Here comes the storm

It's snowing outside and we're expecting high winds. Here's hoping our Sandy-battered electrical system can handle it. There must be a lot of tree limbs out there, hanging by a thread right over a power line. We're expecting up to five inches and this is a wet, heavy snow. In other words, I may lose power. If I disappear, it's not by choice.

Good luck to all the Hurricane Sandy victims who are trying to weather the cold in half-destroyed houses. New York and New Jersey are still a major wreck. I don't think people outside the area really understand how bad it is. The election was a nice intermission but reality is returning with a vengeance.

Happy Halloween!

It's the national gay holiday of Halloween! Hooray! Unfortunately, Hurricane Sandy put the kibosh on one of the finest American Halloween traditions -- the West Village Halloween Parade. Yesterday, the word was that it was canceled. However, a ray of hope appeared today. Here's Mikey Bloomberg at NY1:

"Unfortunately, we just cannot spare the manpower from the NYPD and other city agencies to host the annual Greenwich Village Halloween Parade, so we are postponing it to a later date sometime next week," the mayor said. "We'll work tomorrow and figure out what date makes sense given the resources the city has."

I'm reassured. Some people spend the entire year making their costumes. That's why there are such brilliant costumes, year after year. So the idea of canceling the parade is unthinkable.

When the parade is rescheduled, it will give New Yorkers something to cheer about. Dare I say it will bring a sense of normalcy back to the city? Yes, I dare. Anyway, it's great to hear that it will be rescheduled. And hey, the NYC Marathon is still scheduled for Sunday. We're comin' back, people. Nothing can stop New Yorkers.

Internet tops TV

Hours of watching storm coverage on TV told me very little. They couldn't see the forest for the trees. All I wanted to hear about was the Big Thing: how are the subway tunnels and how is downtown Manhattan? Nada. All they showed me was flooded parking lots.

However, one minute after calling up the Huffington Post (whose site is hobbled by the storm, by the way) I learned:

As of last night, seven subway tunnels under the East River flooded. Metro-North Railroad lost power from 59th Street to Croton-Harmon on the Hudson Line and to New Haven on the New Haven Line. The Long Island Rail Road evacuated its West Side Yards and suffered flooding in one East River tunnel. The Hugh L. Carey Tunnel is flooded from end to end and the Queens Midtown Tunnel also took on water and was closed. Six bus garages were disabled by high water.

That is huge. The city will be hobbled for a long time. Thanks, internet! (The "Hugh L. Carey Tunnel", by the way, is the Holland Tunnel. I hope everyone continues to call it by its former name. Hugh L. Carey, indeed. Bah, humbug!)

The calm after the storm

The power was in and out yesterday. Even when it was on, the lights dimmed now and then. Figuring this would kill my electronics, I unplugged everything except the modem.

In the end, I spent the night watching the storm on my Macbook Air. The news stations were live-streaming, which made this possible. All the while, branches were hitting the roof and sides of my house. It was so windy that I was sure a tree would fall on the house. Never happened.

Checking the news this morning, I see that other people weren't as lucky. The subways flooded, fires took out whole neighborhoods, and people, including kids, were killed by falling trees. The hurricane was devastating for so many. And of course, it's only been light for a few hours as I write this. Who knows what they'll discover later today. I feel terrible about the losses people suffered. I cannot imagine what losing your child or your home is like.

But I'm also relieved to have dodged a bullet. And I'm shocked that my house has power this morning. In this area, the power goes out if someone sneezes loudly. Everything okay in your neck of the woods? Chime in.

If I disappear...

If this blog goes silent in the next day or so, I've lost power because of the hurricane. Nothing else could keep my hands off the keyboard. Good luck to all of us, especially those in lower Manhattan.

I'm not ready for this

NASSAU, Bahamas (AP) — Hurricane Sandy raged through the Bahamas early Friday after leaving 21 people dead across the Caribbean, following a path that could see it blend with a winter storm and reach the U.S. East Coast as a super-storm next week.  

Oy.

With storm conditions projected to hit New Jersey with tropical storm-force winds Tuesday, there was a 90 percent chance that most of the U.S. East Coast would get steady gale-force winds, flooding, heavy rain and maybe snow starting Sunday and stretching past Wednesday, U.S. forecaster Jim Cisco said. 

Oy again. The center of the latest storm track goes directly over my house.

Last year an October snow storm knocked out power in my area for days. This sounds like it might be even worse. This two-year trend shows tremendous disrespect for the national gay holiday of Halloween. I shall be filing a complaint shortly.