The Perfect Storm

This past weekend we on the east coast had to endure a little storm, her name was Irene. Irene made a run up the east coast and took dead aim at our home state of New York. She wasn't aiming at my family or my home, but she was getting a little close for comfort.

In the front yard of the Hotbuns residence there is a tree. Not a small tree. In fact it is a very, very large tree. That very, very large tree is a Tulip Tree which I have estimated to be in excess of 75 feet tall. Our very, very tall 75+ feet of Tulip Tree also happens to be on the deader side of dying. That is not the only very large tree in close proximity to the Hotbuns residence either. We have Oak trees, and Maple trees and if I look hard enough in the back I'm pretty sure I can find a Sequoia or a Redwood. O.K. I exaggerated there a little.

Having grown up in New Orleans I am no stranger to hurricanes. I've seen firsthand the devastation they can cause and with the Redwoods and Sequoias in the yard there was no way My Beautiful Wife and I were going to leave our prize possessions, (children) in the house for the oncoming possible Armageddon. So we loaded up the truck and we moved to Al-bany, New York that is.

We ran, We ran so far away.

O.k. enough of the nonsense, you got the idea. We decided to ride out Hurricane Irene in a hotel with a kitchen, a swimming pool and I was betting a generator in the event that they lost power. We were not alone either. The hotel was full both nights we were there and having walked the dogs three times a day or more, I noticed that about 95% of the cars in the parking lot were from New York.

With us we had our two, not tea-cup Pomeranian, oversized dogs and one cat. We had a nice big room with lots of T.V's, lots of room and lots of siblings. At times it got a little loud, a little obnoxious and a little overwhelming, but that is to be expected when you toss that many people (and animals) into a room for two days. We had a kitchen and we brought food so we had a nice pork chop dinner with lima beans and mac and cheese the first night with a more relaxed dinner of B.L.T's on the second.

The pool was nice and apparently no one else brought a bathing suit because we were in the pool for hours and hours with no other guest coming in at all. The kids had a blast and quite honestly so did the Mrs. And I. Back in the room we played board games, and some game called Headbanz where you wear this plastic head band with a card facing your opponents and basically played 20 questions. The kids were convinced that I was psychic or cheating because I rocked that game.

On Monday we packed up the Hotbuns mobile and headed home to see what hand lady Irene dealt us. When we got home there were a few branches down here and there, some small debris laying about the neighborhood, a few floods down by the lake and Casa De Hotbuns standing in all it's glory.

It was clearly the right choice to flee. While all of our belongings came through the hurricane unscathed, we lost a lot. A lot of stress, a lot of worry and a lot of pent up energy. Instead of sitting around waiting for our trees to fall, we made the best of the storm, The Perfect Storm.