TUESDAY HURRICANE BLOGGING

I just checked in with my very large and close-knit family to see what they'd decided to do about Hurricane Ivan. Our "family seat," so to speak, is Panama City, Florida, but we're spread out all over the Florida Panhandle and further west along the gulf coast. My son, who's a student at FSU in Tallahassee, has gathered up his wife and one-year-old son and they're on their way to upstate New York, my daughter-in-law's home. My oldest sister, her husband and my 83-year-old mother are on their way east to Jacksonville to ride out the hurricane at the naval base there (remember, we're a military family). My younger sister and her husband have decided not to evacuate. One nephew is helping to move a commercial fishing boat to the Intracoastal Waterway for safekeeping. Other assorted family members are going in various directions or riding it out.

We're nothing if not independent thinkers!