You know you live in Florida when...

[Steady]

1) You have FEMA's number on your speed dialer.

2) You have more than 300 'C' and 'D' batteries in your kitchen drawer.
3) Your pantry contains more than 20 cans of Spaghetti O's.
4) You are thinking of repainting your house to match the plywood
covering your windows.
5) When describing your house to a prospective buyer, you say it has
three bedrooms, two baths, and one safe hallway.
6) You are on a first-name basis with the cashier at Home Depot.
7) The road leading to your house has been declared a 'No-Wake' Zone.
8) You decide that your patio furniture looks better on the bottom of the
pool.
9) You own more than three large coolers.
10)You can wish that other people get hit by a hurricane and not feel
the least bit guilty about it.
11) You rationalize helping a friend board up by thinking "It'll only
take a gallon of gas to get there and back".
12) You have 2-liter coke bottles and milk jugs filled with water in your
freezer.
13) Three months ago you couldn't hang a shower curtain; today you
can assemble a portable generator by candlelight.
14) You catch a 13-pound redfish - in your driveway.
15) You can recite from memory whole portions of your
homeowner's insurance policy.
16) At cocktail parties, women are attracted to the guy with the chainsaw.
17) There is a roll of tar paper in your garage.
18) You can rattle off the names of three or more meteorologists who work
at the Weather Channel and every single newscaster and reporter at
all of the major stations in town.
19) Someone comes to your door to tell you they found your roof.
20) Ice is a valid topic of conversation.
21) Relocating to South Dakota does not seem like such a crazy idea.
22) You spend more time on your roof than in your living room.
23) You've been laughed at over the phone by a roofer, fence builder, or
a tree worker.
24) Having a tree in your living room does not necessarily mean it's
Christmas.
25) The hurricane shutter guy and your roofer are driving BMW's.
26) You know the difference between the "good side" of a storm and the "bad
side."
27) You go to work early and stay late just to enjoy the air conditioning.
28) A battery powered TV is considered a home entertainment center.
29) A chain saw, generator or a gas grill comes as a free gift with every
new Florida mortgage.

[Inabon]

all you need to do is start building concrete houses instead of half a million gibsum board crap.

[Trev]

Hahahahaha, there are some gems in there Steady.

[Cleo]

It is amazing how popular you get, even when your neighbors know that you are a pornographer, when you have a generator, a working satellite dish, a fridge that is making ice, hot water, and the only WiFi spot for miles.

Fifteen days of fueling a generator twice a day has left me thinking that there must be a better way. Looking to get two 55 gallon drums and running a gravity fed line to the generator for the next one. Plus I found out that you can get gas delivered wholesale if you buy 100 gallons at a time.

Hmmm, my house, as is most houses down here, is made out of concrete.

[Trev]

Would you need special insurance to store fuel in those quantities?


I ask because in my old job we used to store paraffin in 55 gallon containers and to please the insurance company they had to be plastic containers and stored in a unit with a water dump extinguisher system.

[Cleo]

Originally Posted by Trev

Would you need special insurance to store fuel in those quantities?

Probably are suppose to but I really don't know. Right now I have eighteen 5 gallon cans stored next to my fence as far away from my house as I can. Just as I was starting to run out of fuel and dreading waiting in line to buy more someone brought me a 55 gallon drum of fuel down from Tampa which got me through enough days that there wasn't any lines by the time I had to fill all my 5 gallon cans up again. When I finally did get power again I had only three 5 gallon cans still full so now I have a bunch of empty cans next to my fence.

I have a wealthy neighbor up the street who bought a 25kw whole house generator that runs off of propane but the generator is still sitting in his yard waiting for permits. He is installing, once the city lets him, an additional 500 gallon propane buried tank in additional to the 250 gallon buried tank that he already has. He is spending 20k doing all of this and that is if he every actually gets it finished.

