Well, it was quite a day of terror this past Friday. Hurricane Charley was due to hit the Tampa area hard. Karen and I spent the previous two days preparing for this event. We topped off the cars' gas tanks. We began filling our coolers with ice from the refrigerator's ice machine, in case the power went out and we needed to preserve food. Our neighbor was kind enough to lend us his extension ladder, so I went up to trim tree branches that brushed against the house. If the winds were strong, the branches could lash at our roof. If the winds were even stronger, the point of this preparation would be rendered moot.

   There was call for an evacuation in our county and surrounding counties. Thankfully, we live on of the few areas of high ground, so flooding was never a concern (when we bought the house, we had no desire to pay flood insurance). Having the walls blown down most certainly was a concern. We stayed put, hunkering down in the Geraci compound. Karen was the model of preparedness. She knows a lot about weather patterns, having grown up in Georgia which has had it's share of deadly tornado activity through the years. Karen's father was a pilot, who had to learn everything about the weather he would be flying into. He instilled an appreciation of nature's whims on his two daughters. I just followed her lead.

   We'd recently had some minor roof- leaking problems (it's an older house), but we'd used Black Jack roof cement and it's seemed to have helped the problem. So if a representative from Gibson Homan's Black Jack is reading this, and thinks an endorsement deal with a comic book artist would be a neat marketing strategy, Karen and I are available!

   We stocked a closet in the center of the house, away from any open windows. Inside, we had lots of the necessary items: Bottled water, batteries, flashlight, radio, medicine, pillows, towels, paper towels, toilet paper, paper plates, plastic utensils, plastic bags (you have to shelve your hang-ups about the environment when the environment is about to kick your ass). Also stashed away was evaporated milk, and other foodstuffs. Not to mention Gromit's accoutrements, including his doggy bed and food. I wasn't wild about being in such an enclosed space with Gromit, as he's developed an Oedipus complex over the later years.

   We taped the windows with wide packing tape. Some of our neighbors had plywood placed over their windows, which made us plan to purchase some in the future, provided we'd survive. Karen took everything off the counter areas, so the toaster, the dishes or knife block full of steak knives wouldn't launch themselves at us.

   On Thursday, the weather was mild, but the evacuation was in progress. It was still safe for me to mail out some Captain America pages to Marvel. Usually, I zip down to my local UPS Store a few miles away, where they have the best photocopier for black and white comic art I've found yet (I don't use a copier enough to justify renting one). However, when I started out on the road, I saw a bumper-to-bumper vehicular exodus that discouraged me from driving further. I eschewed the copying process and just taped the box shut, tossed it in a UPS drop box near my house. Only once in all my freelance years have I had to use full-sized copies when a package was missing or destroyed, so the odds were in my favor in more ways than one. Unfortunately, the odds weren't with the populace of Punta Gorda and Port Charlotte.

   Around 3:00 PM on Friday, the weather was still mild, but we'd expected the hurricane to arrive within a few hours. Having done all we could to prepare, I was going quite out of my mind, pacing the floor as we watched The Weather Channel nonstop. I couldn't take the constant tension anymore. I thought: "I'm going for a swim in the pool, screw it." So I did exactly that for forty minutes or so. When I came inside, Karen, with tears she could no longer hold back, exclaimed that the hurricane went inland early and was going to miss us.

   We were safe, but not comforted, as we watched others suffer the devastation of a hurricane, the innocently-named Charley.