Hurricane Ike

Well I didn't think that Hurricane Ike was going to come to our area, but it did. I also thought that if we lost power that it would only be for a day, but it was for 9 days.
I grew up in Virginia Beach from the time I was 4 years old to 23. We always had tropical storm/hurricane warnings and they never came, so that made me indifferent to them.
Brian wanted us to be prepared for Hurricane Ike though. He bought lots of water. He filled up several cans of gas for our generator. He boarded up all of the windows of our house. He bought a portable a/c. I kind of thought he was over doing it, but looking back I'm glad he did.
We lost power around 12 am Saturday 9/13. The winds were really strong early that morning, but there wasn't much rain. We didn't have any damage to our house, just a lot of debris from the trees. Saturday afternoon after the storm passed, Brian took the boards off of the windows. Later that evening, the neighbors across the street got their power back, so they were only out of power for less than a day. Brian ran some extension cords from their house to ours to power some things like the refrigerator, tv, laptop, portable a/c, some lamps, and sometimes the microwave.
Some positive things that came from our experience: lots of family time. Brian didn't have to go to work for 10 days. We didn't have use of our cell phones or home phone for a few days, so it was nice not to have the phone ringing. The weather was much cooler after the hurricane passed which helped since we didn't have a/c.
Some negative things: losing power for so long, not being able to contact some of the family because we didn't have a way to, and most of our activities were cancelled.
We're grateful to have power again.