Is This What an Interesting Week Looks Like?

Timeline of Events

 

Tuesday August 23rd

1:50pm – I feel a slight shaking and wonder, “Err…what was that?” The slight shaking increases to an intense shaking. The entire house seems to be moving. Yeah, there was a 5.8 earthquake…in Maryland.

 

Saturday August 27th

11:00am – I wake up and realize I’ve got to help prepare for a graduation party at 4:30.

11:00am – 12:30pm – I do some kind of mixture of cleaning the house and preparing to go out and get stuff for the party. I’m not sure how that worked out.

12:30am – 3:00pm – I run errands with my mother and sister. We get a bunch of stuff that we have to cook before the party starts in an hour. Right, like that’s going to happen.

Sometime before 4:30pm – Guests begin to arrive early. We’re not even close to finished cooking. Of course, almost no one shows up late this time.

5:30pm – We can finally begin enjoying some food and games. There was a Just Dance 2 competition and a game my sister named “Are You Smarter Than a 3rd Grader?” I don’t think there was an official winner.

7:00pm – Guests start heading home in an attempt to beat the rapidly approaching Hurricane Irene.

8:00pm – 10:00pm – I help clean up and prepare to go to sleep.

 

Sunday August 28th AKA The Day of Suffering

12:00am - I actually go to sleep after playing over an hour of Team Fortress 2.

2:00am - I wake up to some of the darkest pitch blackness I’ve ever seen. The power is out and I scramble to find my glasses. It’s hot and I can’t go back to sleep, so I just stare at the ceiling.

2:30am - I hear my parents wake up and go downstairs with flashlights. After a short while, my mom comes back upstairs and gets me. The basement is flooding and we’ve got to start bailing out water.

2:30am – 4:00am - I continuously carry buckets of water up the basement stairs, dump them, and carry them back down to be refilled. My sisters came to help after a while, but the flooding never let up. After over an hour and a half of continuous work, we finally give up and decide to let Irene let loose in our basement.

(3:00am) - I hear a loud cracking noise coming from outside. I have no idea what it is, so I try to ignore it. My mom thinks the roof is coming off, so she tells my sister to come downstairs with her baby.

4:15am – We discover that the loud cracking noise was our tree (which was taller than the house) falling into the front of our house. The door is blocked, and the windows are obstructed by leaves and branches. Luckily, there is no obvious damage.

5:00am – We all head off to bed, still without power.

10:30am - I wake up and can’t help but to notice there is still no power. I can hear my uncle downstairs. My uncle is handy with tools, so I’m almost sure it has something to do with the tree. I head downstairs, look out the window, and discover that I was right. My uncle is holding a chainsaw.

11:00am - After eating and getting dressed, I go outside to help with the tree. After a short while, some neighbors start showing up to help out.

First comes a big, strong man from across the street. He helped us cut up part of our tree before when the wind had split it in half and blown it into his yard. That probably should have been our first hint.

Another neighbor from across the street bring his truck over to help power my uncle’s electric chainsaw (this is after his gas-powered chainsaw failed to start). The truck doesn’t seem to provide enough power, so a man from down the street bring his gas-powered chainsaw. That doesn’t start either, so he gets another gas-powered chainsaw. Finally, that one works and we start hauling away the pieces he cuts off.

12:00am - Half of the tree is still standing, and it’s threatening to fall right in the street. Earlier, my dad had tied some rope around it to help guide it as it fell. Now the time had come to take it down. My dad and a neighbor pulled the rope across our driveway as the man with the chainsaw cut the tree down. It fell right where they wanted, and we cut that up too.

1:00pm – Everything is taken care of and everyone heads home. I go inside and, not to my surprise, the power still isn’t on. My uncle loaned us his generator, so we use that to pump the water out of the basement.

1:30pm – 9:00pm - We try to entertain ourselves and prepare food without electricity. Boredom finally gets the best of us and we decide to go out for some ice cream.

9:00pm – My dad drives us on dangerously dark roads. Some traffic lights are out, so we cross through intersections and hope that no one is speeding through. We stop at McDonalds only to find it’s closed. My dad heads up the road to Wendy’s and we get some Frosties.

10:00pm - As we enter our neighborhood, we notice that some lights that were currently off are now on. The power is back on! I can sleep happily.

A lot of those times were probably somewhat inaccurate, but I think you get the idea.

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