Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Saturday, August 27, 2005
Guess what I did today.

This post is the sixth part in a series. To start at the beginning, please click here.

I'm totally exhausted from this horrible day, but I'm still (with two drinks in me) wired from driving, so what the hell - might as well blog.

So we moved the office. Forever. As I predicted, it took a lot longer than it should have. It wasn't helped by the several phone calls from my wife. She was worried, to say the least. I had her packing up to evacuate, but she managed to finish before I thought she would. I got a little angrier with her than I should have, I guess. She kept asking me, "Why do you have to this today?" I finally yelled raised my voice, "Because when this thing turns, I have to be at work on Monday!" That's probably not the case at this point.

Then my father and I boarded up his house. Then he helped me board up our house. I packed my wife, all of our stuff and the cats into the car, drove over to mom and dad's, parked our cars in their garage, transferred our stuff to mom's Explorer, and took off.

It only took us 5 hours this time. So either the State Police learned from their mistakes last year or not as many people are leaving as we thought.

We got to my aunt's around 10, kicked my cousin out of his room and I got the cats and my wife settled. I didn't realize until I was unpacking how much my wife packed. It looks like we're staying for two weeks. My aunt made a remark when I was bringing everything in. "Did you bring the whole house?" she said. Almost.

So here's the tally of evacuees at my aunt and uncle's house. I've added the familial relationships so I don't have to explain too much about our interactions. See if you can keep up.

So far:
Me
My wife
Our two cats (Jasper and Stella, for those who haven't kept up)
My great aunt, Carrie (my mother's father's sister)
Her three dogs (2 toy poodles and a mid-sized mutt)

Coming tomorrow will be:
My mother
My father
Their two dogs (Standard poodles)
My (second) cousin, Todd (my mother's father's sister's (not Carrie) son)
His girlfriend, Nikki
Their dog (Doberman puppy)

Add to that the regular inhabitants:
My aunt, Charlene (my mother's sister)
My uncle, Mark
My two cousins - Kathy, girl, 18 and Michael, boy , 15
Their two dogs (1 expensive rat thing and a "labradoodle", which I call a mutt)

For a total of:
11 people
8 dogs
2 cats

And maybe more on the way.

This is going to be fun.

Tomorrow I'm going to install City of Heroes and the Villains beta to my cousins' computer and pray that it works. If I don't have some respite from all of this family time, I'll probably explode.

Now I'm going to sneak out for a cigarette and go to bed.

*sigh*