It's almost midnight and Jonno and I are sitting in my backyard, reading what news we can find, parsing through the national media... checking the local media... etc etc...

We must be an odd sight, sitting at the table in my rather dark backyard, lit only by our laptops...

I finally was able to get calls through to my mom and my sister a couple of hours ago. My sister left early this morning and braved flooded streets with fallen trees to drive the hour or so to find out how my mom was faring. When she got there my 80 year old mother was in the yard on her riding lawn mower tied to a small fallen tree that she was trying to move. That's my mom... she's a tough one... My sister said that it looked like a bomb had exploded on the two acres that my mother lives on. There were ten trees fallen and all of the standing trees had lost all of their leaves. Remarkably her house was untouched. And, remember, my mom lives over an hour from where the eye of the storm went through.

She doesn't have electricity or running water, but she refused to leave to go to my sister's house. But, my sister is going back tomorrow and she's not taking no for an answer.