So Hurricane Matthew happened. We weren't all that worried about it early in the week. Then Nikki Haley started holding press conferences and talking about evacuations. And I started hearing stories from folks who were in Charleston during Hurricane Floyd that included the phrase "fifteen hours to get to Columbia." Not the country. The city that's about 90 minutes away during normal traffic. School was cancelled, the office was closed. We decided that hurricane winds were not the best type to throw caution into, packed up four humans and three cats into Nightcrawler* as best we could, and headed out.

Things were a little crowded in the back seat, but we made it work:

Despite the lingering anxiety of not really knowing if our house would still be there after the storm, it actually turned into a nice little getaway. Hotels anywhere in the southeast were filling up quick, so choices were limited, and we needed a hotel that allowed cats, so choices were even more limited. We stayed in one really bad hotel room, and one really nice one:

The cats especially seemed to approve.

I also got to spend Friday night in a laundromat for the first time since my newlywed days:

Anyway, our evacuation didn't end up being much of an adventure. We hung out with some friends, watched some football, and kept a wary eye on the weather reports. It was quite a relief to get home and find the only lasting damage the storm did was the claw marks all over Nightcrawler's seats from where the cats decided to try to climb them.

Now let's not do that again.