It has been about a month since Hurricane Sandy decided to flood our town of Broad Channel and all our neighbors houses.

As you can imagine the emotions we have had are all over the place. With these emotions in play you have to make decisions about rebuilding, if you want to rebuild and other stuff.

While I have been tearing apart the house for the last month or so it only feels like 3 or 4 days since the Hurricane came. Luckily for us we had a plan in place to go to the next door neighbors house if the flooding got bad. Our neighbor has a second story house and while his first floor was destroyed with water his second story provided us shelter in some crazy weather.

I am sure the details of what happened during the storm will come out better when we do a podcast on this as I have probably times and dates mixed up.

I have to say that the little town we live in really got a lot closer and I never thought that would be possible as everyone knows everyone. There is only about 1000 homes on our island and I have been in my house for 44 years. I have neighbors that are here much longer than me.

Everyone was in the same boat when it came to this storm. We all had no power, nothing to eat and an uncertain feeling about the morning tide that could bring a second flooding.

We decided to wait until we had to leave before we actually made the move. The space between the neighbors house and our house is connected by a back deck that is a few feet higher than the sidewalk. We watched the water come up over the sidewalk and with almost 2 hours until high tide we knew we were in trouble.

While our house isn’t up high on a foundation it never gets water from the tide. Well I shouldn’t say never, it got an inch of water during the no name nor’easter in 1992 I think. Since we evacuated to my brothers house in Syracuse for hurricane Irene last year and didn’t get any water we figured we would wait this storm out. My mistake!

There were signs that we should have left. The weather channels Jim Cantores face when the mayor decided not to evacuate should have been a sign. When I saw mr Wilsen who has been in my town for his whole life say he was leaving while being interviewed before the storm on the tv by Channel 11 news I should have said let’s leave.

By this time it was too late, where could we go? The hotels were already filled and they would be in the same boat as us with no power. This storm was so big that unless you got a full day head start you would still be in the path.

Trying to find a place that could take us and our cats seemed to be an impossible thing. Our only resort was to take shelter in the neighbors house on the second floor.

As the tide was coming up I felt sad that there was water in the house, then I felt glad we were safe. The emotions were all over the place but knowing we were safe was the main thing. As the tide came up we could yell across to the neighbors houses and exchange a “We are alright” with each other.

The next few hours I was on my iPad which was connected to Debbie’s iPad and able to get online. I was posting pictures of the water coming in and since there was nothing else to do we took some videos.

Then it got real in a hurry! The water was coming from the east side. I have never seen this before. The ice machine from the deli on the corner went by as if it was a toy. The machine had to weigh over 500 pounds. Soon after that an empty boat came by so fast it could have pulled a water skier.

The winds were picking up and we were waiting to lose power. From our second floor we could see that something was burning over in the Rockaways but we couldn’t tell what it was. Later on we would find out it was the town of Breezy Point. Whatever we had going on here I knew it was much worse where those fires were.

I snapped a few pictures but I let Debbie do most of the picture taking. For some reason I just didn’t feel like taking pictures. I was too busy thinking about what was happening in our house next door and worried if the house we were in was strong enough to handle the winds that must have been over 100 mph. It was by far the strongest winds I have ever seen.

The light show that the telephone poles were giving off were scary. They would light up for a minute or so and then burn out. I was sure there were downed wires in the water in front of our house.

Our neighbor Joe was busy trying to get our attention letting us know that he thought the house we were in was catching fire. After scrambling through the house we realized it was the wires leading to the house next door to use were arching and smoking. Nothing like throwing throwing fire into the mix of all that was going on.

The rest of the night was filled with watching the wind and updating Facebook which for some reason was still working until the water started to go down. We were amazed that they didn’t cut the power. With the stuff burning all over the city everyone in town was thinking the same thing the next few days.

I was wondering about how many people they would find dead in their houses. Our town is filled with older people that have been through every type of storm and most have always stayed. Most live in single story houses like us and wouldn’t have a place to escape to until it was too late. Luckily this didn’t come to pass as no one perished in the flood from our town.

I started to think about where my family was. I knew my mom was on the 3rd floor of a neighbors house and she was ok because we spoke on the cell phone a few times. I knew my brother joe and his family were at the firehouse which has a second level so I knew they were ok. Brother Eddie was going to a hotel out of town so I knew his family was ok. My brother Danny was the only one I didn’t know about but being he is the fire chief and was probably out working his ass off during the storm and he would be ok.

With the water receding my focus came to getting some much needed sleep. We knew that there was going to be a high morning tide and we needed to be awake for that. Since the wind was still strong I didn’t have the feeling to go outside or into our house to see the damage. In the back of my mind I guess I didn’t want to see it.

