Wind, Rain, and a Cacophany of Quacking

August 19-23, 2008 Tropical Storm Fay We have been dealing with Tropical Storm Fay here at our house for the last week. It has been miserable. She's a slow moving system (between 2-4 mph) that is just dumping rain on our area. There are lots of flooded streets, a lot of debris in the roads/yards, high winds, road and bridge closures, electricity outages, and tornadoes! We've had sleepless nights because of the howling winds, pelting rains, and a pesky duck who has quacked non-stop for the last 24 hours somewhere close to our house. I've gone out a couple times to see if I could find him and help - it seems he must be stuck or hurt or something - but I just can't find him. I can't wait for the duck to quit quacking!!! Grant, Mason, Emma Lou and I hung out in the bathroom today for a little over 1/2 hour because there were tornadoes not too far from our house. Yikes! Grant kept wanting to go out, so I kept making up games to keep him in there. Quite the adventure! Luckily, we haven't lost any electricity at our house so far, and it seems the worst is over (although we're still having lots of rain, wind and flooding!) Hopefully Fay is on her way out! Poor Chris has had to work at the hospital the last two days because he's doing an inpatient month. His friends who were outpatient this month have been able to stay home because the base was restricted to essential personnel only. Poor inpatient interns! One of the other interns, Orlando, took pity on him yesterday since he had to be on call today (his birthday) and let him come home early yesterday. Orlando stayed at the hospital even though he lives across the Buckman Bridge. If the winds get above a certain point, they close the bridge, so he sacrificed a lot so that Chris could have a little time off with his family. Thanks, Orlando. It meant a lot. We owe you big time! The pictures don't do the storm justice (you really can't tell it was bad at all), but I tried to get some pictures of how windy it was, as well as the torrential rainfall. You can see the rain in a couple pics, so I thought I'd share. Thank goodness it's almost over! We all can't wait for the sunshine again!