Hard rain's gonna fall

My heart and prayers go out to the poor people stranded in New Orleans tonight. This strength of this hurricane is nothing the city has ever seen and only the fourth strongest hurricane, at category 5, to come from the Atlantic. In central Alabama, the verdict is still out as to how bad it will be. We know we will see a lot of rain and wind, but hopefully last September's Hurricane Ivan took care of the most of the weak trees and might spare us from massive power outages, but it is really just a wait and see matter (as probably goes without saying.)

K and I responded to the knee jerk reaction to stock up and our pantry could now feed a small army and is complete with five cases of bottled water, extra batteries and all sorts of food we can cook over the gas grill (but NO SPAM! -- sorry Dad! ).

That grill saved us last September during Hurricane Ivan and was amazingly not damaged when a Hackberry tree from our next door neighbor's back yard came crashing down and landed on our deck at 3:30 a.m. That was a rude wake-up call that I'll never forget.

We have one of the few basements in our neighborhood and I told neighbors today that they are more than welcome to come hide out with us down there if a tornado touches down anywhere near. I even got K's grandma's rocking chair cleaned off for MC and Ben if they need it. The weather conditions that big hurricanes create are ripe for tornadoes to spin out of and all of us southerners know how instantaneous and deadly those suckers can be.

Folks out West, keep us in your thoughts. Southerners -- get ready and stay in touch if you have the electricity or phone service to do so.