... or so the St. Pete Times' front page said Monday in 60-plus-point type letters. I couldn't have said it any better. The last 48 hours have been windy, rainy and sleepless. I saw lil' whitecaps form on our pool. Sometimes the wind appeared tangible, like those old cartoons of Old Man Winter pursing his lips and blowing curlicue blasts of air. The power goes out occasionally, the longest being six hours yesterday, but nothing to really complain about. Others in Florida have gone weeks without power, which must be hellish, given our everyday dependency on power.

   I forgot to save this blog halfway through the first draft and now have to start over again. My bad. In the four years we've lived here, this is the first major hurricane season we've experienced.

   Monday afternoon, there was a break in the nasty weather for an hour, so Karen and I went up on the roof to inspect the area where moisture's starting to seep in on the ceiling. Our house is twenty years old and has the original roof, which, in Florida, means it's possibly due for replacement. Some roof tiles blew off, and we grabbed our handy Black Jack roof cement and touched up what we thought might be the trouble spots, until we can hire someone who knows what they're doing. But with all the other, more dire roof-repair needed elsewhere, I don't think it'll happen this week.

   We wrapped my collection of comic-book boxes up in a couple of waterproof tarps, held together by bungees. Again. We took the plants, pool furniture and garbage cans in. Again.

   Now we gotta wait on friggin' Hurricane Ivan...then another one, whose name escapes me. Gotta invest in plywood and a digital camera (for insurance purposes).

   On a slightly askew note, for weeks, I'd been craving a Fudgie the Whale since I saw it on the Food Network (that fast-paced married life, lemme tell ya)! It's an ice cream cake from Carvel, available only at Carvel stores, shaped like a happy brown whale. I'd buy it for the name alone. Say it out loud: Fudgie the Whale. Now a little louder, with a little more bass in your voice: Fudgie the Whale! Anyway, I've been whining for one for weeks. We'd planned on getting one for a social gathering that got aborted this past weekend due to the weather. I insisted we get one for ourselves(okay, MYself). Good thing I listen to my wife sometimes, or (with the power outage) I'd bear witness to a dripping, discorporating Fudgie.

   Okay, I'm outta stories for now...actually it's just fatigue...