Okay, okay, we get it—this is payback for the 2000 presidential election, isn’t it?

As if Charley and Frances weren’t enough, here comes Hurricane Ivan, seeking to knock out the few remaining teeth Florida has. Where will he hit—the panhandle? The peninsular west coast? The peninsular east coast? The Keys? No one knows, and no one wants to say—thanks to steering currents, Frances’ wake, water temperatures, high pressure areas and low-pressure cold fronts that, over the new 48-72 hours, will all combine in some unforseeable meteorological ballet that will have the unfortunate side effect of deciding all of our fates.

Ivan is already the 9th strongest hurricane in history and, according to some reports, the strongest hurricane to (potentially) hit the United States in a century. Its winds are 160+ MPH sustained, with gusts of 200+ MPH. That makes Ivan very very Category 5, and by the time you start talking about winds that high, all of your building codes and hurricane shutters and safe construction standards might as well be damned, and you might as well be the little pig who built his house out of straw. Not even NASA’s installations can withstand sustained winds that high—and what’s worse, they’re already damaged from Frances!

Here on the Gulf coast of Florida, we’re all tipping our hats to the NHC, which has conveniently placed the estimated 5-day track of Ivan right on top of our town. Thanks, guys. I sure hope every last resident of the United States’ second most fastest-growing city can fit on the woefully-outdated 2-lane I-75, which by the way is the only road out of here.

This is to say nothing at all of our trip to Thailand, which is (was?) scheduled for the early morning hours of Wednesday the 15th. I’d say there’s a pretty good chance that in addition to all the stress of preparing for the “storm of the century” and then possibly having to deal with damage control afterwards, we’ll also have to recreate all of our travel plans with the airlines, hotels and other factors involved. And to think that I wished for 2004 to be over a week ago. Ha…last week we were floatin’ on Cloud 9 compared to where we are now.

Even better still, my parents were scheduled this Saturday to fly down for their first visit in several months. I’d say that at this point, they should only go through with that trip if they’re willing to get stuck here for at least a few days longer than they’d planned. Not that I’d mind having another set of hands to help me install all those goddamn hurricane shutters yet again, mind you. (As least we left ours on the house after Frances, but the shutters on my parents’ house are still “offline” as it were.)

Sigh…and of course the scientific community, graced with their ubiquitous sense of terrific timing, issued a “we told you so” statement which I’ve seen run on several news websites this morning, reminding us all that Florida’s 30-year low hurricane period is now over and that the recent repetitive punches of storm after storm is “the new normal” which we can expect to endure for the next 10-30 years. Thanks, cackblasters! I’m sure I speak on behalf of all Florida residents when I tell you to go shove a drumstick up your bungholes—uh, I mean, when I thank you for putting everything in perspective for us.

Since we already (still) have all of our hurricane supplies, I think that tonight after work I’ll drop by the local EB Games, pick up a couple of new Xbox titles, come home and promptly vegetate myself into a state of utter and complete ignorance as I enjoy what could be my last casual gaming session in quite a while. Hey, why not, right? Some people drown their sorrows in a bottle of booze, I just play video games. At least there’s no long-term physiological damage, unless you count contributions to carpal tunnel syndrome.

It occurs to me just now that one of my final “preparations” should be to call my insurance company and confirm a few details about our homeowner’s policy. It renews on the 12th of September, which may ironically be the day Ivan blows us all off the map, so I want to make sure there’s no chance of the insurer coming back to me and finding some excuse to say “Oh, you’re not covered today” in case there is some damage, God forbid.

Ohhh, good! I just heard that one of our most irritating clients has just sent in a request for us to put together YET ANOTHER custom survey, the execution of which is handled almost 100% by me now that everybody else on the team of 3 or 4 people who used to work on this kind of stuff has left the company. What makes this especially grating is that I just FINISHED one of their fucking survey requests this morning, and was only just now coming down off my high of being able to think, “Hey, I finished the survey ahead of schedule!” Now I see how they reward us for finishing early—they give us more shit to do. I wish this client would get a Category 5 schoolin’.

Off to do battle! Check in with you later.