Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Hunterdon County in a state of emergency...and this is just the beginning. Here are some pics, articles, and thoughts on our flooding.


The famous Mill in Clinton (my town). Closed due to flooding. Posted by Picasa

Flooding in Clinton Posted by Picasa

Overflowing over the wall and onto the street. Raritan River. Posted by Picasa

Raritan River about 3 mins. where I live. Posted by Picasa

Washington Crossing Bridge. This is how I found out I was stuck in PA. Thanksfully I found another bridge to cross over just in time. Posted by Picasa

I had to leave because water was coming towards me. Posted by Picasa

Others were standing there in amazement as well. Posted by Picasa

Washington Corssing Bridge. I am on the PA side. The bridge is close due to flooding. (This is where Washington Crossed the Delaware. I was able to cross it to go to Newtown. When I came home I was not allowed to cross back.) Posted by Picasa

The bridge before it was "swallowed." Posted by Picasa

Standing on the PA side of Washington Crossing. You can see how the water was slowly creeping towards me as I was standing there. Posted by Picasa

A pic from online - a different pic of flooding on 29. Posted by Picasa

A pic I found online. This is on Road 29 - the road I usually take. Obviously it was closed. Posted by Picasa
Here is an article online about our area. The bold part is where I am.

ALLENTOWN, Pa. - Up to 200,000 people in the Wilkes-Barre area were ordered to evacuate their homes Wednesday because of rising water on the Susquehanna River, swelled by a record-breaking deluge that has killed at least 11 people across the Northeast.
Thousands more were ordered to leave their homes in New Jersey, New York and Maryland. Across the region, rescue helicopters plucked residents from rooftops as rivers and streams surged over their banks, washed out roads and bridges and cut off villages.
Wilkes-Barre, a northeastern Pennsylvania city that was devastated by flooding in 1972 by the remnants of Hurricane Agnes, is protected by levees. But county officials said the Susquehanna was expected to crest just a few feet from the tops of the 41-foot floodwalls.
Luzerne County Commissioner Todd Vonderheid said officials worried about the stability of the levees because the water was expected to press up against them for 48 hours.
"It is honestly precautionary," Vonderheid said. "We have great faith the levees are going to hold."
A dozen helicopters from the Pennsylvania National Guard, the state police and the Coast Guard were sent on search and rescue missions, plucking stranded residents from rooftops in Bloomsburg, Sayre and New Milford. Hundreds of National Guard personnel were preparing to distribute ice, water, and meals ready to eat.
Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell declared a disaster emergency in 46 of the state's 67 counties.
Flooding closed many roads in the Philadelphia area, including the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Officials walked rafts through deep water to ferry children out of a tennis camp in Philadelphia.
The soaking weather was produced by a low-pressure system that has been stalled just offshore since the weekend and pumped moist tropical air northward along the East Coast.
The same system drenched Washington, D.C., on Sunday and Monday, closing the National Archives, the IRS, the Justice Department and other major government buildings in the nation's capital.
Binghamton, N.Y., received a record-breaking one-day total of 4.05 inches of rain on Tuesday. Although the bulk of the rain moved out of the area Wednesday, forecasters said more showers and occasional thunderstorms were possible along the East Coast for the rest of the week, and rivers and streams continued to rise from the runoff.
An estimated 2,200 people were ordered to evacuate an area surrounding Lake Needwood at Rockville, Md., which was approaching 25 feet above normal Wednesday. Engineers found weakened spots on the lake's earthen dam, said Bruce Romer, the county's chief administrative officer.
New York state officials said two truck drivers were killed early Wednesday when they drove into a 25-foot-deep chasm that a flooded creek had carved across all four lanes of Interstate 88, about 35 miles northeast of Binghamton.
Thousands of people were evacuated from communities across New York state, including hundreds in the Binghamton area. Whole villages north of Binghamton in rural Delaware County were isolated by high water.
Along the Delaware River, more than 1,000 people left low-lying areas of Trenton, N.J. New Jersey state workers in buildings along the Delaware prepared to leave work early. The debris-choked river caused the capital city's water filtration system to shut down. North of Trenton, motorists had to be rescued from their cars because of flash flooding.
In addition to the two deaths in New York, the weather was blamed for four deaths each in Maryland and Pennsylvania and one in Virginia.
The Agnes flood caused 50 deaths and more than $2 billion in damage in Pennsylvania, and remains the worst natural disaster in state history.
After Agnes left 20,000 families homeless in Wilkes-Barre and surrounding Luzerne County towns, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers undertook one of the most ambitious flood-control projects east of the Mississippi River, raising the existing levees by 3 to 5 feet.
The $200 million project was finally completed in 2003, three decades after it was proposed and nearly two decades after Congress authorized it.
rain, rain go away!!

i am tired of being under flood watchers and warnings. and even though i love thunderstorms, i am tired of being kept inside.

and i just went down into our basement. it flooded. oh @@@@!

ah, the joys of living on the EC.

