Fishing Report

Check out this post from my fishing report blog.

http://bigcatguideservice.blogspot.com/2012/01/pamunkey-1-14-12-report.html

We had a great day last weekend!

Irene

It's been busy around here with all the earthquakes and the Hurricane. Last weekend we had Hurricane Irene come through. A lot of the local forecasters were forecasting that it would stay well east of us or that the wind would not be significant. There was even a local NBC forecaster who was saying we wouldn't even get any rain. They were way off. If you were around for Isabelle it was pretty much the same thing. There was a lot of rain and a LOT of wind with gust over 70 mph. There were tons of trees down all over the Richmond area. We actually got it worse in Richmond than they did in the Virginia Beach area.
There are about 9 oak trees in our back yard and 4 of them are close to the house and HUGE. I didn't expect anything to happen to them because they are close to each other and I figured the roots probably are intertwined. There are some dead branches though on some of the other trees and I was actually hoping they would blow down. Well absolutely nothing blew down in our yard. Nothing but little twigs and leaves. I guess we were lucky because some of our neighbors had it much worse. One house had a tree fall right through the middle of it. Tabs Grandfather down the street from us had a big oak fall on his house. At least he had moved his cars because that tree fell right across his driveway where he normally parks before it hit his house. Across the street from us there was another big tree that fell right across the power line and kept us without power for 5 days.

 Probably not the smartest thing I've ever done but water was running into his house so I went over in the middle of the storm and helped cut the tree.

 this is were his cars normally are

 This guy made a bad decision. I went around another way to get home.

I had hoped to make a little extra money after the storm by cutting up trees but the neighbors had so many trees down that I have spent the last week cutting their trees and hauling the wood to our future home site. We should have enough firewood now to easily get us though next winter. I haven't has a wood stove since I lived in my parents house and I have no idea how much wood we will need but I am very confident we have enough. I took 4 loads down from the storm and I already had a huge pile from clearing for the food plot.  That's not counting all the trees I will go around and cut up this winter that are down on our property from the storm. Now I just need to build one of those awesome wood sheds like they have over at Against the Grain ( http://againstthegrainhomestead.blogspot.com/2011/06/okay-wind-is-in-my-favor-today.html )

Earthquake in Virginia?!? WHAT!

If you haven't heard it all over the news, Virginia experienced the largest earthquake since 1897 on Tuesday! Not only was it the first earthquake I have ever felt, but it had to be the scariest thing that's ever happened to me. I have to say it is a very uneasy feeling to have the ground you stand on be unsteady, not to mention unexpected.

I had the pleasure of being at work when it happened. I was talking to my mother on the phone and It was weird because at the same time we both told each other we had to go. ( Of course neither one of us knew we were going through the same thing at the time) The first thought that came to my mind was that my building was about to be hit by an airplane because of the rumbling sound and the fact that I work fairly close to an airport!

After struggling to stand on this now moving surface I made it outside clear of any potential hazards and it was seriously like the world had stopped. People filed out of there offices, everyone still confused and not really believing what was going on. Some people were even yelling to me wanting confirmation that we were having an earthquake. Finally after being shaken up for what seemed like an eternity it was over and because my husband and I work together I knew he was ok, so the first thing that came to my mind was my mom!

Of course when I went to call her I got a busy signal and then just silence. Since my computer was already up I saw were people were posting there phones were out, so it made me feel a little better knowing more of what was going on. Some phone companies were out, but a majority of the reason the phones weren't working was because everyone was trying to use there phones at the same time.

Thankfully after the longest ten minutes of my life I was able to get a hold of my mom and she was fine. In the end the magnitude of the earthquake was 5.8 and there have been a few aftershocks within the past couple of days. One even reached a magnitude of 4.2 , but thankfully we don't live that close to the epicenter to have been able to feel those. Now that the earthquake stuff is over we are preparing for the hurricane that's supposed to hit this weekend!!

Bacon and Eggs

One of the blogs I follow called Bacon and Eggs is having a giveaway and all you have to do is post a comment on the giveaway post. Here is a link to the post.

Bacon and Eggs: MY FIRST GIVEAWAY!!!!

Speaking of eggs we are now officially knee deep in 'em. We gave away 1 doz. on Tuesday and another dozen yesterday and I hard boiled 6 yesterday and we still have a half dozen in the fridge not counting the 4 we will get today. Oh and I also used 2 for the batter when I deep fried some squash yesterday.  I love checking for the eggs and they taste great. They are a little small but It doesn't matter to me as long as they keep laying them.