Hurricane Idalia Takes a Detour to Valdosta after Wrecking Gulf Coast

In spite of the dire predictions and projections I'd been seeing for the previous several days about "Invest-93"...later Hurricane Idalia, rising up from its birthplace in the western Caribbean and making a beeline as it intensified for a direct strike on Gainesville as a major hurricane, turns out the storm had different plans as it picked up yesterday and struck Valdosta, Georgia on its way across to the Atlantic Ocean.  To be sure, Idalia caused a lot of flooding and damage up and down the Gulf Coast, but as far as my hometown was concerned, not so much and certainly not to the near-panic level the media was laying out.  Being more or less a creature of routine and habit, I felt put out by all this hurricane fuss, something I would have loved in my youth when I'd have seen all this as an opportunity to escape going to school...but not now.  So back we go to our respective humdrum lives...whoopee!