floyd the flood, takes a breather

for the record, dearest friends, i am alive and well. the waters have (so far) not made it far into city limits and our house specifically is (so far) dry. knock on wood. we may have won the battle, but the war is not yet over. there are many many obstacles in our way:

• while the water did not get as high as the national weather service predicted, it did crest (or "top off") and has started to receede.
• the national weather service has basically admitted (through no fault of their own) they have no idea what will happen around here.
  
• in the meantime, mother nature looked down on us, opened her ugly mouth, laughed and said, "mwahahaha, you think you're tough?! try this!" and proceeded to dump 10+ inches of snow on our fair city in about a day.
• the new snow means that the water levels will most likely rise again.
• the sandbags and dikes (we don't much use the word "levee" around here) are being constantly tested and will most likely have to withstand another rise in the river level as the snow melts.
• the national news spotlight is shining bright, but will quickly fade as the waters drop.
• the problem is actually not solved - how do we prevent in the future?

and the most important reason why the fighting must go on:

• grandma is here for yet another night.

more fun stories about sandbagging (that sounds dirty and is, but not in THAT way), the community response, bumping into high school chums, grandma staying with us and links to all the coverage to be coming.

i just wanted to quickly write that so far so good and please expect some wity banter in the coming hours. for now, i sleep.