Hurricane Frances as of 9/2/04. At this point in time Charleston SC will not take a direct hit but we will still get some ugly weather out of Frances. Just what we need, more water... 

Hurricane Party anyone?? Well actually Gaston was only a Tropical Storm but the only thing that seperated this storm from being a full fledged hurricane was 4 MPH worth of sustained winds. Luckily for us here in the Lowcountry this baby did not develop into a beast. We managed to weather this storm without any major problems. The wind howled and blew tree limbs off but the only thing that those damaged was Justin's bycycle and it needed help anyway so no big loss. One limb that took out Justin's bike would have taken out most of the porch had it been another foot to the right. I am glad it missed.

Power went out around 11 am and stayed out until approximately 5:30 Pm. Yeah, we get to keep our food in the fridge and sleep with some cool air on us tonight. What a treat that will be!! DSL died before the lights did so hopefully that will be back online soon. I know that I know that it is possible to live without high speed Internet but I would rather not.

Now, we can look forward to Hurricane Frances who is predicted to get close to us by the end of next week. Yipes, I hope it just misses us altogether and goes somewhere else. How about going back out into the Atlantic and just spinning itself out?? That might not be a realistic wish but I will wish it for all of us. I spent most of the morning online with my friend Patty who was also online in Mt Pleasant where she weathered the worse of tropical storm Gaston. Patty told me that the wind was blowing water through the door knob where the screws hold it onto the door. The wind must have been blowing pretty hard to do that Patty. I asked Patty if she had put floaties on her three birds just in case the water starting to rise and she laughed. Now that this mess is over and to the north of us we can begin the clean up efforts and watch the waters begin to recede.

Reporting to you live from downtown Charleston South Carolina.

Unwanted wet visitor - Tropical Storm Gaston

Well, whether we like it or not our wet and windy tropical storm Gaton is almost upon us.
As you can see I have been able to post some radar and satellite images for you compliments of Intellicast.com and Counton2.com. It is currently raining on and off and the winds are gusting at 15 to 20 MPH as of 6 am this morning. The good thing is thus far we have not had any bad thunderstorms or lightning or tornados spawning off of the rain bands thus far. Hopefully this is the worst that it will get but I am sure as the storm advances onto the coast that the action will pick up some. I am supposed to work down at the Charleston County Office building today at 3 Pm until 11 Pm but I doubt that it will be open. The last time we were threatened by a hurricane the County Management boarded up things and sent everyone home. I called down to the security desk at 5:30 am and no one answered the telephone so hopefully that means they were sent home. Dowtown Charleston floods at the drop of a few inches of rain and we are going to get more than that before the day is out. I will take some digital pictures as the day progresses so you can see whatever happens.

Katy's long term substitute teaching position lasted all of two weeks and one day. I cant tell you how badly that went for Katy. Katy was so excited to be in her own classroom and poured her heart and soul into what she was doing. Just as she was getting ramped up to do some real teaching when the books FINALLY arrived the principal pulled her into his office and told her that a permanent teacher had been found. Needless to say this upset Katy and apparently took the staff by surprise that the school district was able to find someone so quickly. Nevertheless no matter what the school principal thought or did not think about how quickly a teacher would be found he had to find someone immediately to fill the role of a teacher for that classroom because school was opening for the 2004/2005 school year.

The puppies are getting larger and LARGER as the days go by. My goodness how they have grown in just a couple of days. Well , I guess it has been more like a week or so since they were born. Their eyes are now open and each one has a name thanks to Kristina and Justin overlooking their care.

Last week I found out that I did qualify and was registered for the Workforce Initiative Assistance program. My WIA case worker is very familiar to me in that Kim and her husband used to come visit me on Saturday at Goodwill when I used to work in the service center. Apparently they have been shopping around for a bargain computer and wound up talking to me on several occasions. My oh my, it is a small world after all. :)

I had a meeting with one of the program leaders at Trident Technical College and learned several things. The program leader told me that he is willing to start a class for me and one other person who works at Deyten Shipyard on Monday and Thursday evenings from 6 Pm to 9:30 Pm. The MCP courses would be the modules on installing and implementing Windows 2003 desktop operating system and server. I am not sure WHY they are not offering Windows 2000 though since 2003 gold code has not even been released to the public yet.
From what I can tell they are not even offering 2000 classes. Anyway, the state is picking up the tab for the first two courses and exams to the tune of 999.00 per course so I am going to try and knock these two courses out and then worry about what I will do for the other 5 courses and exams to get my MCSE. Once I pass 4 exams I will have my MCP and MCSA certs which will look nice on my resume. That will hopefully be a good thing as it will make me much more marketable in this very tough IT industry. I also found out that professional certifications are considered continuing education and you can not get student loans or grants to pay for it. That really bites. How can they consider an MCSE certification continuing education when I dont have a college degree yet? Go figure....

