Out Go the Lights!

AP here:

Cathy's sister Julie came to visit and they were supposed to go to the beach for a long weekend. They drove down but the next day they were forced to leave the beach and come home due to mandatory evacuations. Then Hurricane Irene came and took out the power. Not that Tonka cares about the lights but he does care about the Air Conditioning. I care about the monsoon rain since I have to drag him out to go potty even in regular rain. The wind was whipping and the rain was really coming down but we had power when we all went to bed on Saturday. At 2:00am the power went out and by 3:00am the house was stuffy and Tonka was barking to go potty. He went out and laid down under the porch where the sideways rain had already gotten the carpet wet about a quarter of the way in towards the house. I stayed up to keep an eye on him and the water and afeter about an hour he came back in and went back to bed. I sort of slept another hour in the recliner in front of him for a while and then got up. Time to get the generator in place and full up with gas. Thankfully the generator we have (thank you Mom and Dad) can power the refrigerators, the fish tank and some fans just fine. It stayed windy for most of the day and Tonka was enjoying the breezes. Once the wind died down the sun came out and it got hot and humid. Everyone moved to the basement for the night since it is cooler and that is where Tonka usually sleeps anyway. The power was only out from 2:00am Saturday to 12:30am Monday but definitely long enough to make you miss it. When it came back on of course all the lights that we had flipped the switch on came on and woke us up. Julie and I shut all the windows, and put the house back in order.  It was great to turn off the noisy generator and climb back in a real bed in the air conditioning - it was not great to wake up to a blood stained carpet where Tonka had another nose bleed.