mellicious | Entries tagged with ike

Not because I can't think of anything else to talk about, but more because I accidentally clicked on it and then went, "Hmm..."

The prompt was "Describe your neighborhood."

My neighborhood is pretty interesting, really, although it's not something I think about much.

The place we live in is a rather posh suburb, or at least parts of it are posh. It's also full of older subdivisions, meaning there are a lot of rent houses, occupied by an extremely varied cross-sample of people, as tends to happen with rent houses. (The house closest to us has a pickup and a boat in the front yard, and generally some other vehicles as well.) But we don't live in a rent house, either, we live in an apartment. It's an smallish, older apartment complex, probably of the same vintage as those rent houses ('60s-ish, maybe into the 70s) but well-maintained. It's also a complex that caters to senior citizens.

Some of you will remember that we got flooded out by Hurricane Ike, nearly 15 years ago. When we moved in, back then, we were not senior citizens, but in the interim, well, we're getting really close. We're not on Medicare yet, but Rob is nearly 60 and I'm older than he is, by a couple of years. Most of our neighbors are considerably older than either of us. (He said one told him lately that she was 87, which is higher than I would have guessed, in that particular case.)

In fact, some of you may remember hearing me talk about my mom's boyfriend - he was the reason we ended up living there. We had stayed in touch with him after my mom died. (We intended to move back to Galveston but that somehow never happened!) Unfortunately, he passed away several years ago, well into his nineties.

So, my neighborhood might be best described as a hodge-podge - the condos down the street and the big houses down by the creek, cheek by jowl with us renters. It's an entertaining place in ways the chamber of commerce (where we went to vote recently) might not want to acknowledge. We love it.

I never did cook a lot, and the last few months I have been cooking even less, and thus we hadn't replaced a lot of cooking-related things that got ruined and/or discarded in the storm and the hasty move afterwards. But since I've been going to Weight Watchers again, I'm cooking more, and so we're slowly buying some new things and starting to replace the spices, for example, that we threw away and never replaced. (We threw away almost all the food that was in the wet apartment for two weeks, whether it actually got wet or not. It just seemed icky.) Our local grocery store (HEB) carries a lot of Zyliss stuff, and today we bought the salad-spinner that happens at the moment to be on the front page of their website. (I almost bought the green one just like that, but I bought orange instead. We have a lot of green in our kitchen, but I figured if it was going to primarily live in the refrigerator it didn't need to match anything.) (And a week or two ago it was the locking corn-cob holders, which can also be found on that site. This stuff is crack.) I have never had any desire to own a salad-spinner before in my entire life, but it's just so pretty. My justification in the end was that I have trouble persuading myself to eat salad, and anything that facilitates the eating of salad is thus a good thing.

On a sort of semi-related note - I have an unholy love, for some reason, for my grandmother's Pyrex nesting bowls, and the fact that somebody sold an identical set on Etsy makes me almost sad, as though I missed out on getting them, even though I have my grandmother's set and thus have no need for them. It's all very illogical.

Utterly unrelated - and late - is a really good "annotation" of the president's Cairo speech, from the Wall St. Journal of all places, with notes about the way it was meant to play to the Muslim audience. ("Of all places" because I don't really expect the WSJ to have much positive to say about Obama, and the annotator clearly seems to approve of the speech, in general.)

(And as I say every time I link to the WSJ, tell me if you can't follow that link, and I'll attempt to do something about that.)

I know it's nearly 5am and all, but I've just taken my test and there's no way I can go to sleep yet, and so I think I need to talk about the latest mini-crisis. I am writing this on the laptop which is on the dining table - I went and grabbed it off the bedroom end table which is where Rob usually uses it - because I think my monitor has decided to die. There was a smell and I think I saw a little spiral of smoke. It was working fine and the smoke or whatever seemed to have stopped but I turned it off and unplugged it just to be safe. I'll probably end up just going and buying a new one tomorrow - that was the last part left of the pre-storm computer system, and all of the rest of it has gradually succumbed so I think it's just the end of that chain of failures. Even if it's working I'm not going to be very inclined to trust an electrical appliance after it's been smoking. Another thing to blame on Ike. (I am at this moment downloading LOTRO on this computer just in case. I'm assuming if WoW worked on the laptop then LOTRO will too.)

