Overbooked and Underpaid: Notes from a Yes-aholic

Beachfront Property

Regular readers of the blog know that we got whacked by a big storm this June and lost a good portion of our driveway.

Here is a pic taken right after the tree went over:

Well, we finally are getting the driveway fixed, read "completely replaced". Of course the insurance company only pays for the damaged portion and, of course, the whole driveway has to be redone and regraded or nothing will drain properly.

So last night, phase one: Stump Removal

Then today, phase two: Driveway Removal

It turns out all that talk for years that, by living on one of the only hills in our town, we live on a sand dune is true after all. Here is our current, personal "beachfront".

Tune in later for a detailed account of the grand overhaul of our backyard. We're just too deep into it for much live blogging at the moment.

Whacked!!

This has been an interesting Spring/Summer for us weatherwise. If I were a paranoid sort of person, I would think someone up there has it in for us.  We spent the end of May dodging some of the most severe storms seen in the Midwest in years (you can read about that little gem of a road trip here.) Then, right after we drove back West across Massachusetts, that state was hit by a series of Tornados. For those of you who live in the midwest where such things are common, it would probably help to know that New England is not known for twisters.

In mid June, our area was hit by a pretty serious windstorm that took out several trees along the lakefront and we took it in stride. 

Then, June 30th at approximately 7:45 we got whacked.

It had been a pretty normal day, hot but not that oppressive, high humidity, 90+ degree heat that usually precedes serious storms. I was in the backyard trying to convince our 16 week old puppy that now would be a good time to empty his bladder and let me move on to other exciting household chores. John had just finished watering the garden and headed in  to change clothes. And our daughter was at the bottom of the driveway creating her usual sidewalk chalk masterpieces.

Little things I remember:

Far off rumbles of thunder and a vague flash or two of lighting which led me to believe that my efforts to get the dog to pee were going to be fruitless.

John looking up at the sky, which had turned a sickly shade of yellow green and commenting: "Sky's looking pretty weird - Tornado weather...." (We've spent most our lives in Tornado riddled states so we pretty much know that sky when we see it.)

And, I would later find out that my daughter happened to have her camera with her and also had the presence of mind to feel that something was brewing because she filmed the clouds as they passed overhead and commented "Clouds are moving pretty fast....."

The next thing I knew I was surrounded by a wind I can only describe as "Wizard of Oz" like in it's intensity. I ran to the top of the driveway and yelled down to Kate, only to have my words whipped back into my face. I gestured frantically and screamed as loud as I could to get her attention. She looked up and give me the typical 12 year old "Just a minute" raised finger. "NO! RIGHT NOW!!" I screamed.

They say a Tornado sounds like a freight train. Well, I live right next to some train tracks and hear the freights go by on a regular basis and I can attest to the fact that this wind sounded exactly like a freight train. At that point I knew I had to get my daughter and myself into our house and down into our basement immediately.

As we ran into the house I practically threw Kate and the puppy down cellar stairs and started screaming at John to get out of the upstairs. All I could hear was stomping and swearing. Turns out he was wrestling with the windows on our addition trying to get them closed and they kept whipping out of his grasp. He also was watching our 4 cedars lean over our cars at a 40 degree angle, threatening to snap at any moment.

Less than a minute after getting into the basement, the power went out and all was blackness. Three minutes after that it was all over. We could no longer hear that freight train wind and we emerged to take stock of the damage.

This is the first thing we saw:

Followed by this:

And this:

(That would be the transformer for our bit of the neighborhood) 

One by one the neighbors all emerged like folks leaving an air raid shelter. As we checked to see that everyone was all right and started to assess the damage we encountered this:

What you may not be able to see right away is the fact that there are two giant Maple trees down and that, under them, is a house.

From this angle you still cannot see that, to the immediate right of the house with the red roof is another house covered by tree. 

Here you can finally get a sense of the damage.

This was taken 3 days later after the tree removal crew had cleared the first tree and already spent a day and a half working on the second. The good news is that the tenant in the lower half of the house was unhurt and the tenant in the upper half was away from home at the time. Which was a very good thing as the tree sliced through the roof and into the upper story playroom where the little boy who lived there watched TV and played his video games. Under that tree is small child's chair that was completely annihilated. I'm told that the plaster is cracked on every wall, the doors won't close, and the entire house was knocked back off its foundation.

Needless to say the entire neighborhood was without power. John hopped on his bike to check on our sailboat in the harbor and also see if there was any power at his office. The good news was that our boat was fine and his studio still had power so, if push came to shove, we could always relocate down there. 

