Weather!

For those of you who don't live in the DC area, it's been Bloody Hot here lately!  The news said we hit 25 days above 90 degrees this summer.  It's not ending there.  It's supposed to get to 100 tomorrow.  That may not sound too bad to you Westerners, but with the humidity it can be very uncomfortable!

A few weeks ago we had a really intense storm because the weather--really hot temperatures and oppressive (that's what the weatherman called it) humidity.  I heard the weatherman make a brief comment about the a storm coming in, but didn't really think anything about it as they never seem to really know what's going to happen.  The storm woke me up briefly in the night.  I remember thinking that 'oh that must be the storm they were talking about.'  Then I went back to sleep.  Later, when I told people I had slept through it they were shocked as it was extremely loud.  My mom suggested that I have been accustomed to the very loud birds here so nothing would have kept me up. :)

The next morning I woke up and noticed lots of leaves on the ground, but didn't think much about it.  I went to a gas station and tried to pump gas and nothing happened.  I took a look and realized their power was out.  I got to the grocery store and luckily it was open with power.  I went and got gas and headed home.  I turned on the TV and was shocked by the images.  There were trees uprooted, trees on houses and vehicles.  Billboards blown over, millions of people without power.  I was just stunned.  People were without power for over a week.  The majority of people were without power in my office until Wednesday (the power went out on a Friday.) 

I felt so grateful I had my power.  It really makes you think how you would react to a certain situation.  It was so unplanned.  They didn't even really make a big deal about it on the news.  Usually if we have a hurricane or something we know about it for days and people get ready for it.  Someone in my gym said they have animals on a farm that they need water for--their pump is electric.  They didn't have warning they would need to fill up tanks. 

The hotel next to my office was $135.00 a night and that was with an FDIC discount.  Imagine what a hotel would have been without that.  That would have been very expensive.  It makes me think of all of those victims of natural disasters.  Not only do they not have power, everything else is gone too.  Scary stuff!

I went out to lunch with friends and we had to figure out what restaurants were still open because of the power outages.  I know many businesses lost a lot of revenue because of the storm--and merchandise.