The sky is falling!

If you hadn't heard the northeast got hit really really hard this weekend with hurricane winds and rain. New Jersey is still under water and there are roughly 2800 people on Long Island who still don't have power and haven't had it since Saturday.

Now let's step back here for a moment. Saturday early evening Casey picked me up from the train station and we ran an errand over to Michael's where I hit an awesome sale on supplies I needed for Laura's shower invites.

On our way we had to pull into a Carvel parking lot and snap a photo of this:

The sky is falling...and so are the ice cream cones. We're talking ridiculous winds here people, crap was falling out of the sky left and right!

Casey just got a new car...or rather, new to her car. His name is Sven and he is a 1998 Volvo S70. He's fantastic, all the ladies love him.

Sven is also much safer than the Eclipse that was totaled when Casey was hit last month by a girl making an illegal blind left turn into the exit of a strip mall. I am happy Casey has Sven because I worry about her safety.

Anyway. We suddenly decided that we should do something fabulous for our birthday since this year is our quarter century. Cruise to the Bahamas? Yes, please. We spent most the night as the power flickered on and off and the wind blew hard against my windows researching different cruises and how much a 3-day cruise would be.

Long story short, we're too poor to go on a cruise but we're thinking about going to Universal Orlando and staying with my wonderful friend Ron and just spending a long weekend in the warm warm Florida weather.

Once we had enough sitting there planning we decided to venture out and get something to eat. We tried to get to Outback but the roads were flooded. We tried then to turn around and go to Friday's but the power had gone out in that town. We wound up at an Applebees and it was pretty delicious.

What the hell is my point?!

People are still without power. This is awful, but people some people just won't stop complaining about it. There is a LOT of damage and it takes a LOT of time to repair that damage before power can be restored fully.

I know this because my father works for a utility company.

People are all over the news crying about how the utility companies don't care and they're dragging their feet and wah wah wah. They are doing everything they can!

I know this because my father works for a utility company and has been working non-stop since Sunday morning.

The other morning I was getting some iced coffee from DD and a cop and some random guy were standing there bad mouthing the "lazy" utility company workers. The cop basically said that he'd been sitting in road blocks all day waving people past downed wires and that the only thing he'd seen from the utility company was a truck stop, look at the damage, make a note of it and drive away.

There is a certain level of triage that the utility companies have to go through. First they assess the damage, then they determine which repairs will be the most important to the largest number of people and then they send crews out to make the repairs. They had everyone imaginable out in the field logging damage and now they have everyone imaginable out in the field starting repairs. They have crews in from Connecticut and even Detroit helping them in these repairs.

My father who has worked with a utility company for over 30 years and is now a manager who works a desk job has been driving around all day every day since Sunday. So listen to me people, they are doing everything they can. It's not like they are sitting on their butts delegating work, they have managers and uppity ups out in the field doing work.

I understand the frustration of being without power for an extended period of time. But this happens all the time in NH where Jason's family lives. During the ice storms this winter and last winter Jason's family was without power for 4 days. And that was in the middle of winter when the temperature was below freezing. Did they complain? No. Were they inconvenienced? Of course. But I just feel like no one up there made THAT big a deal out of it all. They would get power back when they got power back and they prepared themselves for the lack of power and survived through.

Power goes out on LI for a few days and everybody's irritable, angry, complain-y, and mean. Again, I understand the frustration, but just don't take it out on the utility companies. A lot of them don't have power at home either and they're trying their hardest to do everything they can to expedite the repairs so they can go home and turn a light on.

End rant.