We were hit by Tropical Storm Eta yesterday evening. I once heard that there is an old Indian legend that says there is something under the ground in the Pinellas County, Florida area that repels hurricanes. Indeed, we have never had a direct hit by a hurricane but maybe a tropical storm doesn’t qualify. I’m not sure where the center of the storm hit but I know it was north of us, perhaps in the next county, preserving the legend. In either case, it was pretty windy for a long time.

We have a a large oak tree next to our house and I think the wind was causing branches to fall on our roof so every couple of minutes we would hear a loud bang. Frankie and Floki were not exactly scared but the noise did seem to cause them concern.

Chris, on the other hand, was sleeping in the Florida room, totally oblivious to the noise. I wanted to get a photo of him napping but I made the mistake of turning the light on and woke him up

We decided to go to bed at around 10 p.m. That is when our power went out. Rose insisted we leave the bedroom door open for air circulation even though Chris is a pain in the butt.

He was actually not too bad at first but then fighting off his attacks became too much and I had to put him down off the bed. He, of course, didn’t stay down and by 1 a.m. I couldn’t take it anymore.

I got up and got the power inverter that I bought for last year’s hurricane season and plugged in one of my Ryobi 40 volt batteries. I then plugged in a fan and brought it into the bedroom and closed the cats out.

That worked good but by 4 a.m. the battery had died and we were both uncomfortably hot so I plugged in my other battery but by then we couldn’t go back to sleep.

We got up and I tried making coffee but it was too much for the battery so I ended up going to Dunkin Donuts for coffee after they opened.

We are now in the car heading to Lakeland where Rose has a property that she oversees. I assume our power will be back by the time we return but just in case I brought my batteries with to charge.

Update: I was wrong and the storm did not make landfall near me. It looks like it moved north along the coast and then made landfall 100 miles away as the state curves to the west.