but don't you worry, dear reader.
while that storm disrupted power and uprooted trees everywhere in the region - including across most of the erstwhile thoroughfares between my unscathed (and consistently powered) apartment and my new home - my new home was just fine, with neither power lost nor magnificent trees interposed among the architecture or across egress.
although the basement appears prone to flooding (two sump pumps!), it did not flood on this occasion.
not knowing the impending regional disaster of the storm, i really enjoyed watching it (and experiencing it through other sensory modalities) from my fourth-floor apartment. as you may recall from previous mentions, the building was poorly ventilated, tending to absorb and retain a great deal of heat on the top floor in the summer. this summer has been no different, so, when it became apparent that a storm was approaching, i opened all the windows in hopes of letting some of that rapidly-cooling air displace some of the stagnant too-hot air of the apartment. that unit had six windows on the west wall, and a doorway on the east opening into the hallway. i appreciated the cooler air, and watched the increasingly dramatic clouds, punctuated by a lot of lightning, often in unusual colors - red and green mostly, which i am told might have been arcing from blown transformers rather than lightning itself. anyway, it became breezy, and, really wanting to cool the place down before the impending showers would force me to close the windward windows, i opened my door to the hallway, hoping for some cross ventilation.
well, dear reader, i got cross ventilation. i don't know which neighbor was on the other end of the wind-tunnel that was created, but the dust-storm at the front of the system struck just as i opened my door, and suddenly the entire unit was filled with dust, grit, and everything in my apartment that wasn't attached to something heavy shrieking around in vortices as i struggled against the wildly-flailing door. it dropped twenty degrees almost immediately in the unit, and, the piles having already expanded into full-blown literal paperstorm, i held that door open until the rain began, then hurried to close everything up and gather my scattered belongings. that was about all of the excitement for me: the best ventilated moment of my 11 years in the unit.
driving was an exciting adventure, fraught with obstacles, detours and major intersections lacking stoplights, as, over the ensuing days i slowly packed up one car-load of my stuff at a time and hauled it across town.
i did promptly learn that the clear wireless service, of which i had been a happy customer over the past year (but for two occasions when inclement weather appeared to render the wimax signal inaccessible -- the company isn't named "clear" for nothing: caveat emptor!), does not offer coverage on my block.
so i plan to switch over to fios, as the product that best fits my needs from perhaps not even the lesser of the two great regional monopolies.