My First Tsunami

So last night I went through my first tsunami scare here on the island.  We heard about the warning around 10pm last night.  I immediately looked up the map to see if we were in the evacuation zone, but we weren't.  That made me feel a little better but I was still a little nervous.

After turning on the local news and watching their constant coverage for a while, we decided that it probably wasn't going to be that big of a deal and went to bed. 

I was in a super deep sleep when my phone rang around 2:30 in the morning... It was my dad.  Evidently he had just seen the news in Georgia because it was a little after 7:00am Eastern Time.  He wanted to make sure I knew what was going on.  I assured him that I did and that we were going to be fine, and then we hung up.  Sleep... I just wanted to go back to sleep....

I dozed off again.

Text message this time.   It was Kent's mom checking on us.  Then another.  My mom.  Then a few more from friends at home.  Kent turned his phone off and rolled over snoring, but I couldn't just leave people hanging, so I answered calls, texts, and facebook messages until after 4am while watching the local news coverage.

The local news seemed to realize that it wasn't going to be as terrible as they initially thought, and they even questioned the national media coverage.  The major nation wide stations kept using words like "pounding," "hammering," and "slamming" when talking about the waves, and the local news simply said the surf was a little higher than normal.  I felt bad that the media was making my friends and family worry so back home, so I stayed up fielding calls and messages until I couldn't stay awake anymore.  I can't say enough how much the thoughts, prayers, and concerns meant to me.  I had no idea that many people back home would think of us and pray for us.  I believe those prayers had a hand in keeping this island and the surrounding ones relatively safe.   From what I understand, some islands had some damage to homes and ships, but nothing like Japan.  We should all keep Japan in our prayers over the coming weeks.

When I finally woke up on this beautiful day, I decided to do something small to celebrate our blessing of no real terrible tsunami hitting Oahu.  For one, I decided to make a little "celebration sale" in my Etsy shop.  From now until Sunday, any orders placed using the coupon code TSUNAMIFREE10 will receive 10% off the price of the item.  Hope you'll take advantage of it!

I also decided to start refinishing my bedroom furniture.  I really hope to get it all finished by the end of the weekend.  So far the drawers on the dresser are sanded and painted, and I'm working on sanding the body of the dresser.  It's slow go, but I think it will be worth it. 

Here's what my drawers looked like before...

And this is after paint but before the polyurethane...

I'm loving the rich chocolate color, and can't wait to see it all finished and put together!

After this I only have a small chest of drawers and a night stand.  Hopefully it won't be too bad.  Has anyone else repainted/refinished furniture lately?  How did yours turn out?