Isabel struck us. No, I mean that quite litterally. She didn't pass over with minimal damage, she didn't even just hit us. She struck us and did a damn good job of it, too.

There are still some schools that are closed due to contaminated water, damage, and lack of electricity. There are still several counties without power. And there are still tree branches, entire trees, and leaves littering streets and yards. I know of more than one family whose entire basement was flooded. There's a house a few streets down with a tree going through it's roof. Even just down the street there's a deckless house and the biggest damn tree branch I've ever seen lying innocently in the pile of splintered wood. That poor house, their deck was attatched to their kitchen floor. When the deck went down, the floor went up. Their house is a mess.

One of the families I used to babysit for got a branch on their roof, but it hit the gutter more than the roof itself. A few houses over someone else's roof got clobbered, tearing off a corner of the roof.

We got lucky. All the damage done here was a few holes in the front lawn. Our basement didn't even flood, and thank God for that - we just had it carpeted.

School was closed Thursday in anticipation of Isabel, but nothing really happened until Thursday night and Friday morning. I spent the night with Leah at Miles' house. We lost power at around 4PM, right as we were watching LotR2. It flickered several times before going out completely. Being the geniuses we are, we decided to walk to my house - via path through woods - and later to Safeway to pick up some dry firewood for the fireplace.

Leah's mom stopped us on the path, rightly so. We had taken three steps past the park when we heard a deafening crack, followed by several loud thumps. Mrs. K came running up from down the path, looked at us as though we were out of our fucking minds, and shephereded us back towards Miles' house. We called my mom and got a ride to The Giant instead.

It was odd. I live 2 minutes away from Miles. When they lost power at 4, all the power at my house was just fine.

That night was creepy. I remember staring out the window into pitch blackness while listening to trees and rain collide, the wind whistling eerily around. Someone said that had you gone out with a flashlight, the trees were bent down at a 40 degree angle. I believe it. We heard a crack staring out into the darkness, and for a tense 10 seconds wondered when the tree would come crashing through the roof to kill us all. Luckily the tree was in the neighbor's yard and harmed no one.

School was closed on Friday (obviously), and there was a 2 hour delay yesterday, due mostly to water contamination. For whatever reason, the water filters were shut off. For two days we weren't allowed to drink from the tap. We had to get bottled water, and the stores were quickly out of flashlights, batteries, Yule Logs, and bottled water alike.

The schools were supposed to provide free bottled water to whomever wanted it, but before they began handing it out, the filters had been put back up and the school pipes drained of all adulteration.

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School's a busy bitch. There's so much stuff to be done, and rarely enough time. I want a job (I need the money), but I don't have near enough time to have one.

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My latest online addiction is Desta. I decided to give God [link!] another chance. I'm so glad I did.

I've been sucked into His world, the world of Desta. And really, God isn't such a bad person. Actually, I think he's a really nice person. I love myself for not talking Lillian out of anything (although I doubt I would have anyway), and I love Lil for marrying him, and I love him for loving Lil, and wow, isn't this just a big, happy, loving sentance!

I'm a 'Police' on Desta - the lowest level of Admin, I believe - but I'm DAMN proud of myself. I love my job. I love my sleek admin powers. I'm fucking addicted to Desta.

Jason and Twitch have decided to create their own player world - The Legend of [the] Zitokitu. I'm in charge of a few of the graphics (the GUI, tileset, sprites and the like), hiring mappers, and creating the website; I'm also the 'manager' (though neither Jason nor Twitch has clarified exactly what comes with that title yet).

So when I'm not working on homework or killing time on Desta, I'll be working avidly on Lo[t]Z (not to be confused with Legend of Zelda).

An excuse for not writing in Unlocked for a while?

Perhaps.

End