Cant Keep Quiet!

No, not the presidental race.  Hurricane season.

In 2004, school started and was in session for less then a week when hurricane Charley decided to come visiting.  This year it is Tropical Storm Fay that is expected to hit this area sometime tomorrow or Wednesday.

School started today for most counties in Central Florida.  Most of these counties have closed their public schools for tomorrow.  We won't know if we're back in session on Wednesday until tomorrow afternoon.

There are some important differences between Charley and Fay.  Charley was a level 3 hurricane when it hit Florida's shores.  It was also very, very fast.  Fay is still just a tropical storm.  It might be a level 1 hurricane when it hits Florida's southwest coast tomorrow morning.  It's also moving slowly and a bit erratically.

For a while it looked like Fay would just skirt the coast of Florida.  Now it looks like it hit between Sarasota and Naples.

Hopefully this is a one day only event for the entire hurricane season.  I definitely don't want to get into the school starts/school's on hold cycle that happened in 2004.

If you're interested, read my farewell to 2004's hurricane season.

Technorati Tags: hurricane Fay

I've been trying all morning to think about how I wanted to word this post. I was still a kid when Gerald Ford was president so most of my views have come more from looking back at what he did than from first hand memory of his presidency. My friends and I had more important things on my mind back then, like how to get all the mud out of our clothes and hair before heading home from an area of Mead Gardens we called "Muck Land." (Swimming in the stream in Mead Gardens did a real good job.)

I can say that I have a lot more respect for Ford and his brand of Republicanism than I have for Reagan and his or Bush Jr and his. And yes, I do feel that all three demonstrated very different styles of politics. I won't say that I thought Ford was a great president, though.

In my quest to figure out what I wanted to write, I've been reading what many other people have written about Ford. I managed to find a post that perfectly expressed my feelings over Ford's passing.
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My memories of September 11, 2001 are somewhat surreal.

At the time I was working as a special education teacher at an elementary school that had just been renovated. School had opened only a month before and the workers had finished working on the school during the first week. We didn't have internet access in the classrooms and the cable still wasn't working for the televisions.

My class was in a portable. I was a pull out teacher which means that I pulled the students from their classes each day for about an hour to help them build the skills they were lacking.

My class was new at the school. The previous year the unit had been housed at a different school. The furniture for my classroom arrived the Friday before school started. Many items that had been ordered for the room had still not arrived a month later. One of those items was a radio/boom box.

Basically, I was cut off from any outside information.

Shortly after 9:00 on 9/11, my principal came to my classroom. I was working with some second grade students when she interrupted the class and asked me to step out on the portable landing. I did as she asked, keeping my foot in the door so I could hear the students and look in from time to time. I had an aide but she was out of the room assisting some 1st grade students in their classroom at the time.
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If you lived in Florida 20 years ago today, you can probably tell somebody where you were and what you were doing on January 28, 1986. I know I can.

20 years ago today I got up only because I had to go take an exam at the University of Central Florida. If I'd had my choice I would have stayed in bed where it was warm. In my bed, under the covers, it was warm. Outside my covers it was icy cold.

Unfortunately, I couldn't miss the exam, so I forced myself out of bed, got dressed, and then headed off to UCF.

I took my test — aced it — and then headed home. I was listening to a radio station as I drove. I couldn't tell you what songs I was listening to. It was just background noise.

Just as I was getting home a small moving van pulled up to the house. My parents had recently had to move my father's mother from her apartment in a retirement complex into the nursing facility there. The moving van contained the furniture from her small apartment. After I put my things in the house, I started helping my father and the movers bring my grandmother's belongings inside the house.

Not too long after we started the phone rang. I went to answer it. It was my maternal grandfather. He asked if we'd been listening to the tv or radio. When I told him no he told me that we should turn on the tv. The Challenger had exploded.

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