I Love Skype 2

This time to see my family!!!! <3

Irene

Alexandria luckily was not hit too badly. I went to my audition Saturday early afternoon and hunkered down for the night. My neighbor Antoinette and I watched Ryan Reynolds movies and played video games as the night went on. Once it picked up we filled our bathtubs (so you can flush when power goes out) and made sure we were good to go.

It was quite windy and rainy, but not too bad. The major part of the storm wasn't expected til after midnight, so curiousity got the best of us and we bundled up and decided to go check out the river.
It was a little too dark for pictures but it was higher than normal even at that point.

See, very bundled. But still soaked through.

Ahhh wind!

So much rain.

News crew filming on the dock

Hurricane suit = Husband's work jacket + husband's swim trunks + wellies with cherries on them.
The rain was really starting to come down at this point.


Antoinette fared a little better than me in her gortex.

The view from our front door during the storm.

Like I said, Alexandria was very fortunate. Some large trees went down but the river did not flood over and our apartment never even lost power. I fell asleep on the couch watching a movie and was out cold for the worst of the storm. Like I said, we were lucky....

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New Jersey on the otherhand got clobbered, especially with rain. The Raritan River, which is in walking distance from my old house, rose over 40 feet.

This is around the block from my old home.


You have to pass this to get to my street...

I drove over this bridge on a semi daily basis in high school.

Duke Island Park always floods in the rain, but I have not seen it like this since Hurricane Floyd in 1999.

I used this road to go home coming off the highway, like all the time. It is between the river and the cow farm and it floods, but not like this!


The Raritan River rose over 40 feet and flooded most of my home town and the surrounding areas.


Our Minor League Baseball Stadium, where I briefly worked as a mascot one summer, is under water


And our "highways" even are blocked, like near the IHop... which also did not do so well...

We have so many little creeks and rivers that have bridges connecting all the towns that a lot of people cannot go far. I know in 1999 we didnt have school for nearly a week since the school bus just could not reach us.


The Jersey pictures I borrowed from facebook and this website, but NJ got hit pretty hard and there is way worse damage than that. Irene was a serious storm. I am glad VA was pretty unscathed, at least by me, but I am keeping my thoughts on my old home.

:(

Not gonna lie, this article broke my heart. I may have teared up at work.

Nostalgic Illuminations

When I miss Ryan I tend to get really nostalgic... looking at old pictures and doing silly things like that. So I instantly knew what song I wanted to do for this week's link up, Illuminations - Reflections of Earth. It is the soundtrack to the fireworks show at EPCOT.

Newer readers to my blog may not know this but I worked at Walt Disney World as a college program intern for about six months after I graduated college. Ryan was in Iraq for most of it and it was my ultimate distraction. At the time, my blog was actually named Disney and Deployed... if you cannot tell I have a thing for alliteration! I fell in love with Disney (again) and I absolutely loved working there. I would tell Ryan all the time how much I loved it, I worked in EPCOT as a presenter at Innoventions and part of my night duties was crowd control for Illuminations. So I got to be in front of the rope (awesome on the nights it was not windy and you came away with ash all over you) and talk to people from all over the world. Plus the people I worked with were so fun and unbelievably awesome.





All of these factors and my unhealthy love of fireworks all added to the story of why Ryan decided to pop the question during Illuminations!

If you ever want to read the story of our proposal (it is actually kinda funny and very typical of my husband and I), feel free, but just know I will always love this music. My friend Jenny got me the CD for Christmas and during the cocktail hour of our wedding this song played over the loudspeakers from my ipod... and my friends from Disney who came to the wedding may or may not have made fun of me for it! Ryan came home early from Iraq and decided to visit me with my family for some Disney fun. He proposed the day after he arrived.







Around the 9:00 minute mark is when Ryan got down on one knee (:

Hey Pintrest!

Thanks for the delicious dinner idea!




I am sooooo full now. :P

Poppy's 89th Birthday

Sorry it took me a few days to get this up, pictures needed to be uploaded and then there was that little thing of an earthquake and I was distracted.

So Saturday morning I was up at 9 (shocker) and I got up, showered and packed, and was on the road around 10:20. I didn't rush because I didn't think I'd hit traffic or anything but boy I was wrong. I did pretty well the first hour and until I got past Baltimore. The it stopped. Oh my GOD it was awful. Delays to exit 67. Get there, it opens, I go 70... delays exit 71... stop. No rhyme or reason. It would just stop and we would go 5 miles an hour for NO reason! It was awful. Usually I get to my typical rest stop after an hour and a half or so, this time it took over three hours!