Anyway, I overstudied for that test - I made a 96. I still need to work on learning the muscles more - I have the Medical Terminology test on the same material still to take. The questions the anatomy test gave were pretty easy if you'd done the reading; I have trouble remembering the names of the individual muscles in the quadriceps and hamstring but I do know that the quads are in the front and the hamstrings are in the back, which was a question that was on the test. (It did ask the same question about the names of the hamstring muscles twice, though, also. Proofread, people!)

Current Mood: accomplished

I know some people have seen this article already - and the thing is, I don't disagree with a lot of what she says. But I went to Galveston right after I read it yesterday, and I thought, "Hell, this place isn't dead." It's going to be a different city for a while, and it may end up a smaller city, but it ain't gone just yet.

I drove down Broadway, and there's still a ton of trash piled up out there, but apparently that's because Broadway is technically a state highway and the city isn't allowed to pick up trash there. (It's been in the paper, lately, which is why I know the answer to this. The state said they were held up by having to award contracts for the trash pickup and it will be done "soon".) But things are clean behind the trash piles, for the most part, and the stoplights are all back on and the businesses are starting to reopen in force. In general I was pleasantly surprised.

I went to Galveston because I had a check to put in the bank (a very belated estate check) and then my boss kinda did one of those, "Well, while you're going..." things, and I ended up going by the office. Which ended up being rather heartening, too, really. The rumor lately has been that our building wasn't going to be ready to move back into until January, and I'm sure there's some reason for that that I didn't see - but honestly, our office looked fine. The elevators were working (the front ones, anyway - I didn't try the ones in the back of the building and I suspect they are not functional) and the a/c was on and the toilets were working, although the bathroom lights were off, for some reason. And most of the plants were alive, rather amazingly, after all this time. I think a couple of my co-workers have been up there at various times and have watered them.

Well, anyway, I want to be able to enjoy working at home for a bit, before we have to go back, so I'm not trying to rock the boat. And like I said, I'm sure that for some reason the building is not approved to be open. But from the looks of things it's perfectly okay, at least in our area.

We had an impromptu department meeting this morning, and my boss said that the outlook has improved somewhat. Apparently all the other entities that have been having to treat all those indigent patients that UTMB normally treats are screaming bloody murder, and the powers that be (that is, the state government and the UT Board of Regents) are taking notice. That's not to say there won't still be layoffs, but maybe not as many, anyway. I have been worried because we have had so little work to do, but apparently - according to my boss, who got it from her boss, the CFO - this is because everything is on hold, basically, while we wait for somebody to make a decision. (Meanwhile Rob has gotten worried about the future of his job - it's ok for now, as we thought, but now there's some question about how they will handle student housing for next year. The fun never ends.)

[Originally this had a filter that took all the local people out.] I trust you guys with the work gossip, partly because you're further away. What do you care?

Maybe I shouldn't have gotten it, but I really like my new car. It drives beautifully and it feels just a tad bigger than Rob's (2007) Corolla. I've been feeling a bit guilty because the final bill was a good bit more than we anticipated, by the time you added all the tax and gap insurance and stuff, but I just have to think of it as a long-term purchase, that's all. I never really thought of the Ford that way - I certainly meant to keep it quite a bit longer than the year-and-a-half I ended up having it, but I never thought I'd be keeping it for ten years or anything like that. This one better last that long, and longer.

I went to Target yesterday (after I went home early because I felt sick - shh, don't tell my boss!), and I found a rug I like for the bathroom, which I hadn't been able to anywhere else. I am picky about bathroom rugs, apparently.