We would later find out that the harbor was hardly the unscathed area that John had thought. While our dock was fine, it turns out that several of the other docks broke free of their pylons and went careening back and forth in the marina. The dock immediately north of ours headed southwards, running into our dock. It then ricocheted back north and came to rest intertwined with the next dock over. In the following photo you can only just see that some of the boats are touching and the gap between the docks is not the 20 feet it is supposed to be.

The northernmost dock actually ran aground and these boats are all sitting on their propellers. Witnesses in the marina said that an enormous wall of water - possibly a series of waterspouts - climbed over the breakwater and slammed into everything in its path. 

It turns out we were extremely lucky. Our only real damage was the loss of our ancient lilac bush,

and the demise of our driveway. At first it looked as though our cars would remain trapped near our garage indefinitely but John managed to rig up a ramp and draw a sort of map with chalk to navigate the cars through. (The rainbow came compliments of Kate. Below she has written "cheer up - it's a rainbow" - gotta love that attitude!) Another note - the neighbor has been working on his garage and hired a dumpster for his debris. That dumpster saved his deck and his garage. The tree didn't even dent it.

The next morning I headed out on my bike to take stock of the rest of the area and take some pictures:

My daughter in my immediate neighbor's yard among 2 of the 6 trees he lost.

 

An all too common sight all over the area.....

Our lakefront parks lost probably 65% of their older trees.

You cannot truly get a sense of the scope of this. It is a pavilion roof for a picnic area and is easily 50 feet across.
 

Another overturned tree - the people give you a sense of the size of the roots. This is probably a 150 year old tree.

Another view of the same roots - This tree is right along the lakefront at the edge of the park and I'd love to know how the bricks got into its root system. There are no buildings anywhere near it. Perhaps filler from an ancient breakwater?

Another of the area's oldest and biggest trees - if you look closely you can see a young man sitting on the tree.

A closer view of the same tree's roots.

Let's hope this port-o-potty was unoccupied.....

 

An "ex" garage

Here is the same garage two days later after the trees are removed. At the right you can see the neighbor's demolished red car. Which was, sadly, brand, spanking new....

The scene at historic Kemper Center where John had a previous studio.

 
 And finally, our breakfast the day after the storm. When you are about to lose all the ice cream in your freezer, sometimes you have to take one for the team.

We are all still cleaning up and digging out from under tree debris. And we lost power again yesterday in another storm so the scary season-o-storms ain't over yet. But, so far (knock wood) that twister with our name on it hasn't found us yet!

Note: a special thanks to the crews from WE energies and also all the tree removal crews. They all worked tirelessly around the clock to get our power restored and our homes free of killer trees. If I could, I'd buy every single one of them a drink!

 
 
 
 
 

 

 

3 Proposals

 

Proposal #1) Business Hours

As I was shopping in my favorite local grocery store today, I saw a notice that they have changed their business hours from 7:00 am - 10:00 pm to 8:00 am - 8:00 pm. I imagine the economy is hitting them hard and this is an attempt on their part to control operating costs.

And it got me to thinking. How much of a difference would it make to our lives if we implemented a plan to reduce the business hours of the nation? What would our country look like if we were not all working and shopping and traveling 24/7? How much energy would we save? How many pollutants would we reduce? How much more time could we spend with our families? Could factories eliminate their late shifts and put more people to work in the daylight hours in buildings that are currently sitting idle?

I don't know if this is a good idea or not, it's just a thought. In the past, when facing times of crisis, we have enacted all sorts of measures requiring sacrifice. A few  that most readily spring to my mind are the 55 mile an hour speed limit (oil crisis of 1973) ration stamps and victory gardens (WWII) and daylight savings time (various origins, including some from WWII). 

It strikes me that we have mostly tried to sail through our current crisis with our lives unchanged and no sacrifices made. I find it hard to believe that we are going to be able to simply "shop" our way out of this one and settle into economic prosperity by osmosis.

   

Proposal # 2) 24 Hour Emergency Radio station and Internet Alert System.

Emergencies. They happen. 

When I was a kid, there was no such thing as dialing 911. As a result, you spent a lot of time being quizzed by adults about things like the phone number for the local fire station and the phone number for the local police. And, of course, every locality had its own numbers and they were all 7 digits long. Not exactly expedient in a crisis.

I find our current emergency alert system to be woefully inadequate in the modern world. We're still using sirens from 40-60 years ago. And what happens after the sirens go off? Where do you go for more information? Especially if you are driving in an unfamiliar locality or are at home with no power? And the alerts that come over the TV when a storm is coming? Useless to us. We watch almost no TV that is happening in real time. We are usually either watching netflix or something prerecorded.

