Just Add Water and Wind

I made it through the storm with power in tact.  (Lost it later due to wiring issues, but that's all better now.) 
Obviously not everyone was so lucky.  My family members all have their power back now (as of Friday) but in the nature of storms and other natural disasters they were right next some areas that are devastated.  I rode out hurricane Bob in Stonington, Connecticut.  We had spent the night before, helping people move floating docks and such to safer harbors. My grandfather was alive, but ailing, so the power outage which froze his adjustable bed in an upright position, was a little trying.  But we were lucky then, and while trees and boats and water damage affected a lot of neighbors, Rhode Island took the brunt of that one.  But Sandy made up in size what some said she lacked in power.
So, there's stuff.  Stuff everywhere, water logged or tree damaged or fire damaged.  And it'll be like this for a while.  A local friend had a tree, probably storm loosened crash into their house Friday.  Water has not receded everywhere.  And water damage plus power outages bring their own challenges.  The Stonington Free Library, where I read so, so many of their books, has a tree on it. 
I made use of the internet to peruse the Stonington-Mystic Patch - which deserves kudos for helping me stay updated virtually with things in my family's corner of Connecticut, as did the New London Day and the Westerly Sun. The Patch has this lovely compendium of nice things people did to help each other out, including the folks who helped the Mystic book store get all their books moved to the second floor, while they cleaned up the water damage.
I love this tumblr (totally SFW, by the way, unless your current connection frowns on tumblr) with messages from Katrina survivors to Sandy survivors. 
Also, if you want to help, you have likely been bombarded with suggestions.  To add to that, Donors Choose has some Sandy-affected classroom projects. 
And, as the lessons of Katrina and other hurricanes have taught us, recovery is a long, long process, but it does happen in many small ways. 

7 Things: The Powerless Edition

I lost power for several long hours last week, so fingers crossed am hoping I might make it through this historic hurricane thing without repeating that experience, but know that somebody, somewhere, is just going to lose power for some time.  (I knew that even before all the robocalls.)
Now, admittedly last week's experience was entirely different because it affected only part of my building (which was terribly annoying because I could see people with power, there was even power in the hallway right outside my door).  But my experiences in prior hurricanes and outages have offered up these tidbits.  For a more complete (ie, less frivolous list), please go somewhere like here. There is also a hurricane app. 
1. LED candles, camping lanterns, these types of things are your friends.  Real candles are pretty but require lots of vigilance.  If you like the flickery light, you can get LED flickery bits. 
2. Crank radios or radios that operate on a form of batteries you have a large stockpile of are a great idea.  Some of them even have attachments that will charge your other things. 
3. Crap food is your friend.  Seriously.  Food that requires little or no refrigeration or preparation is a great thing to have on hand.  Yes, you may still be able to order pizza.  As the friend of a former pizza deliverer, I'm going to ask you to not.  Or if you must, tip super well.  If you don't feel safe going out to get it, don't ask others to do that. 
4. Backlit devices are your friend.  If you have really good lanterns, you may be fine, but generally it's hard to read by flashlight.  Backlit devices work really well.  However, if your backlit device is also your phone, you may not want to use that too much.  Or have a battery extender, solar recharger, or some way to keep that available. Booklights are also good.  It makes it easier to angle the light and continue on.  They also work great with non-backlit devices, be they eink or paper. 
5. Card decks. Card games work well in low light.  And you can play solitaire or crazy eights or learn a new card game. 
6.  It helps if you are on city water, but stay hydrated.  (Especially if you are eating all that crap food.) 
7. Barring a compelling reason, stay inside during the storm.  Sure, you get to make choices about your safety, but things can change quickly in a storm and you don't want to be the person the rescue crews have to come rescue. 

Fat Kid Rules the World

I had a chance to attend a local screening of "Fat Kid Rules the World".  It's coming to Video on Demand, so that if you don't happen to live in one of the cities where it's getting a longer run, you too can check it out soon.  I enjoyed the movie, even though I had not, at the time read the book.  (Part way through now.) So, I enjoyed this interview here, with Matthew Lillard about the process of getting the thing made. 
The story follows the Troy (who is as the title suggests fat, but as the interview states, this is not a movie about weight so much) who is befriended by Marcus, a homeless punk band high school dropout, and the intersection of their lives.  I found the movie really enjoyable and thought it did a great job taking a book told in first person (where so much of the information is transmitted through the internal monologue) and just letting there be moments of silence.  This is not to say that there is no dialogue, this is just to say, that sometimes you find with such book to movie transitions they fill in a lot of dialogue to make up for it, and (again, can't say for sure, since I haven't finished the book yet) there were moments where the characters just glanced back and forth and it just worked really well.  So, I recommend this movie.  (And the book.)

TBR Challenge 2012: The Boys Next Door

Yeah, so, kinda, sorta, accidentally ignored the theme genre this month again.  I read a contemporary YA romance. I mean, technically, it had some suspense, but, yeah, nobody was on the run or anything. 
I had Jennifer Echols' The Boys Next Door sitting in my TBR pile and I recall starting it last year and then apparently I got distracted by something shiny and never made it past the first chapter. 
So, I picked it back up.  It is the story of Lori, who is surrounded by boys. Her mother passed away, leaving her with her dad, her older brother, and, as the title implies next door to three brothers.  So, she gets the guy brain.  But now she's working on being a girl, or being seen as one by Sean, the middle Vader brother.  Except she sidles up to the youngest Vader brother Adam at a party, and since she realizes that means Sean was making out with Adam's girlfriend out front, they decide to try fake being together to make everyone jealous. 
You probably won't be terribly surprised to discover how that turns out, but this book was really enjoyable for having great relationships and interactions.  It's told in first person and yet I totally got the family, and the sibling dynamics and even the parental reactions. 

The Importance of Zeroes

I once spent a fascinating amount of time calling a phone company.  I was trying to pay a bill (not my own, but for a relative lest you thin I am some kind of strange phone bill fairy) and had managed to locate an old bill with the account number but I couldn't find a recent bill with a charge detail.  I got to the total amount due, and while not mortgage payment territory, it was large enough that I just wanted to make sure nothing hinky was going on in the billing.  I had to get transferred several times and explain my request before finally getting to a person who could provide the info. So, I can only imagine the frustration this French woman felt when she received the final bill for her service and discovered the termination fee was apparently ten trillion pounds. Or eleven quadrillion euros. 
She called the phone company to let them know that clearly there was some sort of error, and the first few operators gave her the party line that the fees are automatically calculated, they have no control over that, and so on.  Finally she managed to get to somebody who took a look and realized that the decimal point had shifted a tad too far to the right and instead of €11,721,000,000,000,000, it should actually be €117.21. Oops.