Block Party, Moon Festival and Remnants of Hurricane Ike

BLOCK PARTY 2008 Later today is our annual block party. I have lived in our neighborhood for 18 years (yikes I'm old) and spouse has lived here something like 12 years. He got transferred out of town a couple of times ... before we met. Kinda interesting in a Harry Met Sally way is that spouse and I lived on the same street for 2 years and never met. Anyhoo, back to the block party. This is always fun ... we have great neighbors. Lots of different interests, occupations, travels, etc.

Update since Block Party: It was fun. We finally met "the piper". One of the new neighbors plays his bagpipe on his roof deck. He is really good and it is really cool. His wife and he just moved here from London. We met another couple of neighbors who are getting married next week. The weather was really great ... that drastically changed 24 hours later (above picture).

REMNANTS OF HURRICANE IKE Sunday afternoon Cincinnati experienced over 70 mph winds causing widespread damage and at least 1/2 million people w/o power. At around 3:30 PM I saw this tree snap and fall on these 2 cars while I was scheduling our roofer to come look @ roof of one of our apts b/c of these winds. The picture above was where we had our block party less than 24 hours earlier. The winds are died down by 6 PM. We never lost power but 85% of Cincinnati did and it may not be fully restored for a week. Spouse saw one down line when he came to pick me up from one of apts I was working in. This storm shook our entire house at times, the wind coming down the chimney flues made a low sound and we could hear siding pulling off homes outside. Lucy, our cat,was totally relaxed almost bored during the whole windstorm.

MOON FESTIVAL

Today is Moon Festival also known as Autumn Festival in China. This is China's 2nd most important national holiday and all their offices are closed. This holiday celebrates when the Ming Dynasty began. The Ming's hid secret messages in mooncakes which helped them to throw out the Mongols. Also a holiday to celebrate fall harvest with fruit, rice and stories. Some of the famous fable characters include: the Jade Rabbit (who lives on the moon), the Lady Chang Er (who floated to the moon) and Wu Kang (who cannot leave the moon & returns to earth until he succesfully chops down a magical tree.)