Tropical storm Alma contributed to a fantastic sunset last night. It was Mary Kay pink!

Then, this afternoon she came roaring up from Central America and hit us. Supposedly, the winds were max of 35mph. I have no clue whether that was right or not but it was seriously blowing.

All the deck furniture was spinning around and the long cushion on the banco was lifting into the air.

Mimi made a mad rescue while I held the door open, we were both soaked in seconds. With everything inside and the doors shut the wind and rain were pounding into the glass, water was coming under the doors and we had to go back to our old trick of putting towels in front of every door. I thought we had that fixed.

This is a pic I took as we watched it coming towards us, it was still calm and sunny.

Oddly enough, I had been thinking about the hurricane shields that I got a flyer for in Playa the other day. We measured the windows this morning and I did the math and was kind of horrified at the total.

So, I was reconsidering. Alma kind of got me back to thinking it might be worth the money. If that was 35mph, I don't even want to think about a Cat 4 or Cat 5 would do.

Leapin' Lizards! As I was writing this at about 1am, another cell came barreling in. If it was scary in the daytime it is much scarier at night. Plus, this one seems more intense, the lights went out right away and we are watching the 2 big dishes on the deck move way too much. They are weighted down by buckets of sand and since this afternoon the sand is full of water, it's heavy. I'm not at all sure they are going to make it. With nothing else to do I'm sitting her writing this on my laptop by candlelight.

The other not so great part, it is getting really hot and steamy in here. We can't open a door to the ocean for air and not enough is coming in the back windows. What the hell, I just went and got the last cold beer from the fridge and if it all blows down, it all blows down.

2:30am - Well, it's still blowing but the lights came back on and just on a whim I plugged the modem back in and - I can't belive it - the dish seems to still be on the satellite! I'm going to upload this and go to bed while the AC is still working.