Final on Ernesto

As you can see everything is cleaned up. Well for the most part we can't move the bottom part of the limb but at least we can use the walkway.

I had to work tonight but nothing out of the ordinary to post. It was steady and I tried to get out early as my back is still hurting but I still ended up being there till after 9pm. But at least the cooks made me penne ala vodka for dinner.

Still no sighting of the Bunny.

crazy and lazy weekend

Wow what a weekend! Storm, tree limb, no power, restaurant a total madhouse, Busch Gardens super busy and then I get told at Watercountry USA to cover up!!!!!

Curious yet? Yep all this in one loooooonnnnnng weekend.

You read about the power outage and tree limbs so here is the rest of the weekend. Saturday night turned out to be just as busy as Friday night. My section was inside and my tables turned over very fast which allowed me to make over $160. Everyone was nice and I had no terrible tips to report on (no generous ones either) The night was over real fast and I was sooooo exhausted after it was all done. I stayed to eat (we had gotten power back when I left but I was to tired to have to cook) and then off to bed it was. After spending all morning cleaning up the front yard and then running my butt off I just wanted to sleep.

I woke up earlier than I had hoped, made lunch and got ready to go to work to Busch Gardens. I was in kiddie land again which I enjoy. Its my own little store and its generally busy and when not then I keep my book in a drawer to read. I didn't get to read at all. I was so busy with the park being full. Finally 2 hours before I was supposed to go off another cast member came by looking for a supervisor. I told him to let them know I NEEDED A BREAK!! I went to the outdoor break area because it was the closest and finally got to read my book - Phos pointed it out in his blog and I am totally hooked on the series. I had bought that one last Wednesday and finished it in the bathtub Sunday night. Anyhow the nice part about getting a break late is that when you get back its time to leave.

Monday Grumpy and I got to sleep in. I started with homework (still in bed nice thing about laptops) and he went out to clean up the yard further. We decided we would go to Watercountry USA as it was their last day open and we had not been all season despite him having a free comp pass since I work there. On the way we stopped at Barnes and Noble to get 2 more books from the series mentioned above. We had picked the perfect day for it a visit to a water park. It wasn't to hot and there where less than 1000 people in the park which translates into no lines at the rides. It was awesome we got to ride everything and then went into the surfers bay. The last ride we had gone on the Meltdown was one of those where you sit in a boat type of thingy. Grumpy has to sit in the back with those and I sit up front the middle part was free. When we hit the end of the slide I somehow flew up and back and then into the water. Grumpy said I hit his feet and my lower back, my left shoulder and my right shoulder blade agree I hit something. So after 2 wave sessions at the bay we decided to leave the park when a cast member approached me coming out of it. She told me a guest had complained that they could see through my one piece (cut extremely conservative!!!) swimsuit and I need to put something over it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WTF hell half of the people in their wore swimsuits that did not deserve the name and my beige swimsuit with lavender squares was inappropriate!!! Well we were leaving anyhow but that was just to funny I thought my days on indecent exposures where over!!!
I more or less crashed on the couch with my back still feeling bad and Grumpy started our dinner. All in all the weekend was fun.

I do have one sad part to report. Grumpy mentioned that he had no seen the Bunny since the storm and that there was an unpleasant smell in the front yard. He suspects that it didn't survive the storm. I hope that is not true but I haven't seen it either so please hope for me that Bunny is okay.

On other news I can NOT comment on anyones non beta blog anymore except if the anonymous function is enabled (hint hint!!!) I hope this will be fixed soon as it drives me nuts.

Ernesto part two

Still no power but my neighbor has a generator and let us hook up the fridge and freezer and I piggybacked the computer so I can do homework and send you all some pics of what I saw when I came home yesterday.

This is taken from my porch door. The limb came up to our steps but missed the house thank god.


I had called Grumpy to take the Expedition to work as I thought it would be safer than his little Geo tracker. Our neighbors told me the limb fell 30min later and it would have smashed the car had Grumpy not taken it to work.

Here you can see where it hit on the drive way.


Another shot of the house and front yard


different angle same limb you can see how it stopped at the steps.


The limb that fell is bigger than some trees around here.


Here is a shot after I cleaned up the loose branches

This I can't move until a friend with a chainsaw comes to help me. He is actual the reason I am up he had said he'd come at 9 but I think he is running later to let me sleep in.

looking out from my porch


close up from the porch


close up different angle


My back deck. Not to many branches down there.


look at the lawn its turning into a little lake

my lake


water


Here is the debris that I could clean up myself without a chain saw. Close up on the debris Okay this is my neighbors yard look closely under the tree - you can see the bumper of it.

So all in all we were very lucky the house and the car was spared. I had initially called into work because I thought my neighbor had a chainsaw and I was going to be cleaning up, but he didn't so my clean up went much faster than anticipated. So I called to see if they need me since the house had no power and there was nothing to do and at least that way I'd get a warm meal. My boss actually called me when I was on my way (no doubt because some of our greedy waitresses bitched at the idea of having 5 vs 6 working) saying if I wanted to stay home. I was like what no warm meal and money???? He said to come on in if it wasn't busy he'd at least feed me. Well it was a good thing I thought with my stomach we got slammed. We were one of a few places open and over 300,000 had lost power. I didn't get home until close to midnight. I was out on the patio and made over $100. Now remember these where not our regular customers and my tips weren't that great for example I had a $69 check that left me $5. Our entire restaurant was full and we had people waiting outside for tables it was a madhouse. The news said that not all power will be restored today so we may be busy again. But I don't think it will be as much as yesterday because the people that do have power will have BBQ's to rid themselves of all the food that thawed.