Hurricane Irene

Yes, I was in an affected area of the hurricane from this weekend. Not a lot of fun, let me tell you.

I managed to go to sleep at a decent time for once, but of course that was ruined as I awoke to a power surge. The TV, air condition, and light that I leave on had turned off for a moment, but what really woke me up was when everything came back on and the TV was booming again. Confused, went to weather channel where it showed me the hurricane was right on us. They were pretty calm about it, so figured this was all normal and started to drift to sleep again when I saw a HUGE flash outside my window and the power went off, this time for good.

I laid in my bed for awhile, hoping it would just come back on, but after 5 minutes of just laying there, I decided to go investigate a little. After turning off my laptop and grabbing my flash light, I went out of my room and looked outside the front windows of my house. Rain and wind of course, but my street was out of power! I could see some lights in the distance though, so knew it wasn't like all of my town.

Back to my room, I fumbled around and found my incredibly old walkman with radio and searched for some channels for information. My sister awoke about now and came upstairs. I called to her, letting her know what I knew. We talked for awhile and she told me of the AM channel that has info for our area. Apparently, people had lost power all over my state, but it seemed to be only here and there. All coastal areas of course were having trouble, but some towns were perfectly unaffected according to the news on the radio channel.

The old radio-cassette walkman

Sis went back to her room for a bit and I to my mine, but soon our parents had awoke and then everyone was walking about. Candles were lit, flashlight supply gotten, and we spread both around the house. Even my upstairs neighbors could be heard fumbling around. Mom can't handle heat too well unfortunately (she has MS), so the lack of air condition was really messing with her well being. She ended up going outside in the wind and rain since it was the closest way to keep cool. We all ended up out there at some point, whether just to keep mom company, or explore the damage.

WAY down on my street, I had seen lights, so it seemed that just most of my street and parts of others had no power. We saw a service vehicle down the street in front of someone's house that we mistakenly thought was someone already working on the power, but it ended up being someone setting up a generator for our fireman neighbor. Funny enough, dad had actually borrowed two generators from his work, but neither worked, unfortunately.

After just walking around, talking, and complaining, we all conked out around 7 or 8 am. We had all been getting giddy; at one point, my sister was laughing at her own shadow from the candle light... so I put on a stupid shadow puppet show, haha! I ended up being the last one to fall asleep. I need to have noise to fall asleep to, or else I just can't sleep. Also it was hot... The radio walkman helped me with the noise part at least, and I managed to sleep until around 10am, where my sister woke me up to let me know our basement got drenched and she needed help with her room.

Our basement wasn't flooded per se, as the whole floor did not get submerged or anything. However, half of my sis's room had a wet carpet and the laundry side of the basement had a lot of wet floor. Dad was already up and taking care of the laundry side by sopping up the wet with rags, and my sister wanted me to help sop the water out of the carpeting for her room. That really was a waste of time and a pain in the hands, to be honest. The carpet was pretty much dead, and would always stink.

When we finally gave that up, we just focused on saving things in her room. She not only lost the carpet, but a few papers, stuffed animals, and a pillow. The water also finished off her old hand-me-down dresser, but that was going to be replaced anyway, so not a huge loss. Helped dad with bailing some water out of the basement stairs that lead outside as well (General outline of my house can be found in the middle of an old post, the HomeStuck dream). My cousin and her husband came over to help us out with some of our problems as well.

Our neighbors were pretty awesome people during this. My upstairs neighbor not only gave us ice for our fridge, but got tea for my mother. My next door neighbors also gave us ice and let us know what they were finding around the neighborhood; some powerlines went down around the corner. And we all were told by the power company that power would be reinstated next week. Yeah... that's some hardcore bullshit. Parents made reservations at a hotel, my sister stayed with her boyfriend, and my cousin and cousin-in-law invited me to stay at their house.

I went around the corner to see the damage and got some pictures. While I was over, some of the neighbors on that street saw my camera and said, "Oh, want us to pose in front of the damage?" and did a little pose, haha! I wish I actually took that picture. XD

A downed tree limb.

What I suspect to be where the limb broke off of.

A power line this limb took down... or maybe the power line that took down the limb?

Further down the street, this powerline burned into this fellow's lawn and melted.

This power line broke into the sidewalk slightly.

More broken sidewalk!

Here's the big ass damage!

A close up of the above.

What my dad suspects to be the cause of the damage; it's one of those things that keep the wires away from each other and in place. Dad suspects the wind knocked some wires loose and it got shocked, and melted into some wires before breaking off the powerline.

The flash I saw in the middle of the night was not lightning, but in fact these powerlines going down. The neighbors I had met around the corner told me this as they were right there. They, too, got the message of power being restored in a week, and said they were going to raise hell with the power company.

Another neighbor lost his fence.

We spent hours trying to save some things. Since the lunchmeat would go bad, we all ate sandwiches for breakfast/lunch. Dad had a friend that let us put our freezer related goods in their huge walk-in freezer. My cousin and her husband let us put any fridge things we wanted to save (and could travel) in their fridge as well, so we didn't lose TOO much. Ice Cream and a few other frozen deserts were unfortunately could not be saved (RIP).

We all packed up and got to our destinations. Sometime around 7pm after we all were situated, our upstairs neighbor called us to say that power had came back! Since we were tired, we decided to just stay where we were anyway; as we were MUCH too tired.

Yesterday was another day filled with more aches, but I'll save that for another day; I don't have any pictures that are as interesting so it'd just be another wall of text. Hope everyone who had to deal with Hurrican Irene survived all right!

