As I type this, the NYC metro area is bracing for Hurricane Irene. She has landed in North Carolina already, and we’re all watching the weather and news reports coming in from there, with visuals of meteorologists knee-deep in the angry ocean and roofing materials flying through the swirling air. Good TV.
The powers that be have been telling us for days that this is “a big one” and much of the coastal area is under mandatory evacuation. We are fairly far inland, but at least two of the projections of Irene’s path bring her directly over our area. So we are as prepared as we can be.
Yesterday, we ran around town, stopping at Target and Home Depot to see if they had radios or batteries. No dice on either one, which we expected. The radio situation was perplexing to me, in that there are scads of things to plug an iPod into but not a whole lot of straight-up boombox-type radios anymore. There was one at a Target but it was $60 and it would be stupid to spend that on a radio when I have 6 different ways of playing music all within my arm’s reach. If the power goes and we are desperate for news (not likely), I will just hop in the car and put the radio on.
We stopped at Costco, because the only thing worse than a hurricane is running out of coffee. That place is always a madhouse and yesterday, doubly so. They’d put up a sign at the door saying “We are out of stock on the following: D & C batteries, generators, bottled water.” Of course. People go insane when weather is happening, but for Costco to run out of water is amazing to me.
Of course, all this near-hysteria rubbed off on us a bit so we decided that maaaaybe we should get some water too, just in case. We figured all the regular grocery stores would be picked clean, but there is one near us that is not a big chain and not really patronized by white people. We stopped there, and of course water was plentiful. No batteries, though. We got what we needed and then headed out to our regular grocery store.
There was NO BREAD. It was really astonishing, although I shouldn’t have been surprised. Usually when there’s weather coming all the white bread disappears but the fancy hippie multigrain bread that I prefer is available. Not so, yesterday. Even the shitty Weight-Watchers bread was gone! The shelves were completely empty. Same thing with the water, which I expected. Even the fancy expensive Volvic-type water was gone and people were just shrugging and scooping up cases of Perrier. Lucky for me, the liquor store was fully-stocked so I was able to procure enough wine to get me through the weekend. Maybe. We have beer and a selection of liquor as well, so I’m sure we’ll be fine.