In the spirit of the season, I will lay down for you some hurricane tips and tricks and do's and don't's. Do you dread putting up your shutters like I do? Keep them up all year! It's easier, you only have to do it once and you are always prepared. This method of preparedness adds a level of cave-like darkness to your home, which is really good you return home from a night of doing the Cabbage Patch for 8 hours straight.
If you have no shutters, do what my neighbors did minutes before Hurricane Andrew: get some cardboard and tape them to on your windows. When you run out of cardboard, make an X with 2 large pieces of tape on your window. These methods are symbolic and spiritual only, the cardboard fies away the moment winds hit speeds in excess of 20 mph and the tape just looks really cool. But, it lets the hurricane know that you were thinking about it, and all hurricanes really want is attention. And destruction.
In my home, I have a dual-cassette boombox and hundreds of batteries ready. Power is likely to go out during a massive storm, and believe it or not: a boombox is necessity. So are mix tapes. It is important to have hours of music ready. Name each mix, for to be ready for any post-storm situation. "Category 2 of Hearts," "Dancing Up a Storm, After the Storm," and "Songs of Making Out To."
Please keep in mind, I am not an expert on the weather or climate changes, neither are the people in the TV that warn us about the storms. I have learned, if they don't make a big deal about an approaching storm it is likely that maybe it will be a big deal storm, or maybe not. Also, if they act like the storm is going to be really destructive, it might not be at all, but maybe it will.
The ideal hurricane preparedness situation is shutters on the windows, taped Xs on the mirrors, disco-balls on the ceiling, batteries in the boombox, dozens of cans of Goya Frijoles Negros, a little gas range, an Igloo cooler stuffed with fake ice, Diet Materva, Ironbeer and Ice Cream of the Future, and 3 or 4 of my closest lady friends. Fact is: nothing brings people closer together than crisis situations, and being trapped in a room for hours with nowhere to go.
