A little over two hours ago we dropped Amy off for the first day of 6th grade, the first day of middle school. She has been very excited for weeks. Last night it kind of got the better of her and she was practically making herself sick with all the tension. She even did what was started as a mock collapse and ended up as a real one, with her falling over and bonking her head nicely.

In the end, she ended up falling asleep curled up between me and Brandy. On the last night before a brand new exciting school started, a nice reassuing place was just what was needed.

This morning, we walked in, she collected a name tag and planner in the front lobby, then we went and founf the sixth grade lounge and lockers. Her eyes were wide and the whole experience was obviously pretty overwhelming.

A couple weekends ago we went to a “meet your new class” picnic and she already has become good friends with one girl in her class. She wasn’t there yet though. So when we left Amy still hadn’t quite connected and was still sort of, um, well, terrified. :-) But excited.

By now she will have met up with her friend and the others she met at the picnic and the first couple of hours of getting to know your classmates and how to get around the school will be complete. There may actually already be some real learning happening already too, although I expect the first day will mostly be about learning the school and the people and how things work rather than new academic material.

I’ll be eager to hear how the first day went once it is over. We are prepared for a negative first day, cause that sometimes happens. But this should be good. The whole sixth grade is just 20 kids. With 10 kids per class (and several class changes a day). There should be lots of personal attention and lots of ability for things to adapt as needed to interests and abilities.

You could also see a lot of excitement on the faces of the RETURNING kids. They seem to like it there. As Brandy and I were leaving once kid was coming in (looked like maybe 7th or 8th grade) and she leaped down the stairs smiling and exclaiming “I’m back!!!”. With all luck, a year from now that is how Amy will be feeling.

The school gives off a very good positive vibe. So far we’ve liked everything we’ve seen and everybody we’ve met including both faculty and other parents.

We’ll see if at the end of today we have a happy excited Amy, or a grumpy sad angry Amy. You never can tell with those pre-teen hormones raging. :-)

I promise I’ll get back to other things soon enough.

Here is the latest NHC update of the odds graph though:

No significant chance of hurricane force winds. About a 70% shot at tropical storm force winds though. The only thing we are really worried about with those sorts of winds is the pool screen if a wayward branch gets thrown into it. When we got tropical storm force winds out of Wilma a big branch got thrown into our pool. If the screen had been up then, it would have gotten torn.

This looks like it will probably be a non-event though, which is good.

By comparison, Miami is just about at a 90% chance of TS winds. The South Carolina coast is at about 45%. And there is still about a 5% chance of hurricane force winds in SC.

Of course they updated the charts I like better seconds after I made that last post. Our new odds…

Between 5% and 10% chance of hurricane force winds. Down from before.

And just over a 60% chance of tropical storm force winds.

Odds in Miami and the SC coast are about the same (between 5% and 10%) for hurricane force winds. For tropical storm force winds Miami is more like 78% chance and SC just over 40%.

Anyway, looks like the odds are in favor of our house getting some really nasty weather, but not devastating destruction type weather. Here’s hoping “really nasty” turns out to be more like nice fluffy bunnies and not anything we end up having to care about at all.

I prefer the probability view, but it gets updated less frequently. The 9 UTC NHC Cone update just happened though (a little early), and we’re just to the right of the center line. Now, it will have been traveling over land for awhile by then, but it is still an H, not an S, and even a minimal H is not to be sneezed at.

Now, reading the predictions, there is a good chance that it will weaken significantly over Cuba and may end up not being much of anything by the time it gets to Florida… or it may strengthen significantly and actually be a real threat.

Crossing our fingers that either Cuba gives this storm a knockout blow while it goes over and it never gets back up to Hurricane strength, or the track keeps moving east and it ends up missing Florida entirely.

Of course, with the current track my friend Ivan in the Miami area is right on the target line too. So good luck to Ivan too!

Ivan, what’s the report from Miami? Does anybody care about this one at all, or does everybody assume it will be a non-event?