In The Dark Again

Posted by: on Oct 31, 2011 | No Comments

First let me say I cannot believe that it’s been 6 weeks since my last post. I’m sure I’ve had something relevant to say, just can’t seem to find my writers mojo lately but the latest blast of mother nature seems to have done the trick.

As I’m sure most of you know, ma played another nasty trick on the northeast this past weekend and dumped several inches of white, wet, gloppy snow all over the place. The major problem with this is that fall foliage is not done in my little neck of the woods so most of the leaves are still on most of the trees.  Do you know what you get when you mix white, wet, gloppy snow on top of leaf laden trees? You get one big ass mess that’s what you get. So, for the 2nd time in two months, I’m in the dark along with 600,000 or so of my NJ neighbors. First we had an earthquake (which I admit was kinda cool), then we had Irene (which I admit was totally not cool) and now this (which is very uncool).

My 3 block neighborhood looks like a war zone.  My street has 2 very large branches down that each block about 1/2 the width of the road. One door away from us, the street that crosses ours is closed.

Tree down in the middle of the street one house away from ours.

There are multiple small to medium sized branches down all over the place and several wires as well. We have no electricity, no heat, no cable (and no internet access which is very bad for an information addict such as myself) but we do have hot water so all is not lost. Other areas in and around Short Hills are worse, much worse. Huge trees blocking roads or laying on houses, wires down or almost down, houses with severe damage. The other thing we do not have or at least I have yet to see are power company utility trucks or any sort of clean-up crew on the streets. I’ve heard rumors that they are out there but I have yet to encounter one and I’m hearing some major concerns that this situation may take a week to clean up. A week? Are you f’ing kidding me?

In the last 2-1/2 months we’ve had the first measurable earthquake in decades, the first hurricane to make a direct hit on NJ in over a century (which left my house in the dark for almost 60 hours) and the worst October snowstorm in history. Oh, and let’s not forget last winter’s blizzard and record setting snowfall. All of this has to make you think that our planet has taken one good look around, found out that there are now over 7,000,000,000 people (as of today as a matter of fact) crowding this little orb and said “enough. You people need to get a grip on things. 6,000,000,000 was one thing but 7? Really?”

But you know what’s going to happen? Not much. The snow will melt, the trees and branches that have fallen will get cut down, the wires will be replaced, the power will be restored, fridges restocked and life go on as we move ever faster towards having 8,000,000,000 on our already over crowded planet and the next natural disaster that is sure to happen just as soon as we recover from this one.

The good news is the forecast calls for temps to get back to near 60 degrees and the snow should melt in time for the weekend because I have tee times on Saturday and Sunday. After what I’ve been through the last couple of day, I really need to get out and whack the crap out of that little white ball. Probably will end being a disaster but at least this one will be man made and 600,000 of my fellow NJ residents won’t be left in the dark.