Friday, January 25, 2008

Part 3 of the flood trilogy

Greetings

The flood wasn't important enough to warrant all of these posts, but I don't have anything better to talk about.

In conclusion, here is the last flood post. This is the email sent to friends and family.


Greetings I worked from home yesterday. I had a conference in West Palm Beach at 6:30. I left my house at 5:30 to make sure I could find the place, etc. I was gone for about 3 to 3.5 hours.

During that 3 hours, Boynton Beach (where we live) got between 10 and 12 inches of rain. I didn't know this. I was in a conference listening to a bunch of geeks talk about microsoft products. (Bless them all, every last one of them, including the microsoft products. All hail microsoft. But I digress.). When I got back to the community, I thought it was suspcious that the gate was open. I thought it was more suspicious that the streets and lawns of the main road had been replaced by a lake. And when I say "lake" I'm not being overdramatic in describing a puddle. We're really talking about a lake for as far as the eye could see (assuming you don't have bionics). I just sat there sort of dumbfounded for a few minutes. I called gina and asked her to look out front. Naturally, she was afraid of the rain and was hiding under the coffee table, but I persuaded her to grab her teddy bear and go to the door. She quickly confirmed my suspicion: the house was now on the paved shore of a newly introduced body of water. Huh.

(Side bar: I proposed that we call it lake of jay, but that was lame, so it was rightly rejected. Alternatives are still under consideration.)

I parked my car a few miles away at my brother-in-law's house and got a ride back to the gate. Then I trekked through the water back to the house. Fortunately, it was just water. I feared there maybe some distateful...shall we say, "material", which would've prompted me to stay at a hotel for the night. I walked on the high parts whereever possible. At its lowest, it was well over my ankle. At its worse (remember, of the high ground) it was up to my knee.

Anyway, it was unusual, so thought I'd share. I love rainstorms and, of course, I happened to be gone for the biggest rainstorm that has probably occurred since we've lived her. Bogus. And it was dark, so I couldn't get any good pictures. More bogus. Thankfully, the water only made it about 1/2 way up the driveway. Most of you have never seen our community so I can't really describe it 500 words or less. You're just going to have to trust me. It was odd.

By this evening, the waters had mostly receeded. Then it rained again, and things started to backup into big puddles, but nothing like what happened yesterday. Good times. The cleanup should be fun.

More info here: http://jayallard.blogspot.comThere are some links and a couple of posts about it. I don't really have much else to talk about, so I'm going to milk this for all its worth. Please mark your calendar for the first annual "flood rememberance" ceremony, tentatively scheduled for 1/22/2009.

4 comments:

Mike said...

What kinda of food will be at this ceremony...will rain jackets be proper attire?

Anonymous said...

The flood was caused by global warming and all the fat old people moving to a huge sand dune causing it to sink into the gulf.

Or just rain.

Anonymous said...

Sorry Jay - couldn't resist.

Kevin H

Anonymous said...

You write very well.