Hurricane Michael Thoughts

The plans are coming together, so I cant imagine I will have that much more to blog. 06/01 Just got hit between the eyes with the realization that Hurricane Season just officially started, shudder... 06/03 Got confirmation from the window company that the windows took a bit longer to make than anticipated but would be installed within the week.  With that, everything has fallen into place and we closed at Old South Land and Title at noon.  Nice folks.  Not sure where the June rent is, so we added a codicil to get our portion of the rent forwarded 06/06 Had to do a request to get the rentor's deposit transferred to Ami's company as she is now my property manager. 06/07 - 06/12 Took Jeff to Castle.  Pictures and Posts on facebook 06/17 Had not heard from PMS regarding the move, so I left a voice message hoping that Friday, the 21st was the next day they were doing an Ashley run. 06/18 PMS called back.  I had misunderstood, they do the runs regularily, ...

05/02 Freedom Self Storage called to say they were going to have a 10 x 10 available by the 4th and did I want it or to roll over.  In spite of her thoughts that more would probably open up as we got further along in the military move season, I decided to lock that in.  This way I can start looking for a moving company with some assurance that even if they can't fit all of my remaining property into the 10 x 10 at Spacebox, I now have an alternate plan, although Jeff did volunteer a part of his garage if I needed it. 05/04.  Locked in the storage unit at Freedom.  Unlike Spacebox and Callaway Self Storage, this rooms go up 10 to 12 feet instead of 8 to 10.  I am going to need a step ladder, LOL. 05/07 - 05/15 New Orleans/Seattle.  Photos and Posts on Facebook.  Another chance to get away from all the issues of the new house not being quite right yet.  Decided that since Sunday was going to be Mother's day, I would take a little round trip to S...

04/01 It turns out the roof is going to be a bigger deal than first presumed.  Even though it was next to be replaced, that timetable was about 2 years down the road and the inspector felt it only had about that left.  Insurance companies however, wont right a policy unless their inspector gives it about 3 to 5 years left.  Mortgage brokers want assurance of insurance.  The seller, his agent and my agent started working the possibilities.  The owner wanted to close as soon as possible however, Freddie Mac (who would be underwriting the loan) requires owner occupancy within 60 days of closing.  Because of the lease, that is something we couldn't fudge, so the earliest we were going to be able to close would be 3 June.  But we still need to get past the insurance issues.  04/02 Because of the issues in Emerald Gardens, we set up to look at some more houses today, but they wound up being taken off the market or changed to AS-IS sales and we just de...

03/01 Spending my last night at Jeff's.  When I return from Palm Springs, I will be staying at the Extended Stay Hotel in Destin, until I leave again for Portland. Then  I will return for another week and meet my parents in Phoenix to drive to Tucson for a F-106 reunion.  After that, I am not sure what I will be doing, so that means that my priority will be finding a place to rent (hopefully I can find a 6 month lease), since I have not had much luck finding a house.  Got my refund from Home Depot, no interest paid, so another disappointment.  No mention of it in the sales contract either, so I am stuck. 03/02 - 03/12 In Palm Springs and Seattle with the parents (as well as my aunt and uncle); photos and comments posted to my Facebook account (the desert ws in full bloom!).  However, also during that time, Ami and I were in contact several times as I came up with questions about the 630 Emerald situation.  It felt good also (since no one else was rea...

02/03 a nice sunny day, so I completely dismantles and cleaned out the refrigerator.  I found out about the wonders of white vinegar when I was doing some relief work in Homestead after Hurricane Andrew.  The stuff is amazing how it can remove the odors from the appliances.  I also lost a filling...  Well, I know where it is...  My local dentist closed up shop and now I have new coverage (FEDVIP) so time to look for a new one.  The tooth is not bothering me, so I will probably see how the house hunting goes to see where I want to be "assigned to." 02/06 Got the garage straightened enough that I am parking the Mitsu in it while I am gone.  I noticed that there was some staining on the concrete where it had been standing for a while, so I bought a shop floor pan to park it over. 02/09 Decided that my Honda Pacific Coast motorcycle was (at least for the foreseeable future) another candidate for "too much stuff."  I had set it aside over 2 years a...

