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Henry and Louis' first snow day.

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"Atlanta, N. Georgia brace for snow, ice" reads the AJC headline.

Did I get in the car today and go to the grocery story to buy a gallon of milk despite the fact that I have two half gallons in my refrigerator? Yes, yes I did. The store had only three gallons in the case. When I walked away, there were two. Yes, I am part of the problem.

But at least I don't hoard little ducks made from petroleum based products for the dashboard of my Jeep. Nor do I release helium-filled balloons into the wilds or set all of the leaves in my yard on fire on windy days. I'm so much better than those people.

Is this a rationalization to make myself feel better about my irrational life choices? Yes, yes it is. If something is horrible because it does selfish things, and all humans do selfish things, all humans are horrible. If I'm a human being (spoiler alert: I am), I'm just going to have to learn to accept that.

On the bright side, self-loathing tastes better with milk.

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I type this at 1:28 AM with live weather coverage on WXIA TV telling me that Hurricane Helene is currently a category 2 storm as it passes over Valdosta headed north at about 20 miles per hour. There is minimal wind outside, but based on what I'm seeing, I expect it to pick up soon. That will no doubt bring trouble.

I've mentioned before that my neighborhood has power issues. Case in point, last night, after taking over 3 inches of rain totally unrelated to the hurricane, our power and cable went out. That's right, we were without power for 8 hours the day before a hurricane hit us. There's no telling what the state of our power grid will be by the time you read this.

I write this only to document a novel situation as I wait for the lights to go out again. I don't recall the last time a hurricane passed over Atlanta. I was certainly a Decatur resident when Opal moved through the city in 1995, but I don't remember that storm itself. That might have been the night that a limb fell through the windshield of my station wagon while I was at my girlfriend's apartment in Stone Mountain, but maybe not.

I have friends who remember being trapped in the Pink Pony, a "gentlemen's club," for 24 hours in what is now the city of Brookhaven. Their memories of Opal are much more vivid than mine. (I can only imagine the horrors. I met another friend of mine at The Pony for dinner one night, and a stripper rubbed herself all over my glasses, leaving me blind for the rest of the meal. I'm still irritated about that.)

Opal was 3 decades ago. In 2055, should I live that long, will I remember Helene? I sure hope not. That would mean that things go poorly. No one remembers mundanities. Just strippers.

UPDATE 1:50 PM: Nothing to see here. Helene wandered farther east than expected. Our biggest wind gust has been 11 MPH, and the power never even flickered.

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Adding to my list started on March 8, once again I have damaged my scalp, this time while cleaning limbs that had fallen into my father's yard on Memorial Day during the most recent tornado-generating weather to rumble through my town. Tornadoes have always been the most common natural disaster around these parts, but now they are stating to be annual occurrences. Isn't living in the future great? Also starting to become common occurrences: scalp injuries. The future's so bright, I gotta start wearing a hard hat.

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The bitterly cold 13° temperatures we experienced last week did not leave us unscathed.

Believe it or not, this flooded cellar was the result of an exterior spigot freezing and cracking. We thought we had the spigot well covered with an insulated sleeve, but it was just too damn cold for too damn long.

The spigot froze and snapped entirely off. Instead of flooding the yard, the water rushing out of the pipe shot straight into the still-secured sleeve where it hit a dead end and rebounded into the cellar ventilation. The resulting underground swimming pool did a whole lot of damage to the water heater and furnace.

Thanks to a lot of help from restoration professionals, plumbers, HVAC technicians, and electricians, we're getting close to the other side of it now that the temperature is back to an unseasonable 70°, warm for January even by Georgia standards.

The entire experience has taught me two lessons. One, we should tie the insulation sleeve on much more loosely (a frozen yard is better than a flooded basement). And two, winter sucks.

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By the time you read this, you probably will have heard about the EF3ish tornado that roared through downtown Newnan, Georgia at midnight. Know that my family and I are fine and feeling very, very fortunate.

UPDATE 2021-03-29: Still no estimate on when Internet might be restored. They're still working on digging out downtown. Rumor had it that the high school might have to be bulldozed, but they've decided to try and save it. Hooray?

UPDATE 2021-03-30: Back online! The utility company says that in three neighborhoods they will have to rebuild their network essentially from scratch. That's terrible. Ours was only out for four days, and I was already suffering intense withdrawal.

UPDATE 2024-07-28: For the record, Newnan High School was determined to be unsalvageable, so they tore the whole thing down and rebuilt it from scratch. It was opened to the public for the first time today. I did not go. It's not my high school anymore.

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Almost everyone reading this already knows that in April 2014, my father moved to Fountain, Florida. What you may not know is that Fountain is only 37 miles due north of Mexico Beach, the town Hurricane Michael wiped off the map this past Wednesday.

Through a series of unexpected coincidences, Dad wasn't at home when the hurricane hit, which is good. (He has temporarily relocated to Heard County, Georgia for... other reasons.) Also good is the news that although trees fell everywhere around, including on his barn, the house emerged unscathed! Even his whole herd of cattle survived.

That's even more amazing considering that this news came from my father's friend who lives not 10 miles to the west. His friend's house was all but completely blown apart and submerged under water. (Fortunately, his friend was also out of town on business planned before and completely coincidental to the arrival of Michael.)

Both properties are without power and are expected to be so for another month. And while Father has offered his house to his friend, travel between the two will be quite the hike until Bay County can get around to clearing the roads of fallen trees, which might take considerably more than a month.

Anyway, the point of this story is that everyone is alive, and one day we'll all look back and laugh about it. Assuming that Dad's friend can find clean water and get gas to keep his generator running, and assuming that Dad ever gets over the fever he hasn't treated for the past two weeks because his doctor is unreachable.... Did I mention that the livestock seem fine?

UPDATE: I wrote this post on the 12th. On the 13th, Dad finally decided he'd had enough and visited the ER in Newnan where he was diagnosed with abscessed diverticulitis. That's bad. The hospital docs will determine on the 15th how well the abscess is responding to a heavy dose of antibiotics. Otherwise, there may be emergency surgery in Dad's near future. Freaking hurricane.

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While most of Georgia spent the past 24 hours stuck indoors looking at snow — not that they have a choice here in Coweta County as Newnan has declared a mandatory curfew — I've been stuck indoors in a bed. For the third time in 10 months, I'm sick.

Why does my phone come with the ability to take this photo pre-installed? Who needs this?

I haven't seen a doctor, but my symptoms are consistent with the flu. You know, that thing that's been killing people this year. Which is not to say that I think I'm going to die. I won't. (At least not right now. Not from this.)

I can't remember being sick three times in a year since my senior year in high school. In that case, I wasn't even sick, just using new excuses to play hooky. I spent "Senior Skip Day" as the only person in most of my classes because I'd already missed 30 days on the year. Poor Mr. Smith didn't know what to do with me, so we just talked about Hamlet.

I've got to figure out what I'm doing wrong these days. Is my diet deficient? Am I too reclusive? Am I just a filthy pig? Whatever the cause, I'm making it a priority to get it fixed in 2018.

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