Awaiting the "Frankenstorm"

How are we doing for storm preparation, readers? Here's the National Hurricane Center's prediction as of time of writing, early afternoon on Friday 26 October:

So Philadelphia will likely be hit late Monday, early Tuesday

The prediction, as I understand it, is that the hurricane, which is pretty large and so has a lot of energy in it, will hit a nor'easter when it gets far enough north, creating "perfect storm" conditions on a possibly unprecedented scale.

I was writing a lot about this kind of thing back in August. Was anything I wrote helpful? I think the only thing I would add at this point is that a person shouldn't watch too much TV and shouldn't keep hitting refresh on weather websites. The storm is looking to be bizarrely strong and dangerous, but the hype and alarm aren't helpful once one has the basic facts.

As for preparation here at the Rowhouse Livin' household, we were coincidentally out of eggs on Friday, so I went the supermarket before noon. As I browsed the aisles, I honestly couldn't think of anything else I needed -- my migraine earlier in the month barely affected our pantry supply of easy-prep and ready-to-eat foods, and the only thing I was out of was ground cinnamon.

And we can't be out of cinnamon as we approach pumpkin pie season!

So I picked up a couple of oddball imported jams, some jars of two-for-one pesto sauce (excellent calories for cold weather), a few pounds of wheat berries, and a tin of paprika.

Storms are less dramatic when you're prepared.