Level 1 Hurricane in Ohio... Seriously!

Aaron's in a study session right now, so I thought I'd tag along and sit in the dark, scary hallway and use the internet. I never realized how disconnected from the world I am without the internet! Aaron keeps saying he doesn't know how the Amish do it.

So here goes the adventures of Aaron and Carolyn in the aftermath of Hurricane Ike.
Sunday afternoon at about 2:00 I was cheering on my Bengals (who, of course, lost :( ) and Aaron was at work. All day we had been hearing reports that we were supposed to have 45mph hour winds with gusts up to 70mph so I thought nothing of the insane winds outside. I keep hearing what sounds like wood cracking, and of course, think nothing of it. All of a sudden, the power goes out. I am now very upset because I can no longer watch the game. About an hour later Aaron texts me to see if we have power and I tell him no. 30 minutes later he's home and telling me that there are trees down all over campus (hence the cracking wood I was hearing) and the farm where he works has no power either. We decide to take a walk around campus to see how bad it is. This is some (I took 47 pictures and made 2 movies) of what we found...

The entrance to our apartment complex.

Aaron decided to help out a little around campus..

Doing my part to help!

Yes, there's a CAR under that tree. They already got one out from under it and it just had a busted back window, but it wasn't under the tree as much as this one was.

A crowd gathered to watch them get the car out.

We weren't the only ones taking pictures!! And I found it quite funny this kid was wearing a hard-hat. I actually chased him to get a picture. Later we saw 2 more people wearing hard-hats.

Aaron was very scared a tree or a branch was going to fall on us.

When we get back to the apartment we decide to call Duke (the electric company) to see if they have an estimate of when power will be back. Their automated message informs us that there are 500,000 people in Ohio and Indiana without power and they're expecting it to take 3-4 days for everyone to get power back. Now I'm getting a little worried. A few days before we had gone grocery shopping and spent a TON of money on food (most of which went into the freezer or fridge).

Now it's about 5:00 and I have a study session with some of the girls in my program. Since it's fairly light out, we can study for awhile, but when it starts to get dark we realize we need to find light, plus most of us hadn't eaten since about noon. About this time another girl from West Chester shows up and tells us that she drove through Hamilton and there is power there. So I call Aaron and he comes over and 7 of us head to Hamilton (about 20 minutes away). We get there to find every open restaurant jam packed, plus there is a 2 block line of cars waiting to get gas. We decide on Golden Corral (because it's a buffet and who knows when we'll be eating next) and wait about a half hour to get a table. All through dinner we complain about our food that is going to go bad and wonder whether we'll have class on Monday. One of the girls even calls the head of our department to find out if classes are cancelled. We also overhear that because of the strength of the winds and the fact that there was rain, Ohio experienced it's first ever level 1 hurricane. (I'm still not quite sure how)

Aaron soon finds out that his parents never lost power, so we devise a plan to take all of our food to Huber and offer to take some of the other girls' food too. On the way home from Hamilton we have to stop at Walmart for candles. Well of course all of the cheap ones are gone, so my friend ends up spending $30 on candles. Walmart is also wiped clean of batteries, coolers, ice and anything else you might need to survive without electricity. After leaving Walmart we get a call from the head of the department saying classes were cancelled Monday (yaay!)

After we finish dinner, a few of the girls pack up some of their freezer food and Aaron and I take that along with EVERYTHING from our fridge and head off for Huber Heights. By now it's about 11:30pm. As we start driving through campus, we notice that all of the buildings have power. Very excited at the idea that we may not have to drive 2 unnessecary hours we turn around and go back to the apartment to discover we still do not have power. We start (for the second time) going the normal way home, but have to turn around and go a different way because the road is closed due to an electrical wire in the middle of the road. And of course, I drank way to much pop at Golden Corral and now that the trip is taking even longer than expected I have to go to the bathroom. Since no one is open we have to pull over on the side of the road so I can squat in the middle of a bean field. When we finally get to Huber, we put all the food in the freezer and visit for a few minutes then head to my parents house to sleep. (Brandee and the baby were at the Sebourn's so it was already a full house).

We get to my parent's house at 1:15am to find the screen door locked. No one in my family has a key for this, so it's beyond me why they ever lock this door. But not wanting to wake up my parents I crawl in through one of the front windows and open the front door for Aaron. Apparently I'm not very quiet when breaking in, and my dad comes down the hall (in his underwear) to find out what's going on. Luckily he doesn't attack us, and Aaron and I finally get to bed.

The next morning I was having everyone over to study at 10, so we had to wake up at 8 to head back to Oxford. Before we left, we discovered that a huge oak tree in my parent's backyard had been uprooted.

We head back to Oxford and quickly take showers with the last of our hot water. We spend the day studying neuroanatomy and playing "Loaded Questions." For lunch we (along with 8 of my classmates) went to a dinning hall. To get ourselves through the week we resorted to stealing bananas and cookies off the salad bar and hiding them in our pockets (Aaron) and purses (everyone else) in order to sneak them out the door. We call Duke a few more times and find out that 800,000 people lost power and they're expecting it to take up to a week for everyone's to be restored, but we should have it back by Tuesday morning at 9am.

We wake up Tuesday morning and guess what, no electric. We call Duke again and find out we aren't supposed to get it back until 9am on SATURDAY!! My friends are one-by-one getting their electric back so we just keep hoping that we're next. Supposedly, of all the people that still don't have electric, 85% of them should have it today. With our luck we'll be the very last apartment complex to get it.

Needless to say, it's been a rough week. I have a huge neuro exam Friday that I've been trying to study for by candle light and Aaron had a math test this morning. Luckily we are able to see the humor in this, but we're ready for the power to come back. Like now. We're surviving on eating out one meal a day and for the rest of the meals, we eat whatever else we can find to that doesn't need to be cooked. I think it's pretty safe to say that after this week I won't be eating peanut butter sandwiches much. Keep your finger's crossed for us that we get power back soon!! (Aaron hasn't showered since Monday and is getting a little stinky....)