Florida Shooters Network

Prayers and best of luck to all our friends up in the Big Bend area or anywhere about to be affected. Hoping it turns out to be a nothing storm.

Yeah -- ask us tomorrow !

I can feel our insurance rates rising...

Next renewal, I have the feeling that regular old homeowner's insurance will cost more than my outrageous property taxes here in lovely Crime Hills.

We lost power yesterday just as it was getting dark. To be honest, it wasn't storming bad at all when the power went out. In fact, my house and about 10 others are the only ones without electricity. This sucks because I know it makes us low priority. I have the generator going so we don't lose food.

Teco sucks. In the past 25 years in this house, I bet we've lost power for 4 hours or more at least 100 times, usually for no apparent reason. After a storm 10 years ago, we went 8 days without power and were the last area in town to be restored.

George W wrote: ↑Mon Aug 05, 2024 12:36 pm We lost power yesterday just as it was getting dark. To be honest, it wasn't storming bad at all when the power went out. In fact, my house and about 10 others are the only ones without electricity. This sucks because I know it makes us low priority. I have the generator going so we don't lose food.

Teco sucks. In the past 25 years in this house, I bet we've lost power for 4 hours or more at least 100 times, usually for no apparent reason. After a storm 10 years ago, we went 8 days without power and were the last area in town to be restored.

Do you have any AC, even a portable? Brutal time to be without AC. Best of luck to you.

I have a couple of window shakers. If I don't have power by this evening, I will get them going.

Rain, rain, rain.

And, just like that, she was gone. Joe

Well, for the first time in the almost nine years I've lived in my house, the water from the "dry" river bed near my backyard came all the way up to my retaining wall.

I live in a cul-de-sac with pie shaped lots. My back yard has a two foot retaining wall all across the back perimeter. Beyond the wall is all WCE land owned by the HOA. And 100 ft. beyond the wall in that WCE land is a "shallow, dry" riverbed. Well, normally it's dry. But in the "rainy season" (i.e. daily Summer Thunderbumpers and Tropical Activity), it isn't all that "dry." If there's too much daily rain, it can crest and start to seep into the path between it and my retaining wall (about 100 ft.). Prior to the start of this season, the water has not gone past the 20 ft. mark to the wall. This season, the water touched the wall, but it was more like a "swampy" sort of thing... no real accumulation. When I checked this morning, it had receded back to the 25-30 ft. point.

We'll see how things go. I have to be careful when working in the back yard (mowing the lawn, etc.) because with that water, could come "cottonmouths" and other species. I do often see a Southern black racer flying around. Non venomous, I know, but it will bite and is a real PITA as it tries to crash inside my garage if I leave the door open. And it can get into corners where I can't find it and "extricate" it. In fact, the first of these I encountered stayed inside my garage (wouldn't get out) and eventually died from lack of food/water. And, boy did that dead carcass create a huge stink inside my garage. I had to find it first, remove the dead body, and then clean the spot with bleach etc. to get rid of the smell. But I don't think I got rid of it all. Because subsequent Black Racers I've encountered have all tried to hide in that very same spot, as if they were kids looking for their parent. I never tried to kill the parent. I just wanted them to get out of my garage, but they refused to come out of that spot. Now, I do my best to not let them near the garage door. They can stay wherever they like on the outside of my property and eat all the newts, etc. they can find. Just don't go back inside my garage.