I have not felt like making any entries for a while as I have been pretty depressed lately. There are a lot of things weighing on my mind. Having to give up my dog Shakespeare has been pretty tough on me. My situation with Teresa has also been on my mind a lot. I am tired of living in this area (I have been here since High School) and cannot wait to retire. I want to move to New Mexico but I don’t know if I can wait for 3 more years. Every day living here is one more day I wish I was somewhere else. There is not much that brings me any joy or happiness anymore, except my family. I have a great job but I am bored with it and have nothing more to offer to my career. I want my career to be over and I want to be out of this area forever. So it is tough having to live with all this. But I need to stop being so depressed all the time. I do have a lot that I am thankful for and I need to focus on those things and not the things that depress me. With that out of the way for now I will just mention that Tropical Storm Ernesto has come and gone today. We got about 6 inches of rain but not all that much flooding, and least not at home. No damage from winds or rain that I have noticed. The drive in to work this morning was pretty wild, however. Slashing rain and wind made the trip over the Monitor/Merrimac bridge really exciting. I drive a 1996 Ford Ranger and the wind was really tossing it around. To make things more interesting, traffic was stopped on the bridge for about 25 minutes and I sat there with the truck jumping around enough to almost make me seasick. That and the spray from the waves off the James River bridge coming over the rail and onto my truck. When traffic got moving again it was not too bad until I got near Fort Monroe. Fort Monroe is surrounded by water on all sides. You have to come across one of two causeways to get to it. All the roads were completely flooded with lots of debris in the roads. Big waves were crashing over the seawall very close to the road I had to traverse. When I finally made it to the parking lot, I found out that there had been no power since 6am. So being the brave lad that I am, I said to hell with this and turned around and went home. After another harrowing journey home, I sat out the rest of the storm in relative comfort. Teresa also had trouble getting to work and once she did, they told her to go home. I called later and found out that everyone at Fort Monroe had also gone home. What an exercise in futility, but it was kind of exciting. Imagine if it had been a hurricane instead.