Let me preface this by saying I have no idea what I'm doing.  I'm going to type something, I'm going to press publish, but I have no clue what form the finished product will take.  So bear with me.

As everyone knows, we're in the middle of, or soon will be in the middle of, a hurricane of epic proportions.  Sandy.  Frankenstorm.  Whatever you choose to call it, I call it a tremendous pain in the butt.  I've been running around like a lunatic all day setting up tarps along our foundation to prevent water from getting into the basement (where we'll be camping out during the peak of the storm, which is (we are told) in about 2 or 3 hours).  Below is a picture of a fairly sophisticated tarp system I erected, complete with bowline knots (from my sailing days at summer camp), sand bags (or in this case a leftover mulch bag... you can't see it, but it's there), and in back left corner what you may recognize as our dog poop can.  Nice.  Desperate times, right?  Hopefully the sheer mass of golden/beagle dump will be enough to keep the tarp down.  An unfortunate side effect of this sort of tarp contraction is that when the wind really picks up, it acts like a sail.  Hopefully my bowlines will hold.  If they don't, we may have a can full of turds flying through our back yard, hopefully away from the house.

Side story, unrelated to the storm.  Today Michelle was cooking Jackie some chicken nuggets.  Jackie asked me to put her in her high chair (really Hilly's high chair at this point, but sometimes Jackers regresses).  I was busy running around storm-prepping and didn't oblige her request.  A few minutes later I hear Jackers say something along the lines of "Dada, I'm up."  I turned around to find that she had somehow monkeyed her way up and into the high chair on her own.  She was very proud of herself.  See below.

Anyway, we're expecting a long night.  In the basement.  All six of us.  Yes, it's gonna be interesting.