no electricity, no running water, and no way to leave, due to the fact that the road to our neighbourhood opted to wash away. So, I sit here, trying to figure out things to do, with minimal success. Ok, I'm bored of this. later.


*hours later*
Ok, so dad and I went down the road to check out the level of damage... It's crazy what a lot of water can do. at least 30% of the road leading up to our neighborhood was washed away on the cliff side, and in some spots, it's worse. At one spot where water was supposed to pass under the road, the underpass was blocked in the storm, resulting in a river not only washing over the road, but also taking the road along for the ride. But, I really have no room to talk, I'm mostly concerned about what's happenning to people over in Cuba... they took the storm head on at a Category 4, with windspeed in excess of 150 MPH. I hope they're ok..

Hmmmm.. Hurricane Dennis, eh?

So, I'm in the midst of a hurricane at the moment. And I' writing a blog entry. Isn't that wonderful? To be honest, the storm hasn't hit us nearly as badly as we had figured; the eye of the storm (the dead space in the middle that serves as the nucleus) has been pushing north of the island, so the North coast has been getting the worst of it. What that means to us, being that we live halfway up a mountain on the southern side, is that we get a LOT of rain, some amount of wind, and bucketloads of cloud. So some ppl are getting 110 mph winds, while we're getting good weather to fly a really, really big kite. What isn't so much fun, though, is the fact that our roof is leaking like a mofo...



::edit::

Okay... so, it doesn't seem so bad... that is, until you've spent a few minutes outside in it trying to fix things, namely the roof, a flooding problem, and banana trees that have committed suicide into the back yard. I've never seen this volume of rain in my life. Honestly... when I had to go fix a part of the roof, it was under a good 6 inches of water. Given that this was the roof of a 2+ car garage, you can imagine just how much water that is....

OK, ok, fine...

Ok, so you're upset that I haven't posted in a while. Truth be told, I've grown bored of this blog... at least, in its current format. I have to figure out what I want to do with it. And as for the pictures... using Jamaican internet to post pictures is nothign short of torture, so sorry, but you're all going to have to wait until I get back to see the rest of my pics from this summer. ANyhow, I do have *one* thing that i'm going to post... I scribbled this when trapped on a plane to leave Miami, the day after getting back from Europe (15 hours of flying). They needed to repair the plane, but that meant about one and three quarter hours of being locked in a plane with no Air Con, and about 148 other disgruntled Jamaicans. What follows is a transcription of the jumbled mess that I scribbled in a notebook about an your and 15 mins into our entrapment.

"
5:33 EST DST 22.06.05

For the love of God. I'm stuck in this oven of a plane that should have left over an hour ago. me instrumentation in the cockpit neds to be repaired. Yay. Downside? Power's been switched off. Translation? NO DAMN AIR.

Over 100 people in a plane, no air circulation. This is what hell would be like for smaller sins, like making fun of midgets, or hating babies. Not too bad, not unbearable, but bad enought that you'd kill yourelf at least every two hours or so. How bad is it when Jack Johnson won't calm you down? My jeans are stuck to my legs.
"

Woah, I wrote that?