WoW has been cranky lately, and it's been making me cranky -

columbina too, probably, although I haven't actually talked to him in a couple of days so I'm not quite sure. They put in a new patch, and the new expansion is coming out soon, and everybody and their brother who has ever played WoW (i.e., the entire geek world, basically) is playing all of a sudden. And the servers can't quite handle the influx. Makes me a bit alarmed for what it's going to be like when the expansion actually comes out.

(This was written earlier today. Col and I actually had a very nice evening playing with no serious problems, for once.)

I have to say some nice words about some organizations that don't too often get nice words - like FEMA and my insurance company. Besides the fact that FEMA has already given us money, they actually called yesterday to find out if we had housing and we weren't living in our car or anything. And practically at the same time, State Farm's Total Loss Division called to tell me how much they were giving me on my car, and it was very fair. So I am very happy with both of them. I am also happy with the credit union, who got the title on my car to me in one day, when I asked.

I am finally feeling better today. My sinuses just went nuts this week. I didn't so much as get any unpacking done the two days I stayed home, I felt so bad. It's really par for the course for me to have trouble with them this time of year, but it's still annoying as hell.

We had lunch with my aunt and uncle today - they were in town (from Idaho) for my aunt's 50th high-school reunion. We drove over to Alvin for lunch; it's barely a 15-minute drive over there now.

I signed up for NaBloPoMo again. What the heck, it's a tradition now. And I've been posting darn near every day anyway. (And may my life not be quite as interesting as it has been lately, the next couple of months. I'm not sure I can take much more interesting-ness.)

And hey, hook 'em Horns!

I just got my "old" computer set up, finally - I was missing a keyboard, that was the hold-up there - and it's working, yay! But it's also totally freaking me out because the screen is so. fucking. gigantic. After a month of using laptops exclusively, it just seems wrong. And also, I've forgotten where the keys are on a normal keyboard. (We are using laptops at work, too, have I said that?) "Home" and "End" and "Delete" and so forth are all in different places and so I am off-kilter.

(I also think that I am coming down with something, maybe. I kinda feel like crap.)

The WoW patch is downloading, and taking forever, really. I swear it went faster on the wireless. But the wireless computer has moved into its new home in the bedroom, where it is working fine. It should, really, but I'm still happy that everything is working as advertised.

My computer table at the moment is a little folding thing, and while I wouldn't quite go so far as to call it "rickety", it's not quite as steady as I would like. I have pushed it up against the wall so I won't be having nightmares about it falling over in the night. I definitely need to buy a computer desk soon. (Maybe I will use the gift card that an online friend so kindly sent - I won't name names but it was very appreciated, let me tell you!)

I don't think I can talk about the debates in the state of mind I'm in right now. On CNN they are showing McCain talking about "one of the greatest frauds in voter history" - ACORN? really?? I dunno, somehow I would put the hanging chad and all of that chaos in Florida higher, myself. I mean, the whole ACORN thing is highly embarrassing, yes, but - well, that's just McCain putting spin on it and I shouldn't pay attention, should I?

Former presidents Bush and Clinton were in Galveston yesterday - they are doing the fundraising thing again. Which is good, I think we need the publicity. We got pushed out of the news by the economic meltdown and I've only seen us hit the national news as sort of an afterthought since.

For the people that were wondering about all those boats washed up by Ike and just how difficult it is to get rid of them, here's an article about moving one of them.

Added: more interesting stuff from the Galveston paper:
Re Virginia point (which I mentioned the other day)
The National Weather Service's report on Ike

Let's see, I last really wrote something on Wednesday night... The movers were supposed to be there early Thursday morning, so we left the apartment at 6:30 and stopped at Waffle House on the way to get breakfast. We got there almost exactly at 8 and they weren't there yet, but they were there before 8:30. We had found some movers that were based in Pearland, the next town over from Friendswood, figuring that all the Galveston-based ones would be totally swamped. And they weren't cheap but they did a really great job. (Moore and Son, if anybody local needs a mover any time soon.) We even had them move the washer and dryer and they are stuck in the back of the dining room - since the new apartment doesn't have w/d connections - with a quilt draped over them. I mean, they're brand-new and probably still work so I wasn't about to just throw them away. Maybe I should have tried to sell them but I was pressed for time.

