Wishin' I was Knee Deep in the Water Somewhere...

...other than in the middle of our street, of course.

While Hurricane Sandy spared southern Florida of her wrath, we still felt her wake as she barreled through.  Literally.  Her storm surge, plus a full moon, combined with the fact that tides in October are (for some reason unbeknownst to me) higher than usual made for some crazy record water levels here in Ft.  Lauderdale, or at the very least here on Hendricks Isle.  The managers of our building, who have been running our little shangri-la for over seven years, have seen nothing like it.

Normal high tide and not normal high tide, for comparison.  Water was about a foot over our dock.

Only today have the water levels gone back to "normal", but for the past few days during high-tide, we had to wade though calf-deep water to get to our car.  In the middle of the street, it was nearly knee deep.  Knee deep!  Some poor fellow down the street had just bought a brand new corvette last week, only to find eight inches of water in it the morning after Sandy passed to our East.  Pretty insane considering she was hundreds of miles from us at her closest point.  I'm no real-estate guru nor am I an environmental scientist - but I'm guessing that you'll be able to buy property in low-lying Florida for real cheap in the next couple of decades and mountain property is going to be pretty primo.  My heart goes out to the folks up North who were and continue to be seriously affected by Sandy's rage.  What we got was nothing compared to what they are dealing with.

In other news, the new name has been applied to the boat!  It looks fantastic and I'll post pictures as soon as we can get a nice shot from the water.  Scott's been working on a mega yacht the past few days and Isla and I have been driving all over town running errands so that work does not completely seize while Scott is away.  We have new incentive to get our butts in gear: we just got word that we MUST leave Florida by January 21st or else we have to pay a large chunk of change (of the three zero variety) to the state of Florida for sales tax.  We'll take our money and run, thank you very much.