As Bob Dylan might say, here comes the story of the hurricane – Isabel has pretty much come and gone here in Northern Virginia. Power has been restored where I live after about 12 hours of it being out. A few of the trees outside my window are at 45-degree angles. Washington, DC is still effectively shut down, as it has a tendency to do whenever anything remotely bad happens. And nearby Old Town Alexandria is clearing debris after the tides of the Potomac apparently overflowed far up onto King Street, the main downtown thoroughfare. All in all though, the area is still standing and should be back to normal in a few days.

As for me, I feel that, in general, when nature unleashes its full fury and your main concern the next day is that the beer in your fridge may have become skunked, you’ve been pretty lucky.