Well, the kids are back in school. Today is the first day. A fifth grader and a third grader. I wish them both fun filled, exciting, enjoyable, productive school years where they learn tons of great stuff.

Good luck to both of you!

i almost feel like a musician again.

Almost.

See the building in the waaaay off distance? Yup, that’s how far away I had to park this afternoon.

Oh yeah, and there was a traffic jam on 128 at 1:30pm too.

Nice.

The median household income in Wayland, MA is $101,036. It has the seventh highest per capita income in the state of Massachusetts.

Why then is it the only town I drive through that hasn’t managed to clean up the mess from Irene?

I was in Wayland, five minutes away from work at 8:55. I got to work at 9:18. Two roads closed, one of which was route 126, and a power outage that destroyed the traffic at the junction of routes 27 and 30.

Every other town I drive through on my morning commute? Nothing. No traffic at all, and that is including the fact that most of those towns had their first day of school today. I got stopped by one school bus, but other than that it was smooth sailing from the moment I got off the highway.

Not in Wayland though. It took me 45 minutes to get out of town last night. I can handle that, but here we are at the 48 hour mark and a town that is dripping with property tax money can’t clear a state highway?

I am taking a different route home tonight so I won’t see any progress, or lack thereof, tonight… and I can’t wait until tomorrow.

Here is the Irene recap for our house.

No damage, no nothing. We didn’t even lose power. There are a few branches down in the yard, but nothing serious and nothing close to the house. We had one branch come down in the driveway, but it apparently landed right between the two cars without hitting either of them.

A little before noon I heard a couple of trees snap in the woods out back. I actually saw the top of one tree come down, along with one big branch. Nothing anywhere near us, but it was enough to make me nervous. I was also watching the Mayor’s Facebook page and he posted a few times about trees down and power outages around town. There was one comment that mentioned people trapped when a tree fell on their house. That got me moving.

I made lunch for everyone and we calmly ate it at the dining room table, but as soon as that was done we moved to the cellar. We turned my tree falling paranoia into a family game day and played a bunch of games downstairs. I kept sneaking upstairs to check the tree situation, but everything held together. We watched a couple of movies downstairs too, and by the time I went up to get the kids dinner the worst was over. We ate upstairs, but then went back downstairs for another game, but when it was over we all slept in our beds. We were prepared to sleep in the cellar if things were bad outside, but they weren’t and all was well.

I hit two road closures during the commute this morning, both in Wayland, MA. There was debris on most roads, but nothing terribly bad. The power was still out in a couple of sections of Wayland too, but that was it.

Here’s hoping the rest of you made out as lucky as we did. So long, Irene. Good riddance.

Each hand in Munchkin takes a long time, meaning I have lots of time to take pictures and post them.

Munchkin is a confusing game. Must be due to my old age.

I guess it was. I won.

Is this a good hand?

My step daughter taught us a new card game, Hand and Foot, and I won!!

The storm continues, but so far no problems at our house.

Fingers crossed that our good fortune holds through the night.