Ivan Part 2

I never did post an update on Hurricane Ivan after the storm had passed. This is an email I got from my dad a week after the storm hit, the first day he had power.

Finally got power and phone back today. Lost about forty broken shingles, bathroom vent cap, a yard or so of roofing peeled back to the plywood and a 3" hole punched into the roof. Got about two square yards of stained ceiling but no other house damage. The wind snapped off about 100 feet of 6' privacy fence and gave us a 10' x 20' x 6' pile of limbs. I am glad that Carolyn (his new wife) made me cut and trim a few trees earlier this year.

One major lesson learned, don't, under any circumstances, try to eat the "Country Captain Chicken" MRE. Another point, when you pick up a half melted bag of ice make sure you don't have a hole in the bottom of the bag pointed at your pants. We had running water all the way through, just not proven safe to drink and, of course, not heated. I have never heard Carolyn hit such high notes while singing before.

We were in line with the worst wind here on the west side of Pensacola but in the lee of a banked curve on Fairfield Drive which directs the worst of the East Wind up and over the house. We had steady wind around 100 mph for about four hours and kept an eye on the barometer and cheered when it started back up. East windows took in a little water under the pane but nothing major but a couple of towels got most of it. Some of the gusts shook the house for minutes but doesn't appear to have shifted anything. Just in this area about 1 in 6 houses has a tree onto the roof and houses in other areas within two miles just disappeared. We were well above the storm surge and almost too close to the center to see the worst of the tornado spin-offs.

We survived Ivan The Terrible and it looks like Ivan The Tantrum is going well west of us. Thanks for the prayers.

Dad

The picture above is of the auditorium at Escambia High School, which had part of it's roof blown off. EHS was about half a mile from where I lived.

One,
Skoo

Hurricane Ivan

Unless you've been under a rock, you know about Hurricane Ivan. I've mentioned before I grew up in Pensacola, Florida. Hurricane Ivan made landfall shortly after 2am CDT around Gulf Shores, Alabama which is just about 15 miles west from where I lived in West Pensacola. In short this means that the eastern eye wall, or the strongest part of this storm, went right over the Pensacola area. A maximum wind gust of 98 mph was recorded at Pensacola NAS just before 2am.

My father, who rode out the storm in the very house I did alot of my growing up in, has yet to contact me to give his assesment. This was one of those times where I found myself a bit more nervous than usual concerning hurricanes in this area being that for a major part of this storm's life, it was either a catagory 4 or 5 storm. Not that it made too much of a difference, but shortly before landfall, Ivan made a slight downgrade in maximum winds from 135 mph dow to 130 mph. This dropped the storm to just below a Catagory 4. In anycase, this was the strongest Hurricane to hit this area to my knowledge.

My main hope is that as many people as possible are ok. Keep your prayers going and hopefully the worst is over as this storm heads north.

Be easy. ~1~

Shit, damn, muthafucka...

Well damn... it's a bitch to have to disconnect my cable TV just so I can get online and take care of my business. You see, I have something called a cable splitter. For those who don't know what the hell I'm talkin' about... follow me one time. I have one cable that connects to the cable outlet on my wall... at the end of that short cable I have this splitter... on the other end of the splitter there's two more connections, one I use to run another cable to my cable box, the other to run a cable to my modem. Ya underdig? OK, I found that if I run a cable directly from the wall to the modem, I get internet. I also found that if I run a cable from the wall to the cable box, I get all of my cable channels. But, with the splitter hooked up, I get none of my digital channels and no internet service. Ya still smell me here? Basically, the splitter is the problem.

The puzzling shit is that it worked fine 4 days ago. After that... shitty.

So, I'm writing this entry with absolutly no background noise from the Eagles/Steelers game that I'd rather be watching right now. *sigh*

So, if yall don't hear from me for a couple days, you now know why.

Peesh.

It ain't where you're from, it's where you're at

I've heard this saying over and over throughout my life. Another one is "you can take the dog out of the junkyard, but you can't take the junkyard out of the dog". Through the last 10 years there's been an ongoing conflict within me with these two phrases. One side of me still likes to keep a sense of Southern pride where I cling to anything I knew growin up in Pensacola... manly being Southern and Cajun food and sports teams. Then, there's this other side that realizes that I've lived in Lincoln (10 years) almost as long as I lived in Pensacola (14). In this I do notice in alot of ways I've adapted. I catch myself with the double-r syndrome when I talk. Then there's the Huskers memorabilia that vastly outnumbers the Gators memorabilia.

Anyway, as I'm sure you've noticed, I'm reppin' Lincoln with this page now. Infact, I think I might keep this for a while. I had a couple inspirations. One being the old page for Common's Like Water for Chocolate album. Check out okayplayer.com for that. Second was the coming of fall and along with it football season. This is the time of year where Nebraska is on a high from a pride standpoint. Nebraska lives for Husker football... it's second only to God. I even concider Memorial Stadium to be the "mecca" of college football. It's an arogance we have here, much like fans of Notre Dame, Texas, and Ohio State have.

So, welcome to my world... welcome to Nebraska. As I say, "The home of cows and corn". Beyond that, it's the home of Malcolm X, numerous NFL players, Kool-Aid, Crunch-N-Munch, soul food, and, yes, five national championships.

One love,
Skoo

It's been a long time...

I shouldn't of left you, without a dope post to step to.

Ok, let me stop biting Rakim for a minute. Thought I'd write a lil' bit on here before I went to bed.

Obviously, I changed the page. Accually lost some sections in the process, but that's ok. I can always add those in later. Anyway, I just loved this layout so much I had to bring it back. I've had the Nuggets on my mind a lil' bit anyway. For those interested... if you ain't heard, the Nuggets did snag Kenyon Martin from the Nets in exchange for three future draft picks. So, the Nuggs are lookin' really nice for this coming season. Also, I found out about a new TV network owned by the owners of the Nuggets and Avalanche that vows to show at least 65 games of each team this year. The only thing I have left to do is pester Time Warner here in Lincoln about them adding that channel by October.

Anyway, not much else going on with me this summer. I'm taking it off from school, so I'm mostly workin if I'm doin anything.

So, I guess that's all for now.

~1~