An old writing: Who NOT to become

This came from an English assignment I had when I was a senior in high school. The teacher actually was a huge cunt, but I have to admit, her assignments were somewhat interesting. The topic of this one is, "Who would you NOT want to become?" Keep in mind that I was in a much different thought pattern that I am in today, and I left all the spelling and writing errors I had in it. The opinions I had back then are not necessarily the opinions I have now. But this IS a true story!

An amazing weekend.

Last weekend was probably the best three days I have had in quite awhile.

Names changed to nicknames for privacy reasons.

Last Friday, a friend of mine was heading to one of the few arcades left in our state because a mass music game tournament was being held there for the weekend. I used to go there when I was a DDR fiend and could actually compete, but my competitive days are pretty much over. I asked my friend if I could come along, since it has been months since I stepped foot on a dance machine, and it rather depressed me.

I got a lot of those dance game urges out of the way that night, and even ran into an old friend, Cucumber, from back when I used to compete in these tournaments. He asked if I would be coming the next day saying it would be nice if I could come since there really wasn't anyone from our generation. I originally wasn't planning on it unless my friend was going to go (I seriously have nothing to do while unemployed), but figured why not and went again the next night, rooting for Cucumber as he had entered all of the tournaments.

That Saturday is when I ran into even more old friends from the past! One girl whom I called my "DDR best friend," Butterfly, was there and I pretty much talked her friggin ears off, haha! Because I generally have been stuck inside my home with not much to do, I've been missing this sort of socialization. It felt like a mix of being at a sports stadium rooting for your team, having dinner with old friends, and just hanging out with people you like! I had so much fun that night, I figured I'd go the final day just to see things through.

Sunday ended up with even more friends from the past, including an old best friend that I just had grown apart from, Lex. She made some drastic changes in her life that did sort of made me nervous to approach her at first. When i used to hang out with Lex, she would talk about feeling like a woman stuck inside a man's body, so it shouldn't have been THAT much of a shock to me when she showed up in a dress and sweater. I think because it had been so long since I saw her is what did the shock to me moreso though. Still I had to get confidence from Butterfly to start the talk with her, but after that I realized my nervousness was retarded; Lex was still the same friend, just doing what she needs to in order to find happiness in her life.

I went back to rooting for Cucumber in the tournaments he had left. I barely paid attention to the In The Groove tournament going, and mainly rooted for him with the Dance Dance Revolution Extreme Doubles tournament. That was a hilariously awesome tournament with so many close matches. There ended up being a lot of AAAs (meaning got everything absolutely perfect), and a few upsets. Okay, actually it's kind of hard to describe what the hell happened without being boring, so let's just say Cucumber won that!

After all the tournaments were over, they announced the winners of each individual one, and made the announcement of the winner of them all. The way they determined the overall winner was based on how many tournaments they entered and how well they did in them, then making some sort of average. I don't know the exact formula, but doing more tournaments could only help your score. And who won? Cucumber! Made me glad I came this weekend to see him win! He did say, though, that he was maybe barely breaking even for all the entry fees, but it was worth it for all the fun he had.

After the weekend, i ended up sick until now. The over-exertion with shouting, playing dance games, and being in a germy environment probably did it. I think it's a small price to pay for a damn great weekend, though!

I did take pictures at the tournament, but they were take on the 3DS camera, so the quality is UNBELIEVABLY SHITTY. So... enjoy! :D

I apparently messed with the kind of shot I wanted this to be, thus the black outline. Just an example of the crowd. To the left WAS a Pop 'N' Music machine, but I suck and failed capture that.

The crowd watching the "In The Groove" Tournament. Can't see it, but where the gray shirt guy is standing is where the In The Groove Machine is.

Failing again to get the Pop 'N' Music machine, but a better picture of the crowd. Also worth noting is a shitload of fighting games.

A somewhat decent picture of the Dance Dance Revolution Extreme Singles tournament going.

The winners of the tournament posing for the camera, with some other people. The winners are the ones wearing the bronze, silver, and gold helmets. No, I don't know the significance these helmets have to do with music games.

If it's possible to believe, there WAS shittier pictures! These somehow came out the best. On a sidenote, if someone has a 3DS, see if you can see these in 3D if you put them on there. All of these were takein in 3D originally.

Roseanne Barr wants to run for President

Roseanne wants to run for president, huh? She has my vote.

Seriously, if anyone ever has seen her TV show, "Roseanne" a bulk of episodes deal with how the government does not understand or care about the middleclass. Even if she could only run for a lower government position, I believe she could do some good. he only thing I'd worry about is her getting support from the House of Senate and what not, since she does not want to run as Republican or Democrat. It's highly doubtful she could make it in the proper running, but it's definitely a nice thought.

If election time comes around and she's actually on the ballet, I believe I'll be voting her. Probably throwing away my vote, but still a better option than the goofbags that usually run.

Here, have a random pokemon comic:

Island of the Giant Pokemon - A scene from the pokemon anime

This is one of my favorite scenes in the entire pokemon anime!

Yes, I made that. Was going to try making this a GIF image, but getting the timing right was too tedious for me.

In other news, my sister helped me find a decent price for .Hack GU - Volume 3 - Redemption on eBay. She has used eBay in the past so knew what to do and such. Ended up paying about 5 dollars less than I paid for the previous two games. Now just hoping the seller isn't a jackass.