The weekend of Sandy was a weekend preparing for the super storm. Monday started the rain high tide flooding and power outages. Monday night was windy, mostly cloudy skies and moon. Tuesday, still no school, and it was sunny and very windy. I can’t wait ’till school and the end of this super storm.

Coral reefs are in terrible danger. Because of pollution, global warming and overfishing, our beautiful underwater wonderlands are quickly vanishing. Because of global warming, the plankton, small fish and shrimp are either dying or moving to cooler waters. Then the coral starts to starve. It turns a creepy white color. That reaction to the global warming is called coral bleaching.

How to stop our reefs from dying:

There are lots of ways to help take care of our reefs. I started a club to raise awareness about reefs. A lot more people started caring. When a lot of people care about something they try to help it. Also do some research, the more people know the better.

Coral reefs are very interesting ecosystems. Unfortunately they are in trouble. So please help our reefs!

Since Hurricane Sandy is going on, my family had to lock our cats inside for the whole day. My dad must have been thinking about this because he brought up a huge box from down stairs. It had a nice big hole on one side for the cats to get in. Even though it’s big enough for both of the younger cats to go in, only one will go in at a time. The two cats this box is for are Spanky, a grayish brown skinny tabby and Casper, a Siamese tabby. Casper is an absolutely huge cat and Spanky is just a big cat,  but not too big. For almost the whole day Casper has been inside the box just sitting while Spanky sleeps in the TV room. Though every once in awhile Casper will get out and Spanky will go in. Casper then will stick his his paws through a little hole in the box and start waving them around. Either Spanky will completely ignore him and continue playing with a sock that I filled with catnip or he will play along with Casper. Spanky does this by swiping his paws and sticking his head out the door and getting Casper this way. I’m still trying to get them in at the same time.

It is a Monday, two days from Halloween. My family and I are preparing for Hurricane Sandy by filling our bathtubs, making food while we still have power and bringing our flower pots inside. As I look outside I see heavy winds rustling the leaves but not anything that could be harmful, for now at least. Supposedly Hurricane Sandy is going to hit hard in New York this afternoon. Ferocious winds and rain storms are expected to start today. Schools have been canceled and flights have been affected because of hurricane Sandy.  

Thanks to Hurricane Sandy, we did not have two days of school. We had a four day weekend. Over the  weekend I did a lot of crafts. At my house my family lost power for 12-14 hours. I am a really fast reader so I read quite a few books. As soon as we got our power back, my sister was inviting a friend over to take a shower. It is now Thursday night and Westchester is still out of power.

When I hear, Greek Mythology, the first thing that comes to mind is (fake) Greek stories that have to do with the Greek Gods/Ancient Greece. I always loved the Greek myths because they all mostly include; adventure, action, romance, gory and royalties. My favorite story is probably the Trojan War and when Odysseus went back to Ithaca and tried to win back his wife from (what I would call) aliens*. Greek mythology are stories from Ancient Greece when people believed in Gods. There are so many stories to read and all of them are great stories.

In ancient Greece there were many gods. There were 12 main gods called Olympians. The three brothers are the top gods in the chain. The three brothers include Zeus, Poseidon and Hades. Zeus is the king of gods and the ruler of the sky and lightning. Poseidon is the god of the sea. Zeus and Poseidon are both Olympians. Hades is the king of the underworld. Zeus didn’t want Hades to be in Olympus because Hades ruled his own kingdom. He was only allowed to go to Olympus for special meetings.

I really do love Greek mythology and when It was the main subject in school, that had to have been my favorite year.

*Aliens – By that sentence it means people from other places. ‘People outside from Ithaca.’

Hurricane Irene

I am worried about Hurricane Sandy because of what happened to us during hurricane Irene. The night before Irene, we all slept downstairs in our house just in case a tree fell. It was hard to fall asleep because I was worried about what Irene would bring.

