Everybody has been talking about Isabel and I just needed to take a break from hearing horror stories about power outages and floods. Enough time has passed where I can let you know how PepeCarhart house held up. We shut down the office at noon, so I went racing home to get the house ready for the wind/rain/flooding that was anticipated. Rob was home by the time I got there and we zipped around the exterior of the house making sure that all the drains were clear and fording water away from the house. We got a tarp down to re-direct the anticipated flood of rainwater and we put a sheet of plywood over the tiger trap that leads down the stairs into the basement door.

We went over our work a few times to make sure it was sturdy and then did the important stuff. I marinated a big fat steak for us to put on the grill and we headed out to get ‘provisions’. It’s a crime to have a great steak like that without some red wine! The storm had not kicked into full effect yet so we stopped by a friend’s house to see how they were prepared. After visiting them I felt very UN-prepared. They had a 50 gallon cooler stocked with ice and a ton of food, snacks, milk and beer. I meekly mentioned that we were all prepared except I didn’t have any horseradish for my bloody mary that I was planning on having when I got home. It figures, the Boy Scout had horseradish. They ladled the special imported Russian horseradish into a container for me.

Even if we didn’t have ice for the freezer, a weeks worth of PB&J’s, a crate of pop tarts and 50 gallons of water, we DID have the mixin’s for a great dinner the next night and enough rations to last 3 days. That was enough for me and once I had my horseradish I was on my way home.

I don’t drink a lot of liquor, so a little goes a long way. The winds of Isabel must have blown that out of my head because the first one was so good…. well, you know how the story goes. Next thing I know it’s Friday morning, the hurricane has past us and we have no power.

While I had visions of sugar plumbs dancing through my head, Rob was outside at 2:30 in his foul weather gear watching the trees. The tree that is on our neighbor’s property has a nasty habit of hanging over out driveway and kitchen. It’s a big tree and we were more then a little nervous about it falling. We even parked our cars on the street in case the tree went down. That tree was fine. Our next issue is the gargantuan in our front yard that hangs over our house. That one was making me nervous. That tree lost a biiiiig branch but it didn’t touch the house. We were safe from the trees.

We noticed an interesting wind tunnel effect going on in the neighborhood. The house adjacent to us has a flag pole and some sizeable trees in the front yard. We were watching their flag pole practically touch the ground from the force of the wind, it was scary how strong the wind whipped past their trees. We looked up at our trees to see if we had the same powerful wind but we appeared to get about ½ of the velocity. My theory is that the apartment complexes in the next neighborhood created a wind tunnel and it channeled the wind directly in the direction of our neighbor. Maybe it was the Serengeti tree behind our hose that blocked all the wind. I don’t know but I know that we are ok.

On Friday morning, Sleeping Beauty dragged herself out of bed and the first order of business was to make coffee. We had plenty of coffee and nothing to grind it with. I don’t know how the settlers did it but we jumped in the car and headed out to get coffee at the firs coffee shop that had electricity. Once we got our coffee we headed over to the mall to get some dry ice however when we got there (15 minutes after they started handing it out) they were practically out and were telling people to go home. It was a mad house anyway, we would have been beaten to a bloody pulp by 75 year old crazies who had a couple hundred dollars of pork chops in their freezer.

We decided to jump on our bikes and head downtown to see the disaster. Traffic was an absolute abomination all across Annapolis. What a damn mess. We zipped past cars and smirked. Once we got to the top of the Eastport bridge we were in AWE of what we saw. The water was in the Chart House. The water was in the Yacht Club. The water was up to the road and cars couldn’t drive past the yacht club or the Annapolis Marriott.


We zipped around some back alleys and got to Buddys at the bottom of Main St and there was water there. It was a very surreal vision. We saw a ton of adults and kids frolicking in the stale, murky, putrid water like they were splashing in a bathtub. Yuck, just think of all the scunge collecting in that water. It makes my shiver just thinking about it.

We biked further down to the alley between Riordans and Griffins, where we saw an employee run a hose out of the dinning room and into the street/river to drain all the stagnant trapped water out of his resteraunt. Blechk.

Be biked over to the main gate of the Naval Academy and it was closed because there was 2 + feet of water standing in the way. They had an additional gate open by the Superintendent’s house. It was very weird to see that.

Wow, it's been a month since I last wrote. Well, things have not progressed as fast as they once did. After all the frantic work we put into the house prior to moving in we decided to stop killing ourselves and to enjoy life a little bit again.

We decided to treat ourselves and took a weekend off from house work. We decided that working on the house every night during the week was not very relaxing, so we don't do that anymore.

I feel much more relaxed and we have gone back to doing the things we love. We cook on the grill in the backyard, we take walks around the neighborhood, and we actually watch TV! Not just TV but we broke down and got a satellite dish for the NFL package.

What an ordeal that was, idiot 1 and trainee show up from DirecTV and decide the only place they can put the dish and have it get good reception is in the corner of the lot even though the corner of the roof by the driveway has a clear shot of the Southern sky, above the tree line. They try to find a temporary place to put the dish until they come back out and do it permanently so they install the dish on the huge tree in the front yard. Yes, you read that right. The dish was drilled into the tree in the front yard.

We laughed at how ridiculous the thing looked but the tree somewhat hid the fact we have a dish screwed to it.

Our reception was pretty mediocre. If you farted near the dish we would loose the signal. If you have been reading this you know we like to do it ourselves so we decided to see what we could do about this crappy signal. Rob went out to the tree and moved the dish about while I yelled out how strong the signal is. After a while I started to feel like one of those 'callers' at an auction: "I got a 50, 50, 50 now a 65 we are at 65%, 20 we are at 20, 20, 29 WAIT there's a 70! Don't move. What did you do? Rats, we're at 20,20,20."

We couldn't get the reception any better and actually made it worse. We would up having to call customer service which was the best thing we ever did. After a lengthy conversation with them, we found out the correct coordinates for the dish to face and with the help of a compass we headed out to the front yard to do something about the satellite dish on our majestic tree. 226 degrees is the magic number for us.

We paced around the house and realized that the best spot for the dish is not on the tree, it's by the driveway ... EXACTLY WHERE I TOLD THE DISH GUYS I WANTED THE DAMN THING IN THE FIRST PLACE! We took a 2x4, left over from the bathroom remodeling, and hammered it into the ground and c-clamed it onto the chain link fence. Then we screwed the satellite dish into the 2x4. After some simple adjustments we get incredible reception. Before we moved the dish we were at 50% most of the time, now we are consistently at 90-100%; and we have a lovely new piece of modern art in the front of our house. We call it 'Edgewater Style' sometimes we refer to the 2x4/Satellite dish art as 'Sylvan Shores' but all in all, we are pleased with how clear every Dallas and Raider game comes in with very little interruption. If only the Raiders could complete a pass....