Example A) We were driving to Minneapolis during the summer of 2009 when tornados began hitting the areas within 2 hours of the city. We got an emergency alert over our car radio telling us which counties were being effected. Trouble is - we didn't even know what county we were driving in! It's not as thought they put that info on the road signs every 5 miles or so. Not only that, after the alert, the station just went back to its regular programming. We surfed all over the dial and could not find any good information.

Example B) In the recent blizzard we lost power for 6 hours or so. We were also stuck in our house, hemmed in by 4 foot drifts. Without power, we could not access the internet or the television to find out what was going on. I did find a radio that ran on batteries, but, again, all I found was regular programming with an occasional news item that was, at best, vague about the situation

Radio - I would like to see a 24 hour emergency radio station that covers all kinds of emergencies - weather, terrorism, you name it. It should be the same frequency all across the country. Maybe 91.1 to make things simpler. To keep the information specific, each state could run their own station. When there is a crisis, the nature of the crisis should be clearly and repeatedly stated along with information about which roads and highways fall within the area of the storm or chemical spill or whatever. With today's technology, how hard would this be? And if there are stations already using that frequency for commercial programming, how hard would it be to get them to change by one number? Give them a tax break for migrating their signal and cover the costs of changing their logos and such. Even in a power outage, families can access radio stations if they have a battery powered radio. Which everyone should just have anyway. Like flashlights and smoke detectors.

The internet. We need an emergency alert system for the internet just like the one used for TV. It could be a little flashing lightning bolt that blinks in the corner of your screen when there is an alert of any kind. You would click on it and be taken to a site with full information on the crisis - what is happening, who is affected - and what to do next. And since the internet is delivered to us by phone providers for the most part, phone companies could be in charge of keeping the alerts specific to the area in question.

Proposal # 3 Recycling containers

My city has mandatory recycling. I have to separate out all my plastic, glass, and metal and put it in special blue bags to be picked up every week on garbage day. We also recycle all newspaper, scrap paper, chipboard (like cereal boxes) and corrugated cardboard. 

This is great. I am a big fan of recycling.

The problem is that when I am out and about in the city, there are no trash cans anywhere for recycling. Only cans for garbage. 

I would like to see dual garbage cans - with one side for recyclables and one side for non recyclables - everywhere there is a public trash can in my city. Whenever a municipality mandates recycling, it should be across the board all the way. Not just in my house. 

I've seen these dual trash cans in other cities so I know they exist. Eventually, I'd love to see them all over the country, not just in a few forward thinking communities.

So there you have it - 3 of my proposals to change the world!

Of course, I'm not holding my breath.

Diary Of A Blizzard - Updated With Photos

Tuesday, February 1. 

7:30 am Bearing in mind dire, dire predictions of oncoming storm, called family we carpool with to see if we should keep the kids home. Since the weather really wasn't supposed to hit until school was over, we drove the 10 miles up and dropped them off with fingers crossed.

Spent most of the morning as usual but keeping a sharp eye on conditions. Had to venture out to get antibiotic prescription refilled for dog with bad tooth and surgery scheduled for Friday. Didn't want to take any chances of getting stuck with no meds and a dying dog.

12:00 Husband headed out to split wood for use in fireplace in case we lose power. Husband also braves frigid temperatures to fix broken snowblower. Pretty sure we're going to need it!

1:00 The winds get stronger and stronger, the waves on Lake Michigan get higher and higher, and cancellations begin popping up all through the southeast corner of the state. Cancelled all my students. Fingers still crossed to get daughter back from school. 

2:00 Receive email from daughter's school that they will dismiss at regular time but have already decided to cancel classes for Wed. Thrilled about the cancelled classes. Less thrilled that they didn't close early. The school is situated smack dab on the lake front where the worst conditions are. The drive up to school is so close to the lake that it is almost a white out from blowing snow alone.

4:00 Daughter arrives home safely. We make leek soup and hot chocolate for dinner. Definitely fine fare for hunkering down. John props up flimsy roof of back porch in anticipation of heavy snow.

6:00 The winds are really getting fierce. Spent 30 minutes just looking out my front window in awe of the power of mother nature.

7:00 We still have power so we continue to do the work we can do on the computer and also penciling up comic strips. Deadlines loom, blizzard or no. The room we work in is almost all windows so we can see the gale force of the wind as the trees bend almost sideways.

10:00 Winds are freakishly strong. The view outside my window looks like Hurricane Katrina with snow. The evergreens are bending like palm trees. Start chronicling the blizzard on twitter - view my twitter coverage here.

12:00 plug ipad in to charge for possible lifeline tomorrow and we call it a day.

Wednesday, February 2

3:00 awake to find power is off as suspected would happen. John heads downstairs to move my harps into the warmest room of the house. A note: my primary concern when we have no power in the winter is that we will lose the furnace and my harps will freeze. Unlike us, the harps can't wrap themselves in blankets and radiate their own heat. Harps that freeze crack. Not only are they my livelihood, they are each about $20,000 to replace.

