Geez. What is it with New Jersey and October storms? Last year’s “Snowtober” left us without power for five days. Not to mention Hurricane Irene a few months before that in August followed by tropical depression Lee. Now Sandy the Frankenstorm is bearing down on us and she definitely has New Jersey in her sights. Kind of scary! (No pun intended.)

With the news media harping on and on about Saturday being Prep Day we thought we’d get a jump on things.

Rick bought the last generator in stock that they had in Home Depot Thursday. I went to the grocery store bright and early yesterday morning to beat the crowds and before the store sold out of water. I got dog food, canned veggies, pasta, hamburger and things easy to cook on our propane burner camp stove. At that hour of the morning there was hardly anybody there.

Question is: do we have enough in case we are without power for 7 to 10 days like they are preparing us for?

We still have plenty of oil for the oil lamps and batteries for all the lanterns.

We’ll need to split some wood for the wood stove. Not only does it provide heat, but we can keep a kettle of hot water at the ready.

Rick stopped at the gas station (along with everybody else in NJ) yesterday and filled up the remaining gas cans and top off the Suburban. They were so busy that the attendant told Rick he’d have to pump his own gas (which is illegal to do here in NJ). No power = no gas so everyone was rushing to fill up their cars and gas cans for their generators.

I’ve started a list of all the things that still need to be done outside to prepare. Bring in canoe; bring in figgy; do something with the potted flowers on the front steps and on the deck; turn over steel lawn furniture; take down ghost flag, etc., etc.

Inside the list includes filling all the large water containers, collecting all the lanterns, oil lamps, flashlights, the percolator (got to have coffee!), the tea kettle, wash the remaining load of laundry, stock the wood stove wood bins with split wood. Whew, I know there’s more but it will come to us as we work along.

Also added to the list today is the person who is fixing our driveway pillar is supposed to be coming.

With all this prep work in place, Frankenstorm Sandy is sure to miss us! But I have a funny feeling she won’t. And we want to be prepared. Camping in your own home is not as romantic as it sounds, that much we know for certain!

Photos top to bottom:
Silly Halloween blow-up at a farm near the Warwick Valley Winery on Sunday.

Our witch sticker on the sun room door.

UPDATE AT NOON: Pillar is in place! Photos of that process coming. Kind of creepy that all morning long we’ve had small planes flying over the house as a result of people evacuating their aircraft to a safer place from the local airport. Makes it all seem real instead of the calm day we are having before the storm.

It has not been a stellar year here for color. While it was pretty, it didn’t last. Our drenching rain of over two inches on Friday really did the trees in. One of the prettiest spots I know of for fall color is Monksville Reservoir.

Lots of color due to the different kinds of trees and the burning bushes down low along the shoreline are gorgeous. I got caught up in the reflections.

More fall pics coming tomorrow!

Well, maybe for giants!

I found these “croquet hoops/wickets” at another haunt of mine, Ringwood Manor which is just down the road from Skylands. It’s an odd place and I use the word “haunt” pretty literally. In my opinion, it is haunted. The house itself is anyway. We went on a tour of it years ago when we first moved here and I did not get good vibes from it at all. A very unhappy place.

Anyway, I stay outside on the grounds now!

The owner used to own the iron forge at Long Pond** where I’ve taken photos in the past so there are lots of iron “things” scattered around outside and the giant wickets are just one of those things. I don’t know their purpose. Maybe they tied horses up to them??

Maybe I’ll go back soon and take photos of the outside of the manor itself so you can see it.

{**Long Pond Ironworks has two forges: one from the Revolutionary War of which there is not much left of and one from the Civil War. Here they churned out gun barrels for the war among other things.}

No! Say it isn’t so! Remember I talked about Taylor Ham, Egg & Cheese breakfast sandwiches from Jessie’s? We won’t be eating these again anytime soon. Last night Jessie’s burned.

At 4:30 a.m this morning we were rudely awakened by lots of sirens. First one volunteer whistle blew, then another further away. Then a constant stream of police sirens. It was hard to tell where they were exactly, but in my sleep-fogged brain it didn’t seem like it was close. The sirens stopped, then started all over again. Kind of like the fireworks.

Once were got up news started to filter in through the neighbors and we learned is was Jessie’s Deli that had burned.

The road in to town is closed so if I want to go to town I have to make a huge detour. And I do have to go in to pick up new meds for Sam and a few other important things. Maybe I’ll wait and see if the road gets opened back up again.

Until then, neighbor Aileen allowed me to walk down their private road to the main road. What follows are from the scene this morning at around 8:30 a.m.

It’s my understanding that most of our local volunteer fire companies are away at a convention in Cape May (poor planning!) and they had to call in companies from further away. The main road below our house was pretty much paved with fire trucks.

One neighbor said that they went in to open up this morning and smelled smoke inside the Deli. When they opened the door to the kitchen, the fire erupted.

There are no fire hydrants so they were pumping water out of nearby Monksville Reservoir into tankers. When I was there the fire was basically out in main structure but the propane tanks were still burning.

My sister and her firefighter husband just missed all the excitement by one day!

How very sad. We’ll miss you Jessie’s!

(P.S. I forgot to say that Jessie’s is just over the hill from our house.)

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Update at 3:03 p.m.

NEWSFLASH!!! I sent the first photo to the local newspaper and I just heard back from them that they are going to use it in Sunday’s edition! Woohoo! We’ll see now if they really do! Follow this link to see my photo in the online version of the paper! Here’s the link.