Rock Me Like A Hurricane

It has been a long few days around here, folks. For whatever reason, hurricanes seem drawn to Clint and me like a moth to a flame. Last year, Irma was determined to spend some quality vacation time with us in the Bahamas (if you missed our emergency evacuation that story is here), and this year, just in time for Clint\'s birthday, Hurricane Florence decided to make her way to shore and trek on over the Carolinas at a nice, leisurely, drenching pace. Between the power outage, our phone, internet, and cable going out on us, and the fact that the city of Charlotte collectively lost its mind in a panic, it sure made for a, ahem, memorable birthday weekend.

All the hysteria around town had the exact opposite effect on Team Stancil; rather than stock up on generators or hoard an arsenal of bottled water (like my friend Jason who began with 320 bottles but then \"sensibly\" decided to make due with 160 instead), we checked the batteries in our flashlight and made sure we had wine and Chex Mix. The forecast for Saturday did predict high winds and heavy rain, so we made reservations for an early birthday dinner for Clint Friday night, just to be on the safe side.

When Clint came home Friday afternoon, I went ahead and gifted him with a lovely birthday bouquet...of beef jerky flowers. He was not only thrilled with the uniqueness of the gift, the beef jerky turned out to be delicious (and addictive) as well!

What to give the man who has everything? Beef jerky blossoms, of course.

Clint tested, Clint approved.

Tasty treats, and decorative too!

It was already dark and rainy when we headed out for dinner; our meal was delicious and the man of the hour got his favorites (steak, spinach, house made potato chips), although our picture taking efforts did not turn out nearly as well as our food. Here is an incredibly grainy and dark picture of us from the restaurant.

Ghoulish lighting courtesy of the incoming hurricane.

We skipped dessert because, per the birthday boy\'s request, we had a Ben & Jerry\'s ice cream cake waiting at home. Half Cherry Garcia, half Chunky Monkey, all Clint\'s favorite ice cream flavors.

Little did we know this was just the beginning of our candlelight adventures.

We enjoyed a small slab piece of cake and relaxed on the couch to (what else?) watch a new Dateline, as is our Friday night tradition. All was well in the world until around 10:45 when, in the middle of Andrea Canning helping us decipher this murder mystery, our power went out. My heart stopped and I waited, waited, waited for it to zap back to life again. After several minutes, we accepted our fate and decided to at least go grab some ice to fill a cooler in case our situation was long term. As we drove through our neighborhood, the irony of what we call \"Stancil luck\" really became clear: everything around us was lit up, bright as could be, with the exception of one small part of our street. The power failure affected a grand total of about 14 houses.

Clint called Duke Energy to report the outage, but they couldn\'t even give us an estimate for when it might be restored (never a good sign). We got ready for bed using our flashlights and spent the next several hours tossing, turning, laying on top of the covers, sweltering, and praying that the power would come back to us. Our deadline for salvaging the food in the refrigerator was 3:00 a.m., so we trudged to the kitchen and loaded our MVF (most valuable food) in the cooler. At this point, it was technically Saturday--Clint\'s official birthday--so we were off to a great start.

Not exactly the kind of party favors you want to have on hand.

Sadly, by the time we got up Saturday morning we were still without power. We ventured out in the rain again for our weekly Egg McMuffin run, then came home and sat in the dark with our breakfast. You may know that Clint has been on a ceviche kick lately, and as luck would have it, we had purchased the ingredients for a fresh birthday batch before the power went on the fritz. Chef Clint got all his materials out of the trusty cooler and chopped and mixed away. He remembered that the garbage disposal requires electricity to run AFTER he dumped a large fistful of red onion and a half a pound of cilantro down the drain. Bless his heart. We scraped out what we could, poured Clorox down the drain, prayed again for the zillionth time for law and order to be restored, and started making plans to get the heck out of dodge.

We found a room at the Residence Inn not far from our house, made a reservation for a first floor suite (convenient as can be for taking our 16-year old dog out for bathroom breaks during a tropical storm), and started packing our bags. I had all of Cotton\'s necessities, my overnight bag, and two grocery bags full of snacks and boredom busters raring to go, stacked by the door along with Clint\'s suitcase. We decided to \"enjoy\" our homemade ceviche before heading to the hotel, and we were just finishing up and getting ready to leave when (thank you Lord) the power roared back to life. There is not a sweeter sound on this earth than the purr of an air conditioning unit after a 15-hour hiatus. Ah, cool air and lights and television and creature comforts, oh my.

Now that the crisis had seemingly passed, I went to check the contents of our freezer. I read that if the freezer door remains closed, the contents should be okay for anywhere from 24 to 48 hours (because of this fact, every time Clint or even the dog got within a six foot radius of the freezer during the outage I yelled, \"DO NOT OPEN THE FREEZER DOOR! STAY AWAY!\"). I had to check the condition of that ice cream cake. Spoiler alert: what I found was not good. 

Rest in peace, ice cream cake. You were taken from us too soon.

Poor Clint. That cake pretty much sums up the way the rest of his birthday weekend went. We spent Saturday afternoon working on a 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle while the rain came down sideways. I have to say what a good sport he was, puzzling away and making the best of Florence\'s party crashing.

Action shot of Clint\'s 42nd birthday. Jealous, much?

Thank goodness we went out for a nice dinner the night before, because even though it was just raining here, practically every business was closed. We called restaurant after restaurant (even Papa John\'s was shut down), and then, in an act of taco-craving desperation, we threw on rain coats and tried to head to our favorite Mexican place, with no luck (I\'m looking at you Paco\'s Tacos). Out of options, we went to the only place that was open for business--Harris Teeter--and put together a spectacular birthday feast.

A guy could get spoiled by all of this.

We slept like babies Saturday night after the previous night\'s un-airconditioned misery, and woke Sunday morning to what the Weather Channel called \"squalls.\" Rain, heavy rain, even heavier rain, and wind. Not exactly patio dining weather, and as it turned out, a sure fire way to cancel the birthday brunch we had planned. This time, our phone, internet, and cable weren\'t working, so we spent our day alternating between working on the puzzle and watching old DVDs--1978 Dallas pilot, anyone?

All of our services came back to life around dinnertime, so life was basically back to normal Sunday night as we watched Netflix and munched on cookies (in lieu of cake, sob). I\'ve already told Clint that next weekend he gets a do-over and we will try again, because while I appreciate good ol\' Hurricane Florence\'s persistence, she was a bit of a downer in the celebration department. So here\'s to electricity, cable television and all the Wi-Fi your little heart desires, and most importantly, here\'s to Clint, the birthday boy! Florence found you irresistible, just like the rest of us.