well, ivan came and went and i'm still here. it turned northeast before it hit land which spared us from a large part of it. we ended up leaving town for the night and when we came back there is one tree on the side of the house that got blown down and one small section of our fence. other than that there is just a bunch of limbs and pine straw littering the roads. the only reason we got really worried before the storm is because they weather channel was predicting something like 15-20 foot storm surges possibly going several miles inland. if any of you know anyhting about the mississippi gulf coast we have a major shipyar here that build navy ships. the access to that place is the pascagoula river and our house is about 3/4 a mile away from that. that had us worried. but everything is fine now and we're just trying to get back to normal. thanks for all the words of support while i was away.