Freaky Weather...

Category 1 hurricane winds in OHIO!??????! 

Hundreds of thousands of power company customers in Ohio woke to no electricity for the second straight morning today, and utilities predicted that some of the 2 million homes and businesses left without power two days earlier by remnants of Hurricane Ike may be in the dark until the weekend.

Schools remained closed in hundreds of Ohio districts including the state's largest, the Columbus public schools. A day after he declared a state of emergency, Gov. Ted Strickland today planned to tour wind-swept areas in the Cincinnati, Dayton and Columbus areas.

One-third of the state's traffic signals were down.

Can you believe this?  Thankfully we have electricity.  A lot of Zanesville is without power.  It led for some good dinner conversations about food storage & 72 hour kits.  The kids were just asking if we could have a hurricane in Ohio... "of course not, they are only on the coast."  Little did I know the effects of one could hit so hard so far away from the coast.  Porter, Victoria, & I had the pleasure of helping a man clear a HUGE fallen pine tree.  Victoria & I were walking & this TINY old man was chain sawing away.  We picked Porter up from school then on our way home we stopped & helped.  By then the little old man's wife had called her nephew, Jim Porter.  It was fun helping.  Anything to get me OUT of my domestic responsibilities.  Our hands were black & sticky.  Porter loved finding the "big" sticks.  He thought the gasoline we used to get the sap off our hands "smelled good."  Victoria loved the apple trees but cried upon finding WAY too many bees.  Mr. Porter farms 800 acres and has COWS!!!  He only lives about 2 miles from our house.  We were warned to stay away from the MEAN cow!  However, we were invited to bottle feed a baby calf.  All in all we've had a great day.