We Were Lucky

After being out and about today, Harry and I have realized that we were definitely the lucky ones in this storm! The Albany area has a lot of bridges, with the Hudson River and the Mohawk River, and many of them are closed today. At one point today, the “twin bridges” pictured here, which are located on the interstate which heads to the Adirondacks, were closed in both directions due to a runaway barge with a 30 ft crane on it which was coming down the river. They managed to corral it, so that road has been reopened as far as I know. Also in Schenectady, there is a lock that the authorities are concerned could be breached, so they are evacuating people in that area. Mudslides in Troy, flooding in Scotia where the condo I used to own is located – Harry and I are definitely counting our blessings today!

My sister has been without power since yesterday morning at 8 am, and I believe their power is still out. They do have a generator, but still, with three kids – not fun!

Surprisingly, the people who seem to have been affected by this even more are the upstate areas, like where my mother lives. I have been watching the photos pop up on facebook all day.

This is a picture of downtown I took last year when Harry and I were going to my mom’s for the weekend. We were outside the local pizza place, picking up a pizza to bring up with us.

This is the spot where we were standing (picture borrowed from fb)

Here’s another one – this is the main road going into town. (also borrowed)

There are so many pictures of damaged roads and property – looks like there will be many months of cleanup coming up. I don’t think it can be said that Irene didn’t pack a punch – she just didn’t do it where it was expected.

Bye-Bye Irene

Well, hopefully the worst of the storm is over. We got a lot of rain. 

It was raining when we went to bed last night, and it rained all day until about 5 o’clock or so. But it hasn’t been too bad - most of the rain pooling in our back yard has either soaked up or moved on through the drainage system.

So far, we have not lost our power. However, over the past couple of hours, it has gotten more windy than it was all day. I am hoping that we make it through the end of the storm without any branches coming down and taking out our electricity.

I checked our local news and there are a number of streets closed in the area. The thruway is closed due to flooding and/or downed trees as well. None of our local roads are on the list, so it looks like our immediate area has not been affected. Hopefully it stays that way!!

We ended the day with some barbequed hot dogs and corn on the cob. Yum.

It’s been a really lazy day, and I can’t believe that it is the end of the weekend already. Weekends just go way too fast!!

And More Rain

It is still raining pretty good here, but not too much wind yet. We still have power!!

We have a little river going along our back treeline.

 

 

 

 

Worse for our neighbor’s basement than ours.

The same incline that makes it a pain to level our fiver in the driveway protects us from getting a lot of rainwater up near the house.

As long as the winds stay down, hopefully our trees will come through unscathed.

So far so good! I will not be disappointed if Irene’s bark turns out to be worse than her bite.

Hanging Tight

So far here, it has been rainy with just some short windy blasts. Harry and I have been hanging out and watching the live coverage of the storm. Our satellite went out for a bit last night, but our internet was still good, so we watched the live feed online for a while until the satellite came back. It’s raining pretty heavily at the moment, but I think this is still just the advance stuff, as the actual storm is still about 100 miles south of the city at this point according to the news coverage.

We have the fiver all closed up, the front jacks are lowered a few inches, and she is surrounded by her protective guard – all of our vehicles!! If we were actually living in the fiver, we would be long gone by now.

 

Our back yard is starting to flood, and we have only had about an inch, inch and a half of rain so far. We could get anywhere from five to eight inches before all is said and done.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I will post another update later….

Waiting for Irene

We are as ready as can be for the coming storm. The rv is hunkered down and all closed up, satellite dish stowed, and everything around our house, and on the back deck, that isn’t attached to something has been moved into the garage. We are both getting cleaned up, just in case we lose our power tomorrow. Hopefully we will have done more than we needed and it will turn out to be just a heavy rainstorm, with no aftereffects. But that would definitely be ok. Harry has a lot of family on Long Island, some who live very close to the water, so hopefully everyone there will come through this storm safely, and with their property in good condition. We are definitely keeping them in mind over the coming day and a half.

Some good news also! We sold the car!! Woohoo!! We have a deposit in the bank account, and Harry will be turning in the plates on Monday. Because of the buyer’s job, they won’t actually be picking the car up until next Friday, but soon enough we will be waving goodbye as she heads down the road. It feels weird to think that my car will soon be gone, but exciting too, since it makes me feel that much closer to “getting on the road” time.

Preparing to Batten Down the Hatches

This weekend it looks like we may be encountering a pretty direct hit from a hurricane. That is not something that we deal with up here very often. The weather forecasters up here love stuff like this – finally! big news and they are the “go to” guys for the latest and best info to be had. So it’s hard to know how much we can really expect, because they love to expound on all of the worst case scenarios. However, that being said, according to the forecaster this morning, many of the computer projections have Irene heading straight up the coast, over Long Island, and then pretty much straight up to the capital region. He said that we could get 4 to 6 inches of heavy rain, with some local areas receiving up to 12 inches of rain, and experience wind gusts possibly in the 60 to 70 mph region.

So its definitely time for some storm prep….Harry already went this morning and got some gas for the generator, just in case our power goes out. I went to the store and picked up the few things that we were low on foodwise. We have enough food in our freezer to eat well for quite a while, so that’s not too much of a worry. We’re also going to fill up some gallon containers with water, and fill up the tubs, again in case of a power outage. But really, we are more concerned about the fiver than we are about the house at this point. We’re not in a flood area, so the wind is more of an issue for the rv in the driveway. So, we are going to close ‘er up, bring in the slides, and lower her down so the jacks aren’t extended so much. Plus we have the car and the truck in the driveway, so I am hoping they will act as a sort of windbreak. Then it’s time to just hunker down and hope that Irene packs less of a punch than the forecasters are predicting.

Keeping our fingers crossed!

