16 September 1999
9:05 am: I'm not at work today. Matt and I woke up when the radio turned itself on this morning, and we listened to reports that multiple stretches of road were closed due to flooding, including one uncomfortably close to us. The consensus of our household was that while we were fairly certain we could get to work, that the question of getting home again was up in the air, and rather than be stuck overnight at the office, we decided to stay home. We'll have to either try to make up the lost hours over the rest of the month, or use our vacation time. (I suspect it will end up being a combination of the two.)

I'm relatively certain that no one else is at the office today, either. At least, I hope not. According to the Weather Channel, Floyd should hit this area sometime around noon. Of course, if you look at the pictures and satellite images, it's already here - what they mean is that the strongest winds and whatever's left of the eye will cross around noon. In any case, I still can't connect to my e-mail or the company-owned spot where I keep my webpage, so it'll be a good while before I can upload this entry. The Springfield office is probably gnashing its collective teeth - our office handles their e-mail as well, and they're practically paralyzed without it. (You think I'm joking? It takes approximately five minutes to completely reboot the computer that handles the mail. It's good that we don't have to do that very often, because when we do, the company president is usually on the phone to us less than two minutes after the process begins to complain. It's gotten to the point where we have to call and warn them first about a five-minute pause in service. It's pathetic.)

Anyway, Floyd's eye closed almost immediately after it made landfall (around 3 this morning, around Wilmington, NC) and when Matt and I turned on the Weather Channel at 6:30, it had been downgraded again to a Class 2, but picked up speed. The weatherpersons still aren't sure whether it will have time to degrade completely to a tropical storm before it reaches us, or whether it will still technically be a hurricane. If it's still a hurricane, that'll be a first for me - I've never been through one before, just the skirts.

Of course, I won't be through one this time, either. They expect the real center of the storm to hug the coast, so the Southside (which is local-speak for the conglomerate of 6 or so cities just south of the James River) to will probably be pretty battered, but since Williamsburg is the far north end of Hampton Roads (which is local-speak for the conglomerate of 6 or so cities just north of the James River) I suspect we won't see winds any higher than, oh, 40mph or so, with gusts up into the 60s or 70s. That's just a guess, of course. I'm no meteorologist.


Last night, we got a call from T. (You'll remember I mentioned him yesterday has having already lost a car to floods down in Savannah.) He had fled Georgia and come up to stay with his parents, who live in Virginia Beach. But he wasn't calling to let us know he'd evacuated Savannah safely. He was calling to look for another friend, Sara, who had said she might come to stay with us to get out of the weather.

This was news to us.

Matt and I both hate having plans made for us. Especially if we're the last to find out. Matt is even more irritated by this than I am. But on the other hand, this is a hurricane, and the area Sara lives in is close to a river (the York River - if you look at a map of Virginia, the entire coast is one long succession of rivers) and well below sea-level. So when she called, an hour later, to ask if she could come stay with us and bring her three cats (who were, she confessed, prone to peeing on the floor and fighting with each other), Matt told her that she was welcome to come, but not the cats.

It's possible that if we'd been asked about this earlier, we would've managed some way to handle the cats - an enclosure in the garage, perhaps, easily cleaned and far away from our cat, who does not handle the presence of other animals of any sort with anything like grace. But she had waited until well after dark to call, well after the time when we would have been willing to leave our house in the driving rain, and to make matters worse, she had planned to use our house as a refuge apparently hours before telling us this. And she isn't exactly one of our closest friends. It's not that we don't like her - we just don't know her very well. And she has been the blithe and cavalier center of a bunch of romantic complications that played (and are still playing) havok with the hearts and hopes of friends with whom we're much closer. None of these things individually would have caused us to be so rude to her, but added all together...

We were rude. I felt a little guilty about it. I hate it when people are rude and inconsiderate, so I try to actually be polite and considerate of others - but not enough to invite cats into our new house who had been admitted to being ill-trained. There's a difference between being considerate and being a doormat. To make matters worse, T called back to see if everything had been settled, and before I even could tell him that Sara had decided to reconsider her options, he wanted to know if Matt and I were going to be able to go down and help Sara move and store her stuff!

I felt much less guilty at that point. Sheltering someone who has to flee her home, yes, I would do that. If I had been the one to answer the phone when she called to ask for shelter, I might have been persuaded to make arrangements for the cats. But now T was asking me to drive in the black of night and in a driving rainstorm further into danger? How much stuff does an evacuating person need? A suitcase of clothes, and perhaps a few special treasures that can't be replaced! T never did tell me what all this "stuff" was that needed storage, for petesake. To be honest, this imposition made me more than a little irritated at T. I don't know him much better than I know Sara, and in my book, even close friends should hesitate at asking these sorts of favors!

But I still felt a little guilty about Sara. If she came to harm because she refused to abandon her cats, I was going to feel at least partially responsible.

A bit later Colleen called, also looking for help for Sara. Colleen came up with the brilliant idea of letting Sara have the key to our unused - but paid to the end of the month! - apartment. This, I thought was a good idea. I didn't care if Sara's cats damaged bits of the apartment, they wouldn't upset our cat, and Sara would be able to either leave them there with a clean conscience to stay here, or take a sleeping bag and stay there with them. Either way, she'd be out of her potential flood, and I wouldn't have to feel guilty for not helping someone in need. I told Colleen to call Sara and let her know about this plan. (I don't know Sara's phone number, in case you're wondering why I didn't just call her myself.)

Colleen called back about an hour later to say that Sara's landlord had offered her the use of part of another house next to her own which was built on higher ground, with reinforcement designed to withstand flooding, and that Sara had opted for that option, since that way she wouldn't have to figure out how to transport her stuff. I felt ever-so-slightly guilty again, but agreed that it was Sara's decision, and that it certainly sounded easier.

Now I'm trying to figure out if I actually had a reason to feel guilty, or if it's just that whole Southern-hospitality upbringing backfiring on me again.


Well, it's after 10:00 now, and the force of the rain outside my window is really picking up. Time to go watch the Weather Channel some more.