I must start out this blog post by admitting a thing that might make me either very popular here in Cincinnati, or, possibly, unpopular: we have electrical power at our house.

Ever since Monday’s infamous “deluge” by the remnants of hurricane Ike, with huge windstorms and much power outage, the most common question around here is “Do you have power?”

We came home, slowly but surely, yesterday, to find out that we did have power at our house. We came home slowly because, on Sunday when the windstorm hit, we were in a plane in the region of Knoxville, flying home from Ft. Lauderdale. Thus, since the Cincinnati airport was closed, we were rerouted to Atlanta where, as you saw, we stayed the night.

Further slowness in our arrival was caused by a huge fallen tree totally blocking a street leading to our house. So we had to walk the last quarter mile, dragging suitcases behind us, suitcases whose wheels are now probably permanently embedded with twigs from said tree. Several people stopped their cars to say hi and to welcome us home. Our friend Steve and Peter’s friend Betsy arrived at our house as we did, to help check on things.

Amount of damage: many twigs in yard. Many still-green leaves. Two limbs from giant oak broke, one fallen on our roof, and one still hanging from the tree. Apparently no damage to the roof, not nasty damage anyway.

So here we sit, listening to the not-storm (i.e. quiet) out of our window, with the frequent addition of power saw sounds in the distance.