Come on, Irene!

One of my greatest regrets over the last few days is that i did not get more pictures.  I took a few with my phone but that, unfortunately, is all that i managed.  

After having to leave the lovely Camp Kirkwood on Friday, we arrived home at about 9:30pm.  We were pretty wiped out from the day so we went straight to bed, knowing that the next two days would be either full of rest or full of chaos.  A friend of ours lives in the Lower East Side which was one of the areas that had to be evacuated.   So she came to stay with us.  Having her here was fun and light.  Always a good thing!

We woke up Saturday morning, made breakfast of pancakes and bacon.  Then enjoyed a day full of movies. It became a Chic Flick Marathon.

We watched When Harry Met Sally. Our house guest had never seen it. We felt like we should rid the world of this one injustice.

We also watched My Big Fat Greek Wedding.  This movie gives us single women a little hope...

We then watched Kate & Leopold... cause, well, Hugh Jackman is adorable and Meg Ryan is, was the best!

I spent time while we watched movies to finish editing some photos of a Courthouse Wedding I did the week before.  Irene gave me time to get much needed work done.

I also took a break from the movie watching to make English muffins. It had been my second attempt. I tried making them when at home in Alabama.  They weren't horrible but they weren't as light and fluffy as I had hoped.  I hoped this new batch would be much better.

Later that evening, we made person pizzas, drank some wine and listened to the rain as Irene made her way into New York.  

I stayed up way too late, editing and uploading photos.  I also spent way too much time reading reports on the Hurricane and its forecast.

When I woke up the next morning, I was pleased to find the power still on and voices outside my window, but was not as pleased to find we had leaky windows in the living room.  Trying not to wake the girls up, I tried hanging towels and mopping up the mess, not before i found that our wireless router was standing in a pool of water.  I was sure it was fried. I could smell the charring.  When I picked it up, water poured out from deep within. Luckily I found out later in the evening that it was still working.

My apologies for the iphone shot. The lighting is awful.

In the fogginess of the morning, I accidentally changed the channel on our TV.  We have an older TV which uses the converter box.  You have to keep the TV on channel 3 in order for the converter to work. (Can we say 1980s?) When i changed the channel, I couldn't get it back to three as the only working remote we had was the one that works strictly with the converter.  This rendered the TV useless. Luckily, even though our router wasn't working, we could steel a neighbor's wireless to find out what was going on around us.

Before the other girls were up, I ventured up to the roof to check out the sky.  I didn't take my SLR with me because I wasn't confident in what i would face when up there.  Then when i did get up there, I locked myself on the roof.  So i shot a few pictures with my iphone and then called my roommate to come rescue me. By then I was over the sky and just went back inside.

View of downtown during the "Eye" of the storm

View of the GWB.  The clouds were so low.  

Later that morning, I finally tried my English muffins from the day before. They were much better but still not as airy as I'd of liked. I will try again.  I will conquer the English muffins!

We then watched some more Chic Flicks.  Nothing like the day before but we enjoyed ourselves.

We made ravioli with a garlic butter sauce for dinner. It was yummy!  I really love to cook and try new things.  Something as easy as butter sauce is still not in my armor of pasta sauces. I loved trying something new.

The City wasn't hit nearly as bad as they had anticipated but I am not complaining!  I was thankful that the city did what it did to protect its people from what could have been devastating.

The weekend of Irene is now over and back to work we go. The subways are back up and running and the city is moving ahead. Another crisis averted.

I was a little bummed that we had to cancel church. It was my second sunday on staff. I needed a little more training before the person I am replacing leaves.  But I do have to say, a weekend in with some awesome ladies watching awesome cinema, making awesome food was an awesome blessing!

What did you do during the Hurricane? How did you spend your time?