I am not sure if I will be adding to this or not. I can see me doing a day by day post covering the first few days.

To raise awareness I usually change my site colors to pink for the month of October. Although it makes some of my sites look crazy as pink isn’t part of the over all color scheme it is the least I can do to raise awareness.

This year I am also walking in the Avon walk for a cure for breast cancer in my hometown of New York City. I will be walking 39 miles over 2 days through the streets of NYC. You can make a donation to the Avon Walk for Breast cancer here.

Here is a short video which gives you all the reasons why I am walking with the affiliate marketers give back team.

Well I gave it a gallant effort of 30 blog post in 30 days but Life got in the way on day 20. I picked up some sort of flu and was sick so I couldn’t go on posting. Actually doing a blog post was the last thing on my mind as you can imagine. Guess it was God’s way of saying “I don’t think so Vinny!”

While I am better now after not being able to eat for 2 days, I have compiled enough stats from 20 straight days of posting to get a good handle on what I would have seen if I had posted for 30 days. That blog post will be the next one. I can tell you that I learned a lot about what people like to read and what people like to share. Your blog isn’t about you it is about your subject at hand.

A few months back I was lucky enough to take part in a Kickstarter project. My friends The Dollyrots started a Kickstarter project to get funding for their new album. I am sure they were sitting around saying that $7500 would do the job and wondering if they would ever reach that level. Something happened that they didn’t expect, they raised $33,124. They did this by offering fans the album early along with some up close personal items from the band. Watch this video and you can see the passion they have. I think the fans have more passion for their music then they knew.

The reason they raised this much money is because they are passionate about what they do and the fans know it and feel it too. I have been following the band since 2007 and have seen them live more times than I can count. They always take the time to greet any fan before and/or after they perform and say thanks for coming. It reminds me a lot of Richard Petty who is famous for signing every autograph for a fan that asks for one.

We have had their album for a few weeks now and I can’t wait to see the band when they play here is a few weeks. I have all the songs memorized since I have been playing it for a while now. I feel like I know something the rest of the world doesn’t yet. Kind of cool being an insider. The new CD came out today and I encourage you to buy it on Itunes – or Amazon.

The band is also using social media very well. Follow The Dollyrots on Twitter and you will see exactly what obstacles the band face while on the road. I love the late night visit tweets after they have had a few beers myself to fast food places. I can say that I feel proud that I showed them what Twitter was and now they have over 5000 loyal followers waiting on their every tweet. Their passion comes out in the tweets as well as the music when they are on stage playing what they love to do. Here is the first single off the new album.

Help the band out by using the social media buttons below and help spread the word about their new album.

On September 11th I went into Manhattan with the goal of getting some pictures of the Freedom Tower and the World Trade Center Tribute Lights. A few years back we took some shots from Brooklyn but I wanted to get closer this time. While I got closer I also got emotional. It is very easy to get emotional when visiting anywhere near the Freedom Tower. I just wasn’t expecting it while I was actually taking the picture.

The Sphere use to be located in between the Twin Towers in the courtyard. It was moved to Battery Park in lower Manhattan after Sept 11th. In front of the sphere they have an Eternal flame that is lit 24/7 in honor of those that lost their lives on that tragic day. I have taken pictures of this over the years but this was the first time they had American flags up around it and a picture of the firefighters with their American flag.

It is also the first time I was able to get the Freedom Tower in the background as it is finally high enough to see it among the other buildings. As I was taking the picture I felt myself getting mad.

Back when I worked in the subway system I use to make sure I had lunch every Thursday near the sphere. There use to be a little fence around it where one could sit down. On Thursdays the NYC oldies station WCBS-FM use to have a famous bands from the 1950’s -1970’s play there. I use to get a delicious Pita bread like sandwich from the same hot dog wagon and take it into the courtyard and listen to some bands play while on my lunch hour. I saw some great Do-wop bands and some great singers from the 50’s and 60’s and even saw the Monkeys who were great.

So while I was taking the picture I had all these memories flashing back at me. Thinking about some people that I knew that perished that day. Wondering if the hot dog guy that I use to buy my lunch from almost every day made it out of there on time. I started to wonder about all the people that were sitting next to me at the concerts who I sat and talked to. Whatever happened to these people that I met almost every week. I then thought about how I went up in the towers when I was about 5 or 10. I use to love it up there, the elevator ride itself was worth the price alone.

I started to get mad when I realized that my nephews and nieces never got to see New York City from up on top of the World Trade Center like I did. For the first time in a long time I was mad at the terrorist that took that away from them. All these emotions went through me in a matter of seconds although it seemed like an eternity while I was taking the shot.