Hollywood Humph

Good Morning,
Just found out my work has power. Very excited. It will be nice to get back into some routine starting Thursday.
Thought I would shares some of my thoughts during the past week and a half…..
I have to admit, I was a bit nervous about this storm to begin with. I know a few of you listen to my concerns prior to Wilma even hitting. (Thanks). We boarded work on Friday night. It was a typical weekend all the way up until Sunday.
Mac came over from Naples and two of his friends. He boarded up his house and was a bit concerned. We both talked about it and felt Sunday morning it would be best if he came over to the east coast. How wrong we were on that one…..
Wilma was so far but so close and it was an eerie feeling. Unsettling……. Mac and his buddies came over and we went to the beach to watch the Bengals game. We had a great time despite the loss. The ocean was very calm as well as the wind. First time I've seen it like that. After the game we went to the Elbow Room it Ft. Lauderdale. We slammed a few more beers. You could see people having a great time and trying not to think about what was coming our way. But in some strange way, you could sense the fear.
We went back to my place, took showers and headed to the Sour Apple. We ate and drank and just stared at the TV. Watching this big blog of rain and wind get closer and closer. We shut the bar down and went home about 2 AM.
6AM Monday Oct 24th. I woke to the wind. I hurried up and made coffee. My adrenaline quickly picked up. Mac was up as well. We had the weather channel on and saw that we were going to be in trouble. 8AM…The wind and the rain started. We could see across the street and watch the palm trees blowing like mad. Power goes out. I lit a bunch of candles. I was watching screens fly off doors, palms were snapping in half. We were all in the my bedroom watching out the window. I have impact windows so I felt very safe until we look across the street and watched a balcony railing being ripped from the concrete. Hurricane Katrina was just a bad thunderstorm compared to Wilma I thought to myself…...
Time for the hurricane party to begin. 9AM…We are in the middle of this so we cracked some nice cold Buds. I drank the beer so quick.. Reminded me of having a beer after you cut the grass on a hot summer day. One of the guys started drinking the hard stuff. Mac and I kept to the Buds. I could not sit down, I had so much energy. Like I had a whole pot of coffee. We started to here some loud noises from the ceiling. There were things rattling around like crazy. I kept walking through my condo looking at the ceiling watching and praying no water was coming in. Thank goodness it never did. However, we did notice people across the street all standing by their windows. It looked like people were folding their laundry by the windows. I figured it was the only light available. Later we found out water was screaming in through the windows and they were trying to stop the leaks. There was a lot of water damage in the building across the street. I was very lucky. It could have been me.
Noon time….Nothing has changed except for the beers were flowing like I was going to a Bengals game with Rick.
I had sterno's so we cooked up some soup and I made everyone some HAMIE sandwiches. Boy that tasted good. I was starving. We started hearing some very loud bangs… I went out into the hall and it sounded like the 2 elevators were banging against the wall. BOOM BOOM. Mac looked at me and I looked at him. We were both scared……… The noise went on for another 2 hours. We had no idea how long this was going to last…..
I can not remember what made me go into the hallway and walk all the way down. As I approached the window I could see the end of the storm. I could see the sun. I yelled for Mac and the guys to come down the hall. The end is almost here. It was just after 2 PM. We all felt physically and mentally beat up.. We could tell the sustained winds were dying down. We all wanted to go outside and see. So we did….
After 8 hours of putting up with Wilma, I wanted to feel her, breath her. Hard to describe…..But I am glad I did. Something I will never forget.
Not sure what was worse, going through it or 4 1/2 days of no power and water……Welcome to Sunny South Florida.

That is all….
Steven