“Unless you’ve been living under a rock…” is a fairly cliche way of starting a post out about something everybody knows about, but, fine.. Hurricane Irene is just about touching down in North and South Carolina as I type this, and is set to ravage the east coast well through the weekend. Of particular concern to myself is the fact that it will be slamming Atlantic City directly sometime tomorrow night, with the eye of the storm passing by early Sunday morning. You can check the storms progress using the hurricane tracker tool below on weather.com:
http://www.weather.com/weather/hurricanecentral/tracker
I video chatted a bit with my parents last night, who I’m awfully worried about due to the fact that our house is 1 block from both the bay and the ocean in Atlantic City. There’s been a mandatory evacuation issued for Atlantic City and its surrounding neighborhoods, and in fact, officials are shutting down access to the island at 6:00 PM today. In other words, if you leave the island now, you’re basically not going back until Monday. While I shouldn’t be concerned, since my mom told me last night that they would be leaving for my brother’s house, my parents are particularly stubborn. I have a feeling that they may end up being too inconvenienced to actually leave and will end up staying behind. They do have a point in the fact that our home has been standing for over 100 years, and has probably endured a quite a large number of hurricanes before any of us were on this planet. I’m a beach bum at heart, and don’t think I’d be able to drag myself away from an opportunity to witness a tremendous storm firsthand. Then again, I’m about 25 years younger, fully capable and in shape, and was an ocean lifeguard for 9 years in Atlantic City and did my fair share of rowing lifeguard boats and swimming in the ocean in rough seas.
I can remember over a dozen hurricanes that passed through Atlantic City while I was growing up, and a countless number of smaller tropical storms and Nor’easters, but never can I recall a mandatory evacuation of the city. In addition, all roads into Atlantic City are being closed off, even if you are a resident of the city and as of 6:00 PM tonight, you won’t be able to get back onto the island. My mom and dad, predictably defiant of the warnings, don’t want to leave the house. Quotes include, “This house has been standing here for over 120 years” (this is actually true), “They always issue warning for storms..” etc. My mother went as far to say that our neighbors said if there were any damage to happen to our homes that there “probably wouldn’t be an Absecon island left anyway”. Well, mother and father, I’d rather lose the family house than my two parents, so please go to Constantine and Catherine’s tonight. I’m sure that my parents have not been tracking the severity of the storm. Atlantic City is going to get hit with the most powerful part of a category 2 hurricane, which I don’t think has happened in our lifetime. Casinos are kicking people out and closing down for the weekend.
The most jarring thing I found while checking on Facebook last night though, there have been reports that even Wawa’s has closed. That is serious business. Wawa’s never closes. I’ve been to Wawa’s *while* hurricanes were hitting the island. I even walked there, just to have fun in the storm because it’s awfully fun to get blown around a bit by mother nature. There were usually other people there picking up shorties like everything was a casual. That’s not the case this time around. Wawa’s is shutting it’s doors.
Apparently, it’s not going to be a picnic up in NYC either. MTA is closing down all transportation in and out of the city starting at noon tomorrow, effectively shutting down the city, and evacuating zones near the Hudson and East rivers. In short, just to recap:
- Over 100 homes have been demolished in the Caribbean already.
- Absecon island has been issue a mandatory evac and is closed today at 6:00 PM EST.
- North Carolina is currently being ravaged
- MTA will be shut down tomorrow at noon, effectively shutting down NYC.
- Residents of west Hoboken have been told to evacuate and that essentially their homes *will* be underwater on Sunday night.
Shit just got real. I had a conversation with my buddy, Sehrope, about possibly grabbing some drinks tonight before the storm hits. He let me know that he stocked up on survival supplies for the weekend:
For those that are curious, here is a close up of the image:
… and, yes he’s serious. And that’s why I like Sehrope. Armenians and Greeks think alike. Luckily, I’ve got some food in the case that he runs out of whiskey. God only knows how to help him if he runs out of cigarettes.
So, in other words, stay safe out there everybody! I can’t blame my beach brethren for wanting to stay at the shore… I’d probably do the same, but just make sure that you’re stocked up on water and supplies for the weekend. They’re really building this one up to be cataclysmic, and I haven’t heard this much concern about a storm hitting South Jersey / NYC as long as I’ve been around. Hopefully I’ll be able to grab some nice pics with my camera this weekend









Leave-A-Penny… no, really. Just leave it.
You know those Take-A-Penny, Leave-A-Penny trays at checkout counters at stores and newsstands?
Yah, those. The ones where if you have some left over pennies or change that you don’t want jingling around in your pockets, you leave it there for the next person to take so that they can prevent breaking a dollar for an annoying $0.03 cents added to a bill from tax. Very convenient for those that don’t want a completely irrational amount of $0.97 of money in their pocket.
Well, today I went down for an iced coffee break, and ended up getting Twix bars as well. The bill came out to $3.10, and I didn’t have any change in my pocket for the extra $0.10. Noticing that there was a dime in the “Take-A-Penny, Leave-A-Penny” tray, I grab the dime and hand it to the cashier. She promptly takes it out of my hand and puts it back in the tray, and exclaims, “Hey! You can’t take that!”. Confused.. I ask, “What do you mean. Why can’t I use that?” She says, “That money is not for you.” Here is where the confusion sets in.
“Who is that money for?”, I ask.
“For the boss.”
“Well, then why is it in this tray?”
“Because people leave it there if they don’t want the change.”
“Correct… but if it’s not for everybody else to use, why do you even have the tray. Why wouldn’t people just tell you to keep the change, at which point, you would put it back in the cash register. More importantly, why is this called ‘Take-A-Penny’ tray, and also labeled as such, if I can’t use the change in it?”
Long story, short. This conversation went on for a good minute before the lady got so fed up with me she just took the dime, and put it directly back into the tray. I stood, perplexed for a minute, wanting to tell her that if she doesn’t want anybody else to use it that she should remove it from the tray, but I figured I’d let her get in another argument with somebody else before they decided to re-evaluate the system. When I came back to tell my co-workers, one women commented on how I remind her more and more each day of Larry David.
Given the amount that I comment/complain on this post about every day ridiculous things, I couldn’t help but to agree with the assessment. In any case.. newsstand vendors: Do not place “Take-a-Penny, Leave-a-Penny” trays out if you don’t intend on your customers actually using said tray. Certainly do not label it as such either. That’s just silly.
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