Hurricane Charley

What can I say? We survived it, though we were completely without power or reliable water for four-and-a-half days. Thank heavens for my in-laws.

It's absolutely amazing how grumpy and out-of-sorts you get when you're forcibly separated from your own bed, your own computer, your own stuff.

At the risk of sounding like an ingrate, I'll say this much: we didn't see a single solitary National Guard person throughout the entire ordeal. I would suggest to my readers that had they not been deployed unnecessarily to Iraq, they could have done a lot of good here that would have minimised the widespread suffering and, in some cases, saved lives.