I was so not happy. My butt was numb, my feet hurt, my neck and shoulders hurt... it was awful.

In Delaware when 95 split with 295 it mercifully opened again. I got through Wilmington and into PA and stopped AGAIN. But once I hit Phili it was smooth sailing the rest of the way. My 3 and a half hour drive took 6 hours!!

It was weird driving past my usual turn for my street and not taking it. It made me kinda sad! But I made it to Sam's house finally.



We had a blast. Her sister Danielle hung out with us and we hung out for a bit before taking the necessary trip to the farmer's market. I loaded up on tomatoes, cucumbers, and bicolored corn. SO GOOD. We also saw some hot air balloons which made my day.









Back at the house we made an amazing dinner. First was tomato basil and mozerella with oil and vinegar salad. YUM. Then we had flank steak and fried green tomatoes (recipe and instructions to follow!) as well as corn. Some good food and good company. (: Chick flicks inevitably followed.









The next day I got up and went to my grandparents' house, another hour in the car. When I was a block away I called my grandparents house to wish Poppy a Happy Birthday. I told him, "I wish I could be there! Ryan and I arranged to have a delivery sent to you and they promised it would be there by 12:30. Can you go outside and see if it is there?" Poppy was all confused, asking what I sent him and if I was home or not, but he eventually came outside, still on the phone, and I was standing there on the sidewalk!





He looked so surprised, a huge smile and a little teary. I had him fooled and he loved it! Babci and Poppy were definitely happy to see me and I got to spend about four hours with them just catching up. We looked at pictures (my professional wedding album that was an early birthday gift from my mom and my Poppy's old album) and talked and talked. Of course Babci made I was fed (glumpkes and stuffed peppers) and I helped her make chocolate cake and lemon meringue.





Sadly I had to leave around 5. The rest of my family arrived in the last hour or so I was there but there was a storm coming in and I had to go. Of course half an hour into my drive the sky opens up. The sky was black and buckets were pouring from the sky. Lightening flashed so much I could barely see and the thunder was so loud. I may or may not have said a whooooole lot of Hail Marys, out loud as I drove with my flashers on on the turnpike at 25 miles per hour. It was like this exit 8 to exit 4.



Then the sun came out.

I made it home in five hours. A little better.

Holy Earthquake Batman!

So I ate my lovely lunch today around 1pm, a nice salad with good Jersey produce I took home and a nectarine, before heading outside to enjoy the gorgeous weather.

I was sitting on a bench reading my book. This bench was located on a sidewalk thing between two buildings. As I am reading I felt the ground rumble a bit, almost like a train was going by or something in the parking garage so I ignored it. Then I sort of realized my bench was swaying back and forth. I was like, "What the hell?" and everyone was looking around and then it really started. The buildings on either side of me started swaying and the windows were rattling like crazy! I jumped up and everyone in the plaza was panicked and then it stopped.

My heart was pounding and I am not going to lie, I thought it was an attack at first, a bomb or something, not an earthquake. All the buildings in the plaza had their fire alarms going off and everyone poured out of the buildings. I instantly tried to call my co-worker to tell her to come outside and my phone would not connect. Then I tried to text Ryan, my mom and my dad and they would not go through. Tried to call my mom and nothing.



Luckily my itouch got wireless from the building so I could update people via and email and dare I say it... facebook. I ended up receiving text messages but I could not respond to any, including the two from my mom asking if I was ok. Luckily my mother in law reached me all via email and got in touch with my mom and Ryan for me. We ended up waiting outside for about an hour before the fire deptartment said we could go back in at our own discretion.

Once we went upstairs, all six flights as we were not getting in the elevator, and checked for damages. Some things fell down but nothing big. Shawn, my boss, then sent Meghan and I home so I was pretty grateful. Then I realized as I was leaving my phone was working so I called my mom and then Ryan got a text to me, so I called him.

Here is the damage from the apartment... bad right? :P


Spices fell off the spice rack and the mint leaves broke the cap, I cleaned it up quick.


My Recipe for a Marine Wife sign fell off the wall and into the sink.

And that's it! I survived (: No aftershocks here and hopefully none will happen. Hope everyone else is ok, and thank you to all who checked in on me! I appreciated it.