Clearing up

Hurricane Katrina has passed more quickly than expected but with more damage than expected. True, things aren't bad, but for being "only" a Category 1 hurricane, there was quite a bit of havoc. Luckily, the storm veered south before making landfall, so we didn't get it as bad as was predicted. The power blinked a few times yesterday, but it never went off for more than a few seconds. All in all we lost electricity for a total of several minutes. (But not knowing when it's going to come back on, you immediately go crazy.) And now the cleanup begins.

We didn't even bother to put up the hurricane panels, so that's a lot of work saved. I think the rest is a matter of cleaning the pool (lots of leaves blew in) and getting the patio furniture out again. But my parents also have non-hurricane house plans, such as getting rid of the carpet in the living room and moving the computer somewhere to the other side of this room so they can paint this wall. I think they want to make it some kind of red. If anyone wants to trade houses, please let me know.

(I often take time writing my posts. Since I wrote the above paragraph, we moved the carpet out of the living room and placed it outside, where my dad cut it into strips. It started to rain again as we rolled them up and put them into the garage. My dad had counted 46 stains on the underside of the carpet, all due to the dog.)

A few hours ago I saw the blue sky for the first time since the storm. It's good to know it's still there. Things are pretty much back to normal, I'd say.

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Speaking of which, things seem to be better with Nacole and me (if I can dare to mention both of us in a single sentence) with regards to our date (?). As you may recall, we were supposed to meet at the school football game today, but because it's cancelled, she offered for me to go to her house and watch movies with her and her friend. That should be pretty cool. I'll get to meet her old man, I guess, and give him a good first impression.

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I've had some bizarre dreams lately. A few nights ago I dreamed that I was being pursued by the East German police. I had to hide behind a parked car, but they were shooting both above it and below it, so I had to stick to the back pretty tight. Last night (as the storm was passing) I dreamed that our next tropical threat would be Tropical Storm Lester, which was then near Mexico. It was a convincingly real dream, but apparently the next storm will be named Lee, and it has not formed yet.

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More than 90% of violent crimes are committed within 24 hours of consuming this substance. Newborn babies can choke on it. Fully half of all children who grow up in households that use this substance score below average on standardized tests.

It's bread. Read more amazing facts about why bread is dangerous.

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If you find my lack of segues between topics particularly jarring, I hope the addition of content-separating asterisks will help. If you have another suggestion of a character -- such as dashes, etc. -- let me know somehow.