Hurircane Irene came and went

Hurricane Irene towards the east coast

"But, why?? you are preparing as if its war time" said my husband controlling his laughter when I told him that we would need to add a transistor to our hurricane shopping list. As he hung up the phone, I could snatch a bit of what he was telling his colleague "Man, my wife is freaking out watching CNN...." :)

Hurricane Irene came out of no where and forced us all to be at home last weekend. With 24x7 coverage on several news channels claiming that even the New York Stock Exchange would be closed, I was expecting something in lines of the movie "The Day After Tomorrow". We shopped extensively and am now quite familiar with the hurricane emergency kit: bottled water, torch and batteries, candles, food supplies, some medicines, filling up gas in the car and a transistor (The NJ Governor said we may need to listen to news when there is a power outage - then, of course we need to!). And thank God, we live above ground level. Oh yeah! We were all ready for the vicious Irene to hit us. My husband's only interest (apart from lazing around most of the two days spent at home) was on getting a day off on Monday.  Alas, the vicious category 3 hurricane Irene turned into a wimpy tropical storm as it hit NJ (No no, I am happy about it, really!).

We were fast asleep as it poured its worst rains on us and in the morning we got up to see even some sun shining on us. :). Better luck next time Irene! After resisting this intense urge to get out on Sunday itself, we all left to NYC on Monday (with a more than eager guest who also spent two looooong days watching the rains from our home), hoping that the city would be less crowded this one time. Ya..like that would ever happen...NYC was as crazy as always.

Hats off to the government though for carrying out such extensive precautionary measures! While a few felt that they overdid it, I think its always better to be safe than sorry.