Kim at WIA has me set up to take another Keypress basic english and math skills test on this coming up Wed at 8:20 am. I took prep exams two weeks ago that proved I can pass the exams and now they want me to take three modules that last approximately 45 min.. apiece to prove further that I am no dummy. LOL... I suppose if the state is going to pay for my "continuing education" the least I can do is jump through all of the ridiculously tedious process and take their exams. Atleast I have a goal and I am working towards it.
Hopefully I will be able to start taking the first course in September. I believe it is 2 days per week for 5 weeks or something like that. A friend of mine in Atlanta told me that I need to get the TestKing modules for the track that I am on and that this will help me to pass the Microsoft tests since their tests are almost word for word of the actual exams. So, I guess I will do that as well. Anything I can do to get an edge to pass the exams is what I need to do.

On the school front Justin auditioned and got accepted into the Dolphin group at school at Sedgefield Intermediate. Last year when Kristina was there it was called Super Stars but I guess since that music teacher left to pursue her Masters degree that there is a new teacher and they decided to rename the program. Okie dokie smokey, whatever floats yer boat is fine with me. How much is it going to COST me is the million dollar question. LOL Whoever said that public education is FREE was smoking MAJOR drugs and ought to get years of therapy because they are WRONG. School has only begun this year and the kids are already bringing home pieces of paper with notices about this program and that program and how much it will cost us for our children to participate.

Kristina joined the band and is practicing learning how to play the clarinet AND has signed up for Chorus. Kristina found out the other day that even though she signed up for both she is only showing up on the Band List. Kristina loves to sing and I must say she does have a LOT of potential if she will only develop what natural talent she has in that area. So, hopefully the 35.00 monthly clarinet rental will magically disappear and she will devote her energies into voice lessons and chorus. :) Speaking of the clarinet have you EVER tried to push wind through one of those things? Good grief grady how hard can it be? Trust me when I tell you that I almost busted a lung trying to get some air to go through this thing. It was like putting your lips to the tail pipe of your car and huffing and puffing and nothing happening other than your almost having a myocardial infarction. Of course I stopped short of that after managing to get one tiny squeal through that thing.

On the health front here on the home front I have been a bit concerned about my blood pressure spiking on me from time to time. It feels as if I am on speed when this happens and I just hate how that feels. If you ever took no doze to stay awake when you were younger so you could go to school and work two jobs then you remember that feeling. Hopefully none of us took speed for the kick of it..... LOL.... Experiment with drugs?? NOT US.... Why we would NEVER do that would we... hahahahahahah Eh hemmmmmm...
Anyway back at the ranch and my blood pressure and weight problem. My friend Patty was gracious enough to help me purchase a blood pressure machine since ours seems to have started to malfunction and keeps coming up with error codes instead of working. We bought the thing 3 years ago and now it no longer works. Go figure. Anyway I got the blood pressure machine last night at Wallyworld and I have been taking readings about once every two or three hours. I am using Life Clinic Website as a place to record all sorts of health related information. You can record your exercise schedule, blood pressure, glucose, blood sugar levels and much much more. This website is a plethora of information for those of us that are having health problems due to OBESITY. Being over weight is just not good any way you cut it. My doctor friend sent me several documents last night that basically told me that if I want to live long enough to see my kids graduate college that I had better get REAL serious about losing some of this blubber. Sigh and double sigh... This is no surprise to me folks, I know that I know that I need to cut back on the grub intake and get some exercise. In the last year or so I have gotten much better at eating less and exercising more. However that has only enabled me to NOT gain anymore and just maintain my current weight. That means that I need to cut back even more on my calorie intake and exercise more so I can start to burn those unwanted pounds of cellulite. That my friend is easier said than done. KWIM??