01/03 Turned the Rogue in for repairs.  Yes, it is almost 3 month after the storm, but that was how long the wait list was at this USAA approved facility.  Nice that they already have all the paperwork and it is literally just a drop off.  Got a rental paid for a month in the deal too. 01/06 Sun shine again, so I took the remaining books I am trying to save out of their lysol fumed totes and posted the results.  Some responded well, some, not so much. 01/08 Took my 7th load of cardboard back to a recycling bin I discovered along my route back to Niceville. Hoarding cardboard will definitely be a target for my monthly purges (on the 11th, the day in October I had too much stuff) 01/09 More looking around at houses in Niceville on an admin day.  The inventory is incredibly limited, even with raising my "max looking price" by over 25%.  Definitely some sticker shock since I had not priced any out since I bought my current place in 1992. 01/10 My roofi...

12/2 Researched what it was going to take to drop a 30A power line for an RV.  In order to repair the house, I could not live in it, but probably wanted to avoid the nominally 2 hour (more like 3.5 for the first months) trip to ride herd on contractors.  Jeff has an RV that he was willing to loan me, but I could not see running it on generator for all that time when I had real good access to string a line and wire an outlet.  I used a ball of twine as a fish-line to measure how much 10guage ROMEX I was going to need. 12/03 Brian Gregory, a sales consultant for Home Depot showed up and I contracted for Hardy Board to replace the siding on 3 or the 4 walls, with the understanding that if I could get the roof and soffet fixed, I would add the 4th (front) wall.  since the front is the side with the brick facing, it was not going to be that much to add.  Additionally, after all the calls to roofers who never showed up or just plain said they weren't interested when...

11/1.  One more day trip to the house, several trips to the local storage, which wound up saving a lot more stuff than would have been possible if I was only relying on the Niceville storage, since that was at least a two hour drive, one way compared to 20 minutes round trip.  Had a big thunderstorm kick up and the tarping seemed to do quite well, all things considered.  To the best of my memory, that was the first real weather we had since the storm's passage.  I also had an appointment with Panhandle Insulation to replace the garage door and Chance showed up on time, measure things out and gave me an estimate, which I contracted for on the spot.  He couldn't commit to a time-table, but told me that they were about 3-4 weeks in manufacturing, so probably closer to 6-8 weeks due to the demand.  Hey, it was better than doing nothing and my first real progress, not counting the fact I had an appointment for the Water mitigation people to start on the 4th...

10/11/2019:  Fortunately, it got a little cool through the evening.  With the Master bedroom soaked, I am using the sofa to sleep on in the living room, with some candles and a battery powered radio from the Hurricane Kit.  Somehow, the primary iHeart Radio stations (including 98.5) are broadcasting community service information without towers. I woke up and set to try to get to the UPS store to give Scott Cornell (the owner and a friend) a status report.  It took an hour to find my way around downed trees and power lines, not to mention avoiding any kind of debris on the road so as not to puncture my tires.  The Rogue was serving as not only transportation, but as my generator to keep the phone and laptop going.  T-Mobile signal still strong and robust data. Started using some containers I had set aside to prioritize the personal property I was going to try to save but mostly just made sure the neighbors were OK.  October 11th was also when I made the...

10/10 - In 1995, I tried to evacuate for Hurricane Opal and did not make it further than about 5 miles (and 4 hours), so I returned to my house and rode it out.  Although it was a Cat 3, there was minimal damage to the house. It was primarily a flood event and my neighborhood did fine.  When I went to bed last night, Michael was supposed to strengthen to a strong 1, maybe 2, so my plan was to ride it out.  When I woke up early to check the status, it had ramped up to a Strong 3, maybe 4, but it was too late by that time to try to evac. The storm progressed to basically a category 5.  Newsweek reported that landfall was officially 1240, but I was watching the radar progress on my phone and it appeared that we were very near to the eye wall at 1219.  I am now a T-mobile customer for life.  Verizon failed miserable, ATT was spotty, but I had full coverage throughout the storm and only lost it for about a 30 minute period a day and a half later (I suspect a g...