More o’ the Same

Every time I get ready to start a blog entry in the middle of the week, the first possible title that pops into my head is “another busy week”. That’s the way each week feels when we arrive at the halfway point.

Today was not my usual day off. We are still short at work, so I went in for a few hours this afternoon (after starting the day off with another “enjoyable” couple of hours at the dentist’s office). I don’t mind the extra hours though. The extra money I make from the overtime is going into our rv start up fund, and is being used to purchase things as we personalize the rv to make it our own. One of the great changes that we have made will be put into place in just a couple days. We are swapping out the two recliners that came with the rv for one nicer recliner, which we purchased at Boscov’s. We got a call a couple days ago that our recliner was available for delivery, so we have arranged for it to be delivered this coming Saturday. Just a few minutes ago, Harry and I managed to maneuver the two recliners out of the fiver. They are now sitting in our garage, and we have put them up on Want Ad Digest for sale. (By the way, our dishwasher went this past weekend after a couple of weeks on the website.)

Harry also reserved a trailer for a Sunday in September, a few weeks from now. That is when we will be taking the hutch, dishes, dining room table, and a dresser to Gretchen’s in MA. Then I believe our furniture moving/selling will be over until next year.

There has definitely been more than a hint of fall in the air these past few days. Autumn is slipping her way into upstate NY, more and more all the time.The evenings and morning have been comfortable and even cool, and I had to put a sweatshirt on this morning when I got up. Another sign of the season is arriving tomorrow, when our order of pellets is going to be delivered. We only ordered 1 ton this year, since we have a ton and a half left over from last winter. Basically every year we have ordered at least 2 ton, and then we just have whatever amount left over to put toward the next winter. But since this hopefully is our last full winter up here, we want to try and use up what we have this year with only a minimum left over. We will definitely be keeping track of when we use each number of bags of pellets this year to help with our planning when we purchase for next winter.

Next year at this time we will be thinking about where we might like to spend part of the winter in case our house should sell right away!

A Great Weekend

Our weekend got off to a great beginning when Laurie and George arrived Friday evening. After I got out of work, I picked up some pizza and wings and we relaxed and caught up on each other's latest happenings. We were so busy chatting and catching up that I completely forgot to take pictures!

After a good night’s sleep, we got ready for a day trip to Lake George. We were so lucky because it was an absolutely beautiful day. Our plan was to take a boat trip on the Mohican.

 

First we decided to walk a little bit about town. We actually didn’t go into too many of the shops. I guess there is something about spending months clearing out rooms and carting stuff to garage sales and good will places that takes the fun out of going into knick knack stores! We did find one place to go in and check out, though…

 

A wine store!! Where we indulged in a wine tasting.

By the time we finished with the wine tasting, (and purchasing a bottle or two), it was time to find a place to eat, so we walked back toward the place where we would be boarding the boat, and decided to eat at a casual place with a great view of the lake.

Here is the view from our table.

Lunch was ok. It was a good simple lunch, but I’d say the view from the table was the best part.

 

 

 

 

 

 

By this time, it was just about time to head over for boarding.

 

 

 

 

 

It was such a gorgeous day!!

 

I’ve tried to insert a slideshow of our trip, but I’m not sure if it’s going to work. Here goes…

		Trip to Lake George VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Almost to the Weekend!

It’s been another whirlwind week up here. We are getting ready for company! Laurie and George will be arriving this afternoon for the weekend. Yes, we had such a good time when we were sharing the cabin at the rv rally back in April that we are getting together again!

I traded my days off and worked on Wednesday, which has made the week seem even faster than usual. Hopefully today goes by quickly as well, and we can get on with the business of enjoying the weekend.

I was going through a folder yesterday, and I found my master “to-do” list that I typed up last year after Harry and I talked about what we needed to get done around here before we put the house up for sale. There were originally 60 items on the list – 3 pages typed. It looked very daunting last year when I first printed it out. I was so excited to see that there are only THIRTEEN items left. And six of those we still hope to get done this year:

• Replace the upstairs bathroom floor
• Replace the upstairs bath vanity
• Replace the upstairs medicine chest
• Paint the upstairs bathroom
• Paint the downstairs bedroom walls
• Paint the downstairs bedroom ceiling

That will leave only a few things left to do next year. Which feels great because we hope to have some time to actually relax, take some long weekends with the fiver, and enjoy the nice weather.

Only 16 months left until our house goes on the market!

This ‘n’ That

Today has been a cloudy but pleasant day. It was supposed to be a rainy day, but actually we have only had a few sprinkles off and on.

Since Harry stained the window in our bedroom, we slept in the fiver last night. It was the first time we have been able to sleep with the windows open and the a/c off. I was surprised at how much fresh air comes through those little windows in the bedroom.  It was very comfortable for sleeping.

One thing we did accomplish for today was a first for me – I drove the truck!

Wow, does it feel big going down the road! I drove over to the gas station, and then over to where I work. That is mainly the amount of driving that I am going to be doing in the near future. It will be a while before I am going to feel comfortable driving down the road with the fiver behind us.

Also, when I uploaded the pictures from today, I realized I had never put up our pictures from last weekend’s visit with Phyllis and Len.

This was a couple views from our trip to the campground where they were staying.

It had started out as a stormy day, but by the time we arrived in Albany, it was clearing up.

The view at the NYS plaza…

 

 

Here is Harry doing his tour guide duties…

 

 

 

 

 

and we enjoyed an awesome meal…

 

 

 

We had a great time, and look forward to meeting up again down the road.

One last note from today…we had another call on the car. The potential buyer is going to the bank tomorrow to check on possible financing. He hasn’t actually seen the car yet, but definitely sounds interested. He may call back in the next couple of days.

Overall, today has been a lazy day. I guess sometimes you need a day when you don’t accomplish too much.