Not the Vacation I Wanted

I'm supposed to be on vacation this week, with some quick trips and a big two-day venture to the mighty Hershey Park.

Unfortunately, a hurricane roared through my area over the last twenty-four hours, dropping more rain that anyone has ever seen in my area, which of course meant that the river rose.

And rose. And rose.

When The Wife and I left about four hours ago, the waters were up over the bottom of my driveway and touching my lawn. (And several inches deep in the basement, which is vastly worse.) We're now holed up at my in-law's place, which is on top of a hill in a nearby town.

My house has the gas and power turned off, and we're definitely going to have to buy a new furnace and water heater, washing machine and dryer. (I'm more worried about my books, of course -- I have several thousand books in that basement usually, and my triage efforts didn't go as far as I hoped. I was only able to drag a few hundred books upstairs, and get nearly everything else up a shelf or three or on top of the desk -- so anything left in the basement may be a complete loss.)

I've said "blogging will be sporadic" before, and sometimes it's been true. I'm saying it again, and it will be vastly more true this time, I'm sure.

The good news is that we're all fine, and the floodwaters should be starting to recede any minute now. The Wife and I will get back to the house tomorrow morning to see what we need to do, and we've already got a call into an electrician that we trust. But I do want to warn anyone thinking about living near a river in New Jersey that the weater has gotten very amplified in the past few years, and that I would very much not reccomend doing so.

Rivers are tricksy, nasty things, and we hates them.