In the morning when I woke up, my mom pointed at the trees that were swaying back and forth. Around 6:00 a.m. we lost power. Quickly after we lost power, I poured myself some cereal so I could have the milk before it went bad. When everyone got up, it didn’t seem like that big of a deal, just some rain and wind. Well, we didn’t realize how bad it actually was until lunch time…

“I’m going to get sandwiches from the deli” My step-dad called to us once the storm had settled down a bit. My step-dad came back in a bit of a panic. We all went down the street to see what he was so worried about.

First of, I should explain that we live on a dead end. The side of our street that is not the dead end has a stream on it.

So when we walked down the street, we saw that the stream had washed away the road, and the road had turned into part of the stream! It was scary, because that meant that  we had NO way of getting out! My neighbors came down to see what all the panic was about. Soon enough, all of my neighbors were there, stressing over what we would do.

We tried calling a bunch of different people who may be able to help us. When we called the fire department, all they said was “Do you want us to send a boat?” That wasn’t very helpful. To make everything worse, we didn’t stock up on food, because we didn’t think the storm would be that bad. Plus, we didn’t have water, because the water from our faucet is well water. So, if the power goes out, the water doesn’t work. We were stuck in our house with no food, and no water. And let’s not forget, we still didn’t have power!

We realised that we couldn’t flush our toilets, and we knew we couldn’t just leave our toilets like that, It would be gross. So, we did what our neighbors were doing. We went outside, and filled buckets with water. We carried the buckets upstairs into the bathtub in my mom’s bathroom. With that water, we could use it to pour into the toilets so that they would flush down.

We were predicting that it would take a few days for them to fix the road. We were wrong. Within about five hours, they had dried out the spot and put sand over it so that we could still drive on it. We got our power back at about 11:00 p.m. that night. A few days later, they paved over the road and we were good to go! Right now, I’m watching the trees blow because of hurricane Sandy, and wondering if the same thing will happen. Luckily my mom stocked up on food this time!

Hurricane Sandy is a HUGE storm that is moving across the USA at the moment. My family spent a lot of time preparing for the storm, by bringing in a lot of firewood, so we could have fires without having to go outside, and bringing in furniture that could have blown away.
The gusts from the hurricane can get up to ninety miles an hour in the center of the huge 900 mile wide storm. We have to charge all our electronic devices that we might need later, because it’s only a matter of time before the power goes out.
The storm right now is a hurricane, but when it gets to where I am, it will collide with a cold front, which is probably not good.
The worst of the storm for me, will happen at around 9:00, and I can be pretty sure that it’s going to be loud enough so that I’m probably not going to sleep much

This weekend I went to my grandparents house in Florida, to celebrate my grandma’s 70th birthday! She is a remarkable woman! In 1976 she began her journey to worked on Wall street. Which lead to her being a stockbroker for some big companies, such as Morgan Stanley, Smith Barney  and many others. She also did one of the most amenable things any woman can do, she had two wonderful children. One of whom is my father(now that takes a strong person to deal with him).

For the last 11 years she has devoted her life to taking care of my grandpa. He was paralysed while on a cruise 11 years ago. I was only 6 months old. They didn’t think he was gonna make it, but he did. Since then my grandma has done her everything possible  make his life the best it can be. From taking him to every doctor there is, to taking him across the street to Mr. Bobs house for happy hour. It take a strong bonded and a lot of love to do what she does everyday.

She also has an extraordinary love and talent  for games. When shes not taking care of my grandpa you can find her play Tennis, Mahjong, Canasta, Archery, Golf and so much more. She get up really early in the morning to play Tennis, and stay up late playing mahjong. I think I got some of my love for sports from her.

At her all girls 70th birthday party her “gift bag” was a beautiful hat that said “Aged to perfection”. There was a few extras out on tables, but by the time the party was over, they were all gone . These sport loving ladies could not forget their free hats! Just to see the love that every single lady in the room had for my grandma and the love she had to give,  brought warmth to my heart and a smile to my face! And see the smile on her face and the joy in her eyes when each of her friends walked down the stairs into the party, fill my heart with joy. Hope you had a very happy birthday Grandma!!!