IR shot of Gaston at 6:23 am 8/29/04 compliments of Counton2.com. Winds are up to about 15 to 20 mph gusting here in Goose Creek with some rain on and off. Nothing major yet 

Radar image compliments of Counton2.com, as you can see we are in the soup now... This was taken around 5:30 am 

Radar and Satellite image compliments of Intellicast. I woke up at 5:23 am with debris hitting the roof of our trailer. Winds have picked up substantially over night.  

Local Doppler radar at 11:30 pm as we watch the outer bands of TS Gaston coming inland.  

August 28, 2004 11:30pm EST. Tropical Storm Gaston bearing down on the barrier islands of South Carolina between Charleston and Georgetown.  

IR picture compliments of Intellicast of Depression 7 for 2004 sitting off the coast of SC.  

I am veweeey vewwwwy sweeepppiiieeeeee... 

Group sleep over and under and on top and well, you get the picture huh? 

Our new puppies thanks to Angel and Sammy!! 

Around noon today Charlie is expected to make landfall between Charleston and Myrtle Beach SC.  

On the 12th day of August my true love sent to me.....

Five new furry puppies..... Lets see, not only do we have Bonnie blowing through south Georgia and Southeast Carolina but we also have Hurricane Charlie to be making his appearance on the Florida peninsula around Friday evening and then tracking up the SE coast of the United States. On top of this all Angel decided to give birth to 5 puppies.

So far so good. All the puppies survived the birthing process and the weather has not been too horrible YET... We have gotten plenty of rain so there will probably be some localized flooding here in Charleston and the tri county area. I am watching the radar thanks to Channel 5 News and Intellicast.com and we have a couple of storm cells inching up the Eastern Coast that will be dumping lots of rain and wind on us in the next 2 hours. Once that happens we should have about 24 hours of calm before Charlie comes calling. I believe that we will probably see a lot more action out of him than what Bonnie gave us. I hope and pray I am wrong and that Charlie just peters out and dies or goes right back out into the Atlantic ocean and misses us alltogether. We had a cold front that helped to push Bonnie back out to the coast line and moved her up the coast at a high rate of speed today which also helped to break down the tropical storm and weaken it considerably.

I was in Moncks Corner today for most of the day and apparently a tornado touched down there. I was in the South Carolina Unemployment Commission office signing up for the WIA program so I did not notice the bad weather sneaking up on us. When I left there were several very ugly thunderstorms bearing down on Highway 17 and Main Street.
WIA stands for Workforce Initiative Assistance. This program is designed to help displaced or underemployed workers such as myself to get back to within 80% of my previous salary after I experienced a lay off or a reduction in work from an employer. That is what happened to me back in Feb of 2002 when Ahold USA laid off 36 employees and then let go a lot of their contractors (me included). We have been reeling from that financial disaster every since. From what I have been told today I definitely qualify for this program and my case worker is working out the details as to how she is going to certify me so that I can be elligible and be officially enrolled in the program.

I spent the entire day filling out my life history, work history, family history and doing some online testing on their computer lab. I had to pass a basic math test, reading and reading comprehension exam which I passed. The only thing that they did not require of me was a blood sample which I am surprised after all the other things I had to do. Once I am deemed elligible and enrolled in the program I will be able to tap into training funds that are given to the state for folks like me. WIA will help me to get funding through WIA as well as connect me with participating technical schools or colleges in this area that have agreements with the State and Federal government to provide training programs. WIA will also help me to find and procure any grants or student loans that I need to help finance the training. I guess you could say that this is a VERY positive thing. There is light at the end of the tunnel because it means that once I get some certification in either Information Technology or training in a different field it will enable me to break free from my current DEAD END job that pays poorly and has NO benefits. That is the goal anyway and after today I am well on the way to making this dream a reality.

IR image from Intellicast showing you the eye of Hurrican Charlie and his forward movement.  

Bonnie is almost worn out but now we have to watch Hurricane Charlie which is predicted to make landfall sometime Friday evening in Florida and then move up the coast. That puts Charleston SC right in the path of this storm which could be a level 3 Hurricane by the time it hits.  

We are SE of Columbia about 20 miles from the East Coast. Its raining hard and we have flood advisories and Tornado Watches in affect until 6pm. Other than that not much else... 

As you can see from this IR image (supplied by Intellicast.com) Bonnie has begun its journey onto shore in the Florida Panhandle.