Hurricane Preparedness

It's that time of year again. The time when those of us in the Gulf Coast brace ourselves for hurricanes. You know, I didn't so much think about them until Katrina and Rita three years ago. Wow! Has it really been that long ago?

Anyway, five minutes after Rita entered the Gulf of Mexico you couldn't find non-perishables or plywood in this area to save your life. And since I didn't start paying attention to it until they said it was headed towards Galveston, I was SOL. They also started advertising the evacuation line. I live just north of I-10 (and by just north, I mean I can hear the traffic from my house) and the cut off was everything south of I-10. My reaction was that if everyone south of I-10 was evacuating and I lived that close to I-10, I was evacuating too. Well, I spent 15 hours on the road and got all of 50 miles away before I turned around and came home. At one point I thought I was going to lose my dog, Max, because I'd forgotten to bring the water and it was 100 degrees outside (literally) and he wasn't looking good. It was pretty bad. Now, when I look at the cut-off for evacuation I'm more like "I'm fine - I'm north of the evacuation line". I don't plan to go unless I really have to.

Which is why I do more preparing these days. For example, I buy a gallon of water each week when I go to the grocery store. They say you should have one gallon for each person for each day. Although it's just me, I do have three dogs to consider. Right now I have seven gallons of water - just in case.

But, I decided that I need to invest in some velcro this season. Instead of plywood, if a hurricane heads this way this year (which I hope one doesn't - but just in case), I plan to wrap my house in velcro. Why you ask? Well, I came to this decision while filling in for a co-worker this past week. I had to sit at her desk and deal with her set up Monday - Wednesday. This is someone who has a lot of ergonomic issues and complaints. We've ordered special furniture for her, special keyboards, special chairs - you name it and we've probably bought it for her. She chucks all of it and then puts her workstation in the most awkward positions imaginable and then complains of aches and pains. It makes me nuts. Anyway, I was sitting at her workstation this week and her phone is all but across the room. I wanted to move it closer but it was strangely stuck in place.

Now, I should point out that our phones sit on bases. The base interlocks with the phone and unless you really work at it, the phone will not separate from the base. The base provides a bit of an angle for the phone so that you can read the digital display looking straight at the phone (if that makes sense). But anyway, most staff supports (myself included) set their phones on stands to elevate them. This co-worker does this as well.

So, when I went to pull the phone towards me - it didn't budge. It didn't move. It stayed right where it was. That so wasn't working for me so I grabbed the phone and jerked it - hard. After working for a while on it, I finally got it. Well sort of anyway. I had pulled the phone of its base. The base, on the other hand, was still firmly velcro'd to the stand, which was velcro'd to the desk. Same for the keyboard. I all but jerked the screws that secured the keyboard tray to the desk out and the keyboard itself never budged.

So forget plywood. Forget duct tape. When it comes to preparing my house for a hurricane, I'm going with velcro! :)