[Trev]

Originally Posted by Cleo

Probably are suppose to but I really don't know. Right now I have eighteen 5 gallon cans stored next to my fence as far away from my house as I can. Just as I was starting to run out of fuel and dreading waiting in line to buy more someone brought me a 55 gallon drum of fuel down from Tampa which got me through enough days that there wasn't any lines by the time I had to fill all my 5 gallon cans up again. When I finally did get power again I had only three 5 gallon cans still full so now I have a bunch of empty cans next to my fence.

I have a wealthy neighbor up the street who bought a 25kw whole house generator that runs off of propane but the generator is still sitting in his yard waiting for permits. He is installing, once the city lets him, an additional 500 gallon propane buried tank in additional to the 250 gallon buried tank that he already has. He is spending 20k doing all of this and that is if he every actually gets it finished.

20K doesn't seem so steep when you think of how many power outages you guys in Florida could have over the next 10 years. It's easy for me to say that sitting on the other side of the ocean and not needing to spend that kind of money though...

[Cleo]

For about half that I could put in the circular driveway that I've been wanting.

What they really need is generators at the gas stations so that they can still pump when the power goes out. I had people coming by my place trying to bribe me to sell them fuel. Even had a friend and her two children show up in my driveway out of gas for their car so I ended up with her and her children staying with me too.

I think I'll see how my neighbor up the street makes out with his project before I even think of getting anything like he is putting in but having a generator big enough to run the central A/C is very appealing. Trouble is being able to store enough fuel to run for at least 3 weeks since getting refueled before that could be a problem.

I still can't believe how badly I've messed up my hand doing cleanup.

[Trev]

Damn, I didn't know you'd injured your hand, what happened to it?

[Cleo]

Originally Posted by Trev

Damn, I didn't know you'd injured your hand, what happened to it?

On day three of doing cleanup with about less then a half hour left to do I was picking up some broken roof tile from in front of my house when a piece fell off the roof hitting the back of my hand and severing the tendon that goes to the middle finger of my right hand, yes I'm right handed.

Ended up having emergency hand surgery and may need another surgery on it since spending another two weeks using my hand to pour fuel into a generator don't seem to have helped the healing tendon at all for some odd reason.

I just keep on thinking if only I had gotten the cheaper cement roof tiles instead the fancy clay tiles when I got a new roof last year the broken pieces wouldn't have been sharp enough to have cut me. lol

What really gets me is that we had spent two days using chain saws removing broken tree limbs and doing other dangerous stuff and then on day three when I'm just picking up little broken pieces of stuff I get injured.

[Trev]

Originally Posted by Cleo

On day three of doing cleanup with about less then a half hour left to do I was picking up some broken roof tile from in front of my house when a piece fell off the roof hitting the back of my hand and severing the tendon that goes to the middle finger of my right hand, yes I'm right handed.

Ended up having emergency hand surgery and may need another surgery on it since spending another two weeks using my hand to pour fuel into a generator don't seem to have helped the healing tendon at all for some odd reason.

I just keep on thinking if only I had gotten the cheaper cement roof tiles instead the fancy clay tiles when I got a new roof last year the broken pieces wouldn't have been sharp enough to have cut me. lol

What really gets me is that we had spent two days using chain saws removing broken tree limbs and doing other dangerous stuff and then on day three when I'm just picking up little broken pieces of stuff I get injured.

OUCH!

That just sucks big time. It's Murphy's law that dictates you won't cut your leg off with a chainsaw, but you'll bleed to death from a paper cut...

It's one of them things that will take months to heal as well, plus even after the next op (if you need it) you'll have physio to go through to get your hand functioning again.

[Inabon]

Originally Posted by Cleo

It is amazing how popular you get, even when your neighbors know that you are a pornographer, when you have a generator, a working satellite dish, a fridge that is making ice, hot water, and the only WiFi spot for miles.