Spend next hour planning for no power for the duration. Finally fall back asleep.

7:00 am son #2 bursts through bedroom door to inform us there is no power. Begins his process of internet withdrawl.

7:05 Son #2 discovers back porch door is blocked by 4 feet of snow. Desperate to access the cell phone he plugged into the car to charge last night, he bundles up (finally puts on a warm coat after two years of me begging him to wear more than a hooded sweatshirt in winter wisconsin weather) and he braves the drifts and blowing snow, heads out the only semi blocked front door, and battles his way back to the unattached garage housing said car and phone.

(A view from the garage to the blocked back door)

7:10 son #2 texts friends furiously, asks to go to a friend's house a mile away- Ha! that was a good one - receives an answer of "No!" most emphatically. He goes back to bed.

7:15 With no TV, no power to my internet computer and barely any coherent news coverage on the radio (I thankfully have a battery powered ipod dock radio I can access) the ipad becomes our only connection to the outside world. I surf the web looking for info on the power outage and a possible estimate of its duration to no avail. The best I can come up with is that our area has been declared a state of emergency and the national guard has been called out, several major highways have been deemed "impassable" and one news story that the power company repair crews keep getting stuck in the snow.

7:20 Thankfully we have a gas stove and can light it with matches to cook a hot breakfast. We also have phone service thanks to a landline with backup power. But there is still no heat and now that it has been off for 4 hours the temperature is dropping rapidly. A plan is hatched to open no doors to the outside until the power is back on. Of course, immediately everyone can think of a reason they have to open a door. The most pressing being the dog that needs to pee. That would be the 65 lb dog with a 2 gallon bladder that needs to pee. John suits up and heads out the front door with a shovel to clear a peeing space.

7:30 Dog having peed successfully, we settle in to do electricity free activities. We tent camp so this is less of a problem for us than it could be.

9:15 Woo Hoo! Power restored. Immediately crank up furnace to equalize temperature and also prepare for possible outage again later. (I'm a pessimist)

9:30 Now that we know we don't have to keep the house closed, daughter heads out into the snow to play with the neighbor kids and John heads out to clear snow and take pictures. He shovels his way from the front door around to the back porch to where the (thankfully repaired) snowblower is.

10:25 John still running the snowblower. Son #2 still asleep. What he doesn't know won't hurt him.... and trust me, he'll put in plenty of shoveling time later!

John standing in one of the shallower spots.

Off to shovel.

More later.

1:30 pm finally finish shoveling and snowblowing. For the reasons we have so much to shovel, click my earlier post here. Son #2 heads out with friends to shovel for other people. Finally has the good sense to dress warmly and take a thermos filled with hot tea. 

2:00 Sit down to go through photos and add them to blog. Those I haven't posted above you can find here.

3:00 Heading down to the kitchen to make molasses cookies with daughter. School has already been cancelled for tomorrow and, now that we know we can get the car out of the garage if needed, we need to kick back a little and enjoy some family time.

A Summation of the event - for what it's worth:

I can honestly say this was one of the most freakish snowstorms I've ever been in. 24 hours after it began, and with no more snow falling for the moment, I can still hear sirens all over the city. 

Kudos to every school and institution that took the warnings seriously and cancelled their activities. A big Rasberry to Carthage College which chose not to do that. Their reason being that it is a residential campus. Last time I checked, not a single faculty member lived on campus. I hope none of my colleagues - especially the ones who drive from Chicago and Milwaukee - got stranded in snow as a result of that decision.

Kudos to the state and city road crews who have worked round the clock to keep the roads as clear as possible. 

Kudos also to the new governor for declaring our area to be in a state of emergency and calling out the national guard to help find stranded motorists. This probably saved countless lives.

A Rasberry to our local radio stations for the lack of coverage moment to moment in the aftermath. When power is out, internet and TV coverage aren't much use. It would have been nice to have a radio station to turn to for up to the minute info on the power outages. I have a whole post about this problem planned for another day.

Kudos to the local paper - they had to cancel delivery for today but have done the best they can to put current news on their website. And special kudos for whoever decided to cancel their paywall during the crisis. The only flaw in this plan is that only folks with an iphone or ipad or power in their houses were able to get on the internet at all.

Will We Get a Blizzard?

I was in a local establishment earlier today when the cashier asked me if I thought we would actually get all the snow that is being predicted for our area. (18-22 inches, by the way)

My answer:

"Yes, most definitely. Every inch."

Cashier: "How can you be so sure?"

"Because I'm out of road salt and my snowblower broke last week.:"

Trust me - we'll get that snow....