Goodbye Earl!

Earl, you were probably the most disappointing hurricane ever. After all the media frenzy and grocery stockpiling, one would think Earl would at least be worse than our frequent afternoon pop-up storms. Maybe Fiona will make up for it. It's named after the trigger-happy sidekick in Burn Notice and the Ogre-princess in Shrek instead of the murdered abusive hubby in a Dixie Chicks song, so it should be more interesting, right?

As I was watching the endless news coverage of the hurricane, one of the reporters for a national news network was in Atlantic Beach. I was admiring his attractiveness when I noticed that he was right next to the pier, so I knew exactly where he was standing. I came so close to jumping in my car and driving out the 15-20 minutes to say hi. But I woulda had to put makeup on and that woulda taken another 15-20 minutes and he woulda probably been gone by then. Or drowned by killer waves. Oh well.

Even though by dinner time we knew the hurricane wasn't going to be as bad as it could have been, we still made our traditional hurricane cookies. There's nothing really special about them as they are just frozen chocolate chip and peanut butter cookies, but we make about twice as much as we usually do and then snack on them all night long. It's a family-wide excuse to eat an unhealthy amount of sugary deliciousness that we'll probably regret later.

Something I noticed about the storm was that even though it was still a couple hundred miles off shore, it was already covering my skies with clouds. By the time Earl got its closest to us, the sky was completely blanketed with gray clouds that stretched in every direction. It was ominous yet fascinating at the same time. While I was at work that afternoon, I stood in front of the double glass doors and just watched. That's probably part of the reason I didn't get all my paperwork done yesterday.

I joke about how I wish the hurricane was more eventful, but seriously I'm glad that it did not cause any major damage here. I've been around long enough to see hurricanes destroy homes and I definitely did not want that to happen again. Even though it's fun having the power go out and my family play monopoly by candlelight til midnight, the fun is not worth all the trouble they cause. I'm so glad my God has control over these huge storms and steered it away from us!