Dear Sis:

Dear Sis:
You know, Sis, I love you like a ..well, sister..but sometimes you do try my patience. I appreciated the letter you mailed me, but marking it "If undeliverable, please forward" and then having my attorney as the forwarding address was a bit harsh. Instructing my attorney to sift through the rubble and seek out our grandmother's Coalport tea set and the Waterford stemware was just plain callous.

Yes, our phone lines were out for five days, and we were without electricity for five days, but that's no reason to assume that Hurricane Charley had blown us away. You know Florida well enough to expect that something like a hurricane can have a serious effect on the residents. It's not like we live in a mobile home, though, so Charley could huff and puff but not blow this house down.

Charley did blow down a 60' tall, 24" bole, pine tree in our front yard. I was sitting on the front porch when it went, and it like to scared me to death! It came crashing down about twelve feet from the front of the house in a great, crackling roar. It took down limbs from several other trees on the descent. In one of those amazing things about hurricanes, in a nearby tree there is squirrel nest that looks like it's made of nothing more substantial than leaves and twigs. The nest is still up there, seemingly undisturbed by the elements.
We were lucky in that there was no damage to the house itself. Several of our neighbors were not so lucky. Trees smashed down onto roofs and automobiles doing extensive damage. One house just down the street had a second-story balcony knocked down, and that whole wall of the bedroom was torn out.
As you know, the streets of our neighborhood wind around the golf course. Almost every street has a tree down across the roadway, and power and telephone lines are dangling. Were, I should say, because the golf course maintenance people were out there over the weekend cutting pathways out so the roads were all passable within a couple of days. The trees haven't been removed, though, so the neighborhood still looks like a disaster area.
Our power was out from Friday night until earlier this evening (Wednesday), so we were without power or water for five days. Almost everyone in this area is on well water, and without electricity the wells don't work. We took daily showers at the YMCA, and pulled buckets of water from the swimming pool to fill the toilet tanks. Every flush required a trip to the pool for a couple of gallons of water.
During the days I've been clearing downed limbs and such from the yard, with quick splashes in the pool to cool off. In the late afternoons we'd head to Border's (book store) to sit in the air conditioning and drink lattes. Really, though, it's been an incredibly boring five days with no lights, internet, or television. I've missed the Olympics entirely.
Son's house has also been without power, but they have water since they are on city water. They're staying with us tonight since our power came back this evening and their's is still not back on. The hurricane didn't go as far north as Jacksonville, so your niece was unaffected.
There were long lines at gas stations every day. The stations that had electricity to pump the gasoline kept running out, and many stations were without electricity to pump the gas. For the first few days, about three out of every four traffic signals were out.

Kate worked at a shelter for people with special needs (people on oxygen or with some other physical ailment) every day, so she was at least in air conditioning.
No injuries to anyone, and we are thankful for that.

Now, I'm going to get back to my newsgroup and see if anyone missed me.