>Hello everyone!
>
>Greetings from Northwest Florida. :)
>
>We got power back last night, almost exactly 9 days after we lost it and 
>I am luxuriating under the air conditioner, drinking cold water (that I 
>didn't have to boil), listening to a football game on the internet and 
>trying to catch up on almost 2 weeks of emails. The remaining debris in 
>the yard and the impending arrival of another hurricane can wait for 
>another day...besides if another storm hits, it will blow all the debris 
>off the piles along the road back into the yard anyway.  :)
>
>Just to let you know...the eye came in about 30 miles (about 50 km) west 
>of my house and half that of the college where I teach. The east side of 
>a hurricane is *not* the place you want to be as we got the full effect 
>of the wind and storm surge. I live north of Escambia Bay, about 3 miles 
>inland and 50 feet in elevation, so I didn't get any water in the house, 
>but we had three huge oaks (2 meter+ diameter trunks) uprooted right 
>around us. One of them crushed fences of my neighbors to the north (and 
>destroyed a swimming pool). One crushed a storage building and put a 
>hole in the roof of a detached garage owned by my neighbor to the south. 
>The third crashed onto the roof of my neighbor to the west's house, 
>penetrating the roof in several places. We had several smaller trees 
>down, or snapped off, and limbs down everywhere, but none hit the house 
>so we were lucky. The biggest damage we had was the roof of an old 
>storage building was blown off...and that roof is still sitting there 
>upside down...I'll have to *eventually* tear the shed down and dispose 
>of it, but not now.
>
>If you want to *really* see what it looks like over here check out this 
>site... 
>http://www.pensacolanewsjournal.com/news/guides/hurricane/galleries.shtm?l 
>... if you find the pictures of the large bridge with the missing 
>sections, a 40 foot high wave lifted them off and dropped them into the 
>bay, and note this was *deep* inside the "protected" bay, not out along 
>the beaches. I live about 4 miles straight north of where that happened.
>
>The college sent out emails (like any of us could receive them with our 
>power out) on Wednesday saying we're to report back for a "General 
>Meeting" on 9/27 at 9am at the main campus, and the college will start 
>classes on 10/4, so I guess I still have a job to go back to. I'm just 
>wondering how much good putting plastic bags over the computers in the 
>labs and my office did. The ones in the lab were upstairs, so they 
>wouldn't have had water damage (unless the roof went), but the one in my 
>office is only sitting on a table, and it's vaguely possible water could 
>have gotten that high on the Warrington Campus where I have my 
>office...it's just north of NAS Pensacola, and I'm sure you've seen 
>pictures of what happened there. What worries me most is that we had 
>*lots* of tall pine trees growing near the buildings on the campus, and 
>pines tend to snap off and fall on things in a strong wind. Well, I 
>guess I'll find out on Monday....assuming they'll allow us onto the 
>Warrington campus after the meeting.

Glad to see you back. Stop attractiing the darned things. 

Terry