Hurricane Jeanne Good-bye. The fourth hurricane to threaten us this season has passed us by with little damage. Jeanne came onto the Florida east coast last night so far north of us (around Stuart) that only wind and rain in barely tropical storm gusts reached us. This morning the sun is struggling to shine on us through the over-cast. The wind and the rain, what of it there is, is light. We did not lose any power at any point.

Yesterday (Saturday) we worked all of the morning and half the afternoon preparing for storm. The main issue is putting up the shutters. We also took the revolving tops off the roof turrets and replaced them with lids. (The turrets are new, because we have replaced the roof since the last hurricane season to threaten us. So I had to drill holes for the new lids.) For the earlier storms, I had already taken down the mast for my amateur radio dipoles. But I continue to leave up the uhf/vhf vertical antenna, which has little wind resistance. This afternoon we will take the shutters down, even though we are only half-way through the hurricane season. One thing I will do is store the shutters on the floor of the garage, rather than the loft, to make it easier next time to take them out.

Today Carol and I will also go to the office and bring our network back on line. Part of the preparation process for the office is to distribute tape backups for the network to several people (who live in different parts of town) and go through the process of turning the network off. We also wrap each of the work station computers in heavy plastic. Those computers in work stations in outer offices we remove to inner offices. All the folks at the office worked on this late in the work-day on Friday. Today Carol and I will bring our particular work-station computers back into our offices, as well as the papers we boxed up to transfer to inner offices.

We will go to church this morning. Carol asked me whether we should dress "Hurricane Casual", which is how we dressed for church after Hurricane Frances. Thus a new style has been born. We will dress Hurricane Casual.

Our friends the Carrs called up about some friends of theirs who are staying in a local motel. They are hurricane refugees. They came down from Indiantown, FL, near Stuart, an area hit hard by Frances and now hit hard by Jeanne. They live in mobil homes there, one of them already damaged by Frances. The Carrs said that they do not have much money and asked whether they could they stay with us for a few days if they decided they needed the help. We said they could. One of them suffers from PH, which is how the Carrs know them.

My mother stayed at Epworth Village. After moving there in June last year, it has become a home to her. She prefers to stay over there during the storms. I think that's fine.

Thanks for your calls and prayers.