The Alligator Army Weekly Open Thread, Vol. XXXI

On Thursday night, I went to sleep worrying about the potential of being awakened in the middle of a night by a tornado.

On Friday, I sat with my parents as winds and rain pelted our house in Brevard County for much of the day, walking around our block after most of Hurricane Matthew’s effects had passed to find that our neighbors had lost a tree in their front yard again — one in the same spot had fallen during one of the hurricanes in 2005; I think it was Jeanne — and that folks all around us had lost chunks of fencing.

On Saturday, as the Carolinas flooded, I trekked back over to the spot on the barrier island where I’m staying, and discovered, to my great joy, that the worst exterior effects this house felt from the storm were a few neighbors’ roof tiles in the backyard and a banana tree’s stalk bowing over the fence in the side yard. I did have to drive through a neighborhood that was rendered largely impassable by crews working to remove downed trees, and there was, of course, no power, but those were a minor inconvenience and fully expected, respectively.

At some point late Sunday night, this house got power back. On Monday, after coming back over to stay, I wrestled repeatedly with an ornery Internet connection, eventually just giving up and going to bed.

On Tuesday, I cleaned up, and threw out what had to be hundreds of dollars of food; that’s just what you have to do after hurricanes.

And now, I’m more or less back in the swing of things. I’m glad to be back. It’s been a while.

But I’m tired, man.