And He's Back...

Yep, 17 days after he left, he's coming home... temporarily. It's no fault of his. Blame it on Ike. What can I say, the thought of a Category 4 hurricane bearing down on Miami where #1 son attends school, just doesn't sit well with us. As I write this, it is too soon to tell which way the storm will go, but we decided we would rather error on the side of extreme paranoid caution and look like total over-protective hover parents in the eyes of our first born, than risk having him stuck somewhere without power (and a hot shower) or worse yet, sitting in traffic for hours in a mandatory evacuation.
We have lived in Florida for a little more than five years now, and I have discovered that one of the residency requirements is that you are forced to become something of an amature meteorologist. I hate to use the word "routine" in relation to something so potentially destructive, but each hurricane season, it becomes part of our "routine" to make sure that we have gas in the cars and cans in the garage, fresh batteries in the flashlights, lots of drinking water, canned goods, etc. We watch the Weather Channel religiously and study every computer model on Weather Underground and NOAA. And we pray a lot, not just for ourselves, but for anyone facing the wrath of the storm.
So, for now, we watch and wait. We pick up #1 at the airport tomorrow afternoon. If things go well, he'll be back at school by Sunday night or perhaps Monday. If things go badly, we have batteries, gas and a years supply of Spaghetti-O's right here.