Usually (at least lately), I write these journal entries a few days before I do a ‘release’, so I am writing about things in the past. Keep that in mind as I say the following. A lot has happened over the last several days, which will be recounted in the next few day’s entries. It all started with a hurricane named Frances.
I left work a couple hours early yesterday as there was no business, and there wasn’t going to be any. Everyone was running around preparing for the approaching hurricane. (I actually had done one massage in the morning, and done some good work too, but there wasn’t going to be any more.)
I started looking around the shop deciding what I most needed to take from there. The shop has regular insurance, but does not have flood insurance. (And the insurance companies had just changed the waiting period form 30 days to 60 – after hurricane season is over.) This is a real concern as the shop is on Third Street. For those that don’t understand that connotation, I will explain. You see, the way most coastal towns are laid out, they start putting in roads that run parallel with the coastline. As they put in these streets, they start naming them (er, actually numbering them) at the ocean. So, the very first street from the ocean is First Street. The next is Second Street. Got the picture? If there is a large hurricane that causes a large storm surge, I could find I need scuba gear to get to my shop.
I looked at the equipment I had and decided to move the more critical to the house, which does have flood insurance (even though it is not in a flood area). I took the computer (just the box), the copier, printer, massage table, oils, licenses, and client, government, and vendor files. If the shop ended up under water, I would still lose a lot of things including tables, display cases, cabinets, sheets and towels. I could also be out of business for a couple months or longer.
Later we came back and unplugged everything. Then we moved any electronic equipment (such as stereo speakers) up off the floor. To take more things home would have been impossible, as two of my cabinets are 300 pounds each (empty). So, we did what we could, and I closed the hurricane shutters.
At home, we had also packed certain things that would go with us if we had to evacuate the house. If Frances had stayed a category 4 storm, and had come up here, we would have had to leave. I know the house can withstand a lot of wind, but we have a screen pool enclosure on the back. It would break and fly away at a certain wind velocity, a much lower velocity than the house can withstand (someone commented that this number would be 80mph). Since it is attached to the back of the house, I question how much of the back wall would go with it.
We looked at what we had packed, and what I had brought home from the shop. We made decisions as to what I would need to do business if we lost everything in the house. That right there is a sobering thought. It’s one thing to think of losing things, but to actually plan on what is absolutely crucial, cuts much deeper. It brings a reality with it that one doesn’t feel otherwise. I truly understand these people that evacuated worrying that they may have nothing left when they return.
We decided to take the house computer with us, which has all of the company information on it as well as our personal finances and web site files. My wife packed most of the newer work shirts (the ones that say massage and Reiki rather than just massage). (Get this. She was very clever in what she did. She put the clothes in space bags before packing them in travel bags. Space bags are those that they advertise on TV where you vacuum out the air, compressing your clothes to about one quarter the original size. Neat huh?) We packed the credit card embosser, and several other business items. We wanted to pack a massage table, but didn’t know if we’d have the room. We would be filling an SUV with everything including two dogs and a cat.
I had faith in my gut feeling that the storm would not come this way. But we still had to go through the exercise of preparing for the worst. It is a scary, sobering situation.
Actually, you want to know what is an even scarier thing? And this actually goes to a comment on life today... the lines of people in the grocery were far shorter than the lines in Blockbuster video. Hmm. Now what does that say?