The Clam Before the Storm

Nope, that's not a typo. It really is damp and sticky here, as we wait for Tropical Storm Irene to pass through. Yesterday dawned lovely and cool with high clouds, but as the day progressed, it just got stickier and stickier as the pre-Irene humidity rose and the pressure sank.

All the dogs at the Lakes Region trial yesterday were off, acting weird. They were probably responding to the changes in air pressure. Dinah was so interested in everything BUT the trial at hand that she ignored me the entire day. Aliens had kidnapped my dog and left me with a deaf one with ADD. I ended up having to excuse us from the ring because we were getting exactly nowhere. Better luck some other day.

We went to bed in the sticky air last night. What's worse: someone hit a skunk near our house last night, so all of the front rooms were scented with eau de pepe-le-pew. It hadn't completely dissipated by the time we closed the windows.

Now the rains are coming...

The backyard will be fine in any case. 

The big winds aren't scheduled to get here until this afternoon. We're prepared. The generator is gassed up, and we have dog food and beer. We have a sump pump if the rain water doesn't drain into the pond quickly enough. We lose power here so often in the winter that we're just glad we don't have to worry about not having heat if it happens during this storm. As long as the trees make it through, everything here should be okay.

(I do kinda hope my office building, which is more or less in the direct path of the storm, is closed tomorrow.)