<3

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

i had a great weekend with kristin. i drove down on friday to spend a few days with her and catch up. it was great...lots of fun. the highlight was going to church at the national cathedral. if you ever get the opportunity you should definitely try to attend a service. it is breathtaking! kristin and i also shopped (one of my favorite things to do!), ate yummy food, and caught up on each other's lives. good times!

hannah is gone this week. she is away at camp. so, it is just me and the rosie-girl at home. hannah will be back on friday.

it has been raining her a lot!! i hear it has been very hot at home. yikes - i would much rather be in heat then 100 degree weather!

i will try to post some pics for you soon. have a good day! xoxo

Monday, June 19, 2006

wow, so much time has passed - again - since i have written an update. crazy! i have so much to tell you!

parents

my parents were here for a vacation last week. half the week we spent here on the east coast and the other half we spent in arkansas. it was nice spending time with them. you know, being single and being forced to be independent, i sometimes forget what it is like having family around. and then family comes around and i remember how nice it is! it was sad to see them go but i will be home in california aug. 20 - sept.4. that will be nice. anyway, we spent some time in langhorne, flemington and nyc. then we went and saw extended family down south. good times.

summer

i know that i once wrote a post about how busy i was going to be this summer. i was so excited about all the adventures and how quickly summer was going to pass for me. well, due to several reasons but mainly that of money, my summer plans have been greatly reduced. this, of course, is depressing but i am trying to make the best of it. if any of you want to come visit - now's the time!! i have lot's of availability in my schedule!

job

school here ends this friday. club (both yl and wl) have ended and now my work schedule has calmed down tremendously. it is actually kind of a nice break. anyway, tomorrow i am having a very important meeting with my committee chair. we are going to decide if ylwj can afford to keep on a staff person. if not, that means i am out of a job i love and feel called to (most days:)) and that totally breaks my heart! but, at the same time, i cannot stay in a position that has problems that we have seemed to have lately - and most of it is financial. anyway, please be praying for me. i need clarity!!

living arrangement

along with a possible new job (although i would see it as being temporary until i graduate in may) i also have another big life thing going on that i can't talk about just yet in this forum. but, it has me very sad and stressed out. call me and i'll give you details!

mom

my mom is having fairly major surgery today. wish i could be home to help. praying that all goes well!


Wednesday, May 31, 2006

look at this crazy story i just came across....

Man Finds Python in Rental Car
AP
PADUCAH, Ky. (May 29) - The next time Dan McBride rents a car, he may want to inspect it not just for dings and dents but also for snakes. The assistant athletic director at Eastern Kentucky University found a two-foot-long ball python in his rental car this week as he left the Ohio Valley Conference baseball tournament in Paducah.
McBride got into his car Wednesday night with a colleague and saw the snake draped across the console.
McBride said he thought it was a rubber snake someone put there as a joke. He even gave the snake a pat and put the car into drive.
As he drove toward the exit, the snake lifted its head. McBride hit the brakes, then started to get out of the car. But the snake was on the gear shift, forcing McBride to keep his foot on the brake.
"You can't act tough when you are sitting a foot and a half away from a snake," said his colleague, Simon Gray.
The snake was captured, and was being held until its owner comes to claim it, authorities said.

Tuesday, May 30, 2006

hope you all enjoyed your holiday weekend! i went to lake champion on a leadership retreat. it was nice. we had great weather and it was fun to simply hang out without any kids...hehehe now i am back and i have my last wyldlife meeting tonight and last young life meeting tomorrow. wow! then my summer will finally be here and life will be nice, but different for the next few months. my parents come out a week from tomorrow. yay!

yesterday was memorial day and i hope you remembered all those who serve us in the military. we truly are blessed to live in this wonderful country of ours. i remember my paternal grandfather who was killed while serving our country. i never met him. i also think of my maternal grandfather who served during ww2. i also think of my good friend chris who is in the army and has been a part of the iraqi war. i am so proud, and thankful, of all the men and women in the armed forces.

Monday, May 22, 2006

i have a confession to make. and this may be a shock, because all of you know how i admire martha stewart and aim to be a suzy homemaker even in my "singleness"...

ok, here it goes. i hate to change the sheets on my bed. not only is my mattress super heavy, but my bed is up against the wall. so, my dislike for changing sheets has changed into a total disgust.

so, i just ignore it. it's just sheets afterall, right? it's not like i wear them out during the day. and i always have better things to do then wrestle with my ginormous mattress and change those stupid sheets.

well the other day i was talking to my mom about them. she was astonished to hear that i have not changed them in a super long time. my mom is very ritual about changing the sheets - every saturday morning she or my dad makes sure the chore is done. and i used to be somewhat good about it as well - i would change them at the beginning of every month.

but...well...here it goes - i haven't changed them since i moved in. in mid december. but wait!!they seem perfectly fine to me though.

hahahahaha will you still be my friend? how often do you change yours?

Thursday, May 18, 2006

hello everyone!

i am sitting on my lunch break here in the grad/commuter lounge at pbu. i am taking a summer school class. hard to believe i am taking a summer school class in may, huh? yeah, it's crazy, but possible since my semester ended on may 1. i am taking an intensive course that is just this week - but it is five days in a row from 8:30 - 5. it is on revelation and daniel. while it is hard to listen to lecture nine hours everyday, i am learning a bunch and as of saturday i won't have school again until september. awesome!

i am drinking a diet pepsi as i write this. i am trying to make some changes in my diet, and not drinking regular soda is one of them...well, since monday at least.:) i am not a fan of diet soda, and almost always would rather drink water instead if i had the choice - but soda contains caffeine - which has become my crack as i plow through this school week. i do enjoy regular soda, especially wild cherry pepsi, but it is certainly something that is rather easy for me to give up. next step? fried foods.

i hear it has been high 90's at home. we have been in the high 60's to low 70's. it has been nice, for sure...but it is easy to tell that spring is winding down. i'm sure that humidity is just around the corner. my favorite.

yesterday marks three weeks until my parents visit, and then i am heading to arkansas for a few days. good times. can't wait to have them here.

ok, gotta get going. ttyl (that is just for holli!;))<3