It took the movers about an hour and a half on each end. Gawd, we have a lot of crap. And we threw away a ton of stuff while we were packing, too. The back bedroom is just stacked with boxes. There were a bunch in the living room, too, but I've been working on those and the stacks there are getting smaller.

Yesterday (which would be Friday - I'm having trouble remembering these things lately!) I did work for half a day. I sort of felt like I should have stayed longer but really I didn't have that much to do, anyway. And I'm glad I left because it turned out the AT&T guy showed up and he seemingly had trouble finding the problem and went in and out of the house several times with his little tester box. So we finally have a working phone, which is more of an annoyance than anything, really - but since Rob refuses to carry a cell phone I don't feel like the land-line is optional.

We had told Art we owed him a birthday dinner (I tend to lose track but I think he's 86) so we went to Angelo's and ate Italian for dinner tonight. Other than that we didn't do much today. A bit of unpacking and a bit of WoW and a bit of lounging around. Rob hasn't been to a movie in ages and he is wanting to go to one tomorrow. There is a big Cinemark over on the freeway that seems to be about the closest thing to us, but I'm not sure there's anything I'm really dying to see so I may stay home. And we'll have to go do the shopping that we didn't do today, at some point.

UT beat OU. Wow. I forgot all about it today. SportsCenter is on with the Longhorn Band in the background, playing the inevitable "Texas Fight" - they play it about 10 million times during every game. (But it's not as annoying as "Boomer Sooner", at least!)

More things I keep forgetting to say:
-- Leather seems to get moldy quicker than anything else I've seen.
-- Paper doesn't look moldy, but it gets slick and nasty-smelling (really, really nasty) and then seems to start crumbling into mud.
-- A lot of the lights on 61st Street in Galveston are working, and a lot of the lights on the Seawall - but not all - are working - but an awful lot of the ones on Broadway are not.
-- Both Galveston restaurants we've ventured into (Chili's and The Spot) had a "limited menu" with only a few items to choose from: two entrees at The Spot, and I think Chili's had a (relatively) whopping six. And neither of them would let you pick your condiments. You got what you got, and if you didn't like it you could pick it off. But both of them had liquor readily available.

Also:
-- As predicted - well, sorta - Rob has to go back to work tomorrow.
-- The drive from Friendswood to Texas City was not as long as I suspected. Even with a stop at Starbuck's drive-thru.

It took me about half a dozen trips out of Galveston to realize that there was something wrong with this picture: coming off the Causeway, there's one house over on the right side, at Virginia Point. Only thing is, it used to be a whole row of houses. That's really the starkest picture I've seen yet - in person, anyway - of what the hurricane did. (And I don't literally have a picture, unfortunately, but it'd be really hard to get a picture that really told that story, anyway. Particularly since you're not allowed to stop on the Causeway to adjust your camera.)

I worked a half-day again, and we got a lot done this afternoon. I think we might actually pretty much be ready for the movers on Thursday. I found a Shiner Bock beer carton (vintage 1982 or so, if I recall correctly) very soggy and absolutely full of mold-covered childhood mementos that I had forgotten all about. But y'know? If I had forgotten the existence of most of them, why on earth have I been hauling them around all these years? I'm finding it hard to mourn that stuff too too much.

Incidentally, here is our new Ikea furniture, although it's cuter than in the picture. We got the bed with the storage underneath (no headboard) and the storage unit. I'm sort of sorry we didn't buy a chest but I didn't see them at the time.

It occurs to me that what our ugly temporary "office" needs - it's actually a former Payless Shoe Source, if that tells you anything - is some Halloween decorations. I wonder how that would go over.

( Things are getting back to normal! It's a