Hey there East Coast - report in! :)

[Sevens]

Central Virginia reporting in!

Well, the wind and rain started to get nasty around noon yesterday. I took a nap and while I did that, the weather took a turn for the worst and three power transformers in our neighborhood blew.

Then it got really nasty around 7pm or so. We lost a ton of trees and power lines. Brian and I were lucky, one of the trees in front of our building snapped in half and fell. It missed his car by 5 feet!

Our power was out from 3 pm yesterday until about an hour ago. Our main problem right now is water supply. We have lots of bottled water and Gatorade to last us until the water comes back. The bad part is no water to shower or flush the toilets. They spent most of the time getting the power back on in the city, which lucky us, we are part of. I mean really, Richmond is the state capital and they have to get all the government stuff and governor's mansion and MCV (main trauma hospital for central Virginia) turned back on, plus the surrounding counties water supplies depend mostly on the city, so they had to get that back up.

We are trying to see the positive side of all this. The doggies did fine, they weren't afraid of the storm at all. Actually, when we took them for a walk this morning, it was kinda funny, Guinness went up to each of these huge trees that had fallen and had to "mark" each one. Silly boy.

The one good thing about hurricanes..hurricane parties! Our friends' power is out, and they still have gas for cooking, but no electric to keep the meat frozen, so we are having a hurricane party tonite! Lots of yummy chicken and we are bringing a couple of bottles of wine.

My family is all in Virginia Beach and they fared very well. They still have no electric, but at least where they live, they only have a few downed limbs from the trees. They are having a hurricane party too with their outdoor gas grill.

All in all, not too terrible, thank God it wasn't worse. I just hope this is the last of the hurricane season and we don't get anymore, I hear the flooding is terrible in some areas.

I have to say, the one thing that really pi$$ed me off was looting. We have a section of town we live two blocks over from called Carytown. It's a one way street jam packed with 9 blocks of very nice boutique stores and restaurants. Glass and Powder Boardshop that sells skateboard, snowboards, and ski equipment got looted last night. I am so MAD! The owner is the nicest guy, paralyzed from the waist down from a skiing accident, has worked so hard to build up that shop only to have people steal from him! I hope they catch those a$$holes and make them pay for their crime!

Anyway, I hope everybody else on PT is doing ok. **HUGS***

[HoRsELUvR]

I live in Maryland and i think we got the worst of it last night.there is a tree near my backyard that got split in half and a tree near that one that fell down.we lost our cable this morning but we didnt have any power outages.besides that,we had leaves and branches and twigs and stuff all over the place,which me and my neighbors spent a bunch of the morning cleaning up.