Fifteen days of fueling a generator twice a day has left me thinking that there must be a better way. Looking to get two 55 gallon drums and running a gravity fed line to the generator for the next one. Plus I found out that you can get gas delivered wholesale if you buy 100 gallons at a time.

Hmmm, my house, as is most houses down here, is made out of concrete.

if i was you i would think of a diesel generator.

[Cleo]

Originally Posted by Trev

OUCH!

That just sucks big time. It's Murphy's law that dictates you won't cut your leg off with a chainsaw, but you'll bleed to death from a paper cut...

It's one of them things that will take months to heal as well, plus even after the next op (if you need it) you'll have physio to go through to get your hand functioning again.

This splint is making me physco.

Yeah they already have me going to physical therapy once a week. When I was there this week there was a cop who got shot in the hand and they have her hand sewn to her belly for a skin graft and another guy who has one finger sewn to his palm for a skin graft after getting his finger caught in a steel beam he was installing so this injury doesn't seem so bad.

Yeah they say I will be making a full recovery but will be going through a few months of wearing a splint and having therapy. I'm just glad that I have decent insurance. Kind of sucks since winter here is when I normally start playing tennis again, bike riding and other outdoor type activities. Driving me crazy that I can't finish the project that I was working on in my backyard.

Hurricanes suck big slimy donkey dicks.

[Mike AI]

Cleo, I would love to have you in my neighborhood.

[Red]

Originally Posted by Steady

1) You have FEMA's number on your speed dialer.

2) You have more than 300 'C' and 'D' batteries in your kitchen drawer.
3) Your pantry contains more than 20 cans of Spaghetti O's.
4) You are thinking of repainting your house to match the plywood
covering your windows.
5) When describing your house to a prospective buyer, you say it has
three bedrooms, two baths, and one safe hallway.
6) You are on a first-name basis with the cashier at Home Depot.
7) The road leading to your house has been declared a 'No-Wake' Zone.
8) You decide that your patio furniture looks better on the bottom of the
pool.
9) You own more than three large coolers.
10)You can wish that other people get hit by a hurricane and not feel
the least bit guilty about it.
11) You rationalize helping a friend board up by thinking "It'll only
take a gallon of gas to get there and back".
12) You have 2-liter coke bottles and milk jugs filled with water in your
freezer.
13) Three months ago you couldn't hang a shower curtain; today you
can assemble a portable generator by candlelight.
14) You catch a 13-pound redfish - in your driveway.
15) You can recite from memory whole portions of your
homeowner's insurance policy.
16) At cocktail parties, women are attracted to the guy with the chainsaw.
17) There is a roll of tar paper in your garage.
18) You can rattle off the names of three or more meteorologists who work
at the Weather Channel and every single newscaster and reporter at
all of the major stations in town.
19) Someone comes to your door to tell you they found your roof.
20) Ice is a valid topic of conversation.
21) Relocating to South Dakota does not seem like such a crazy idea.
22) You spend more time on your roof than in your living room.
23) You've been laughed at over the phone by a roofer, fence builder, or
a tree worker.
24) Having a tree in your living room does not necessarily mean it's
Christmas.
25) The hurricane shutter guy and your roofer are driving BMW's.
26) You know the difference between the "good side" of a storm and the "bad
side."
27) You go to work early and stay late just to enjoy the air conditioning.
28) A battery powered TV is considered a home entertainment center.
29) A chain saw, generator or a gas grill comes as a free gift with every
new Florida mortgage.

Those are great Steady. And I can relate to quite a few.

[Steady]

Red, I thought of you when I came up to this one:

18) You can rattle off the names of three or more meteorologists who work
at the Weather Channel and every single newscaster and reporter at
all of the major stations in town.

When Wilma was heading your way, you said " Anderson Cooper is here", so you knew this was big.

I don't want to take the credit for the above list. A very close friend of mine
who lives is Panama City, Florida emailed me the above.

It is nice to see that no matter how bad thing have gotten in Florida, Flordians still have a sense of humor.