Okay. I was wrong and I freely admit it. Irene does have us in her sights. What a week it has been! First an earthquake; now a major hurricane force is heading our way.

But, who would know? Today we drove to New York (Rhinebeck) for the Dutchess County Fair. We planned this day off for Rick weeks ago. The day was sunny, hot and slightly humid. The sky—a pretty blue with puffy clouds. If we didn’t know any better we would assume the following days would be just as nice. Not so. Irene is bearing down on us. Big time.

New York City as of tomorrow at noon all public transportation will shut down. People are being evacuated. Airports have cancelled flights. This sounds serious to me.

Although where we live we are at no risk of flooding since most everything is downhill from here, the sheer amount of rainfall (even if we don’t get the high winds) is staggering.

We spent the time after we got back from our away time at the fair preparing for the worse scenario. We brought in all the things around the pool that could be projectiles. I took in all the deck flowers. We turned our deck tables (which are iron) upside down. We brought the fig tree inside the garage. (Poor figgy is loaded with about 60 un-ripe figs.) We filled huge jugs full of water. We know where battery powered lanterns are and Rick bought lamp oil at our local Sears store for the oil lamps we have. We have a butane burner for cooking on if the power goes out. We have plenty of food.

Of course, with all this preparedness we are bound now to not have anything happen.

As long as we still have power I will keep you posted. We are hanging in there!

P.S. I just now noticed that Rick and I were doing blogs at the same time. This is his idea of Hurricane Preparedness.