Disaster Mitigation at Disney World

I bet y'all never knew the exciting, jet-setting ways of the housing policy world. This week finds me in Orlando for the FLASH Annual Meeting. (That'd be Federal Alliance for Safe Homes.) It's a fairly small affair, only around a hundred folks, but they've been showing us a great time. (It doesn't hurt that the main sponsors of this sort of thing are reinsurance firms. And, as one of our hosts explained last night, just one of their executives certainly makes more each year than our entire dinner table of 8 people put together.)

In any case! Yesterday we got to go behind the scenes at Epcot on our way to visit StormStruck! It's a ride/experience in 4-D (!! I'm still trying to figure out what the 5-D thing could have been in Gatlinburg, btw.) that replicates hurricanes and tornadoes to edutain guests about disaster mitigation in their own homes. Things like what's the best kind of roof for wind-resistance (answer: hip!) and that you shouldn't, actually, crack or tape your windows before a storm. It was actually a lot cooler than I thought it would be.

Then we had dinner and fireworks back at the Boardwalk Inn where we're all staying. It's a pretty nice place (I'm sitting on the veranda right now listening to jazz while I catch up on some work).

Later tonight we're being shuttled over to Animal Kingdom for a tour and dinner, then my big plan is to sit in the "quiet" pool (one of three here at the hotel) for awhile to properly vacation this up. (I have, of course, been sitting in a conference room all day, learning about disaster mitigation and preparedness. Really!)

Generally speaking, I am not a big Disney fan, but, oh, are they good at what they do: delicious food, helpful staff and a really great room (with a furnished balconey); I'll be kind of sad to leave tomorrow afternoon.

Happy Late Birthday Laura

Sorry, I am late with this. We were so busy packing, unpacking, and driving-I mean Mort was driving-I slept almost the whole way home that I failed to honor Laura with the traditional birthday photo.
Anyway, here it is. Laura, I love you and hope you had a good birthday pre-party since a bus ride does not seem like the way to celebrate (unless you drank both bottles of wine on the bus- in which case, I hope you found your way back to your apartment). I may
be slow but we will always have the Salt & Pepper Museum.

Birthday time!!

It's Carrie Ann's Birthday! 

Happy Birthday, sister!

Pictures

Jill has sent me the discs that have all the wedding pictures on them and a release for printing whatever we want. If there is anything particular you want, let me know!

Disaster Update!

So far we've had a hurricane and an earthquake in the last fortnight. Now we can add monsoon flooding to the tally.

I live on a hill. This morning our building had notices posted that we shouldn't venture into the basement, as it is flooded out. It hasn't really stopped raining since then, and we (DC) are not even getting the worst of it...this is nearby Fairfax County (just west of DC), where this evening they have apparently had up to three inches of rain an hour at times.

Luckily, aside from my basement (which rules out doing laundry on-site anytime soon), nothing but an overwhelming dampness for myself and my apartment. Which is a shame -- you'd think with this mess Metro could at least flood a little bit and be a reason to stay home from work. Maybe tomorrow.

Virginia - such a swell place to be!

Well it's been just over a month in our new place and so far, so good! When we moved in, we bought insurance for our apartment through USAA and have been just dying to make a claim, so this has been a pretty good week in Hampton. We had the earthquake on Tuesday of course, but that didn't do much except scare Virginians out of their minds (you should have seen how panicked everyone was when it snowed 4" here in 2010!). Now Irene is aiming to pick up the quake's slack and really do a number around here, with the rain projected to start tonight and actually 'hit' the Hampton Roads area early Sunday morning with 100 mph winds. Jill and Ledger are still in Chicagoland until Monday, which is probably not a bad thing, although no evacuation order has been given for this particular area yet.

Luckily my line of work lends itself to preparing for emergencies and dire situations, so I was "able to get" plenty of flashlight batteries, chem-lights, and canteens of water in case things get interesting around here. Sadly I anticipate only being able to watch one, MAYBE two movies (if they're short) on my laptop battery before it runs out in the event of power loss. And as far as DVRing anything good on TV this weekend, I've already forgotten about that one. I do have plenty of batteries for my iPod speakers, however.

Today I'm going to finish out the prep work, which should have been done a couple days ago but I was working at the shipyard until last night. This will include topping off the car with gas, reinforcing the windows in the apartment with duct tape, moving our deck furniture, running the dishwasher and washing machine so I don't have to live in filth if the water supply is disrupted, and putting some beer on ice. Nothing too extraordinary there I guess. Once all that's done I'll just get the guitar handy and watch the storm roll in!

Stay tuned for more!

Texas Ranch Round-up

Ranches from all over north Texas compete in the 30th Texas Ranch Roundup. 

Greg was a celebrity judge for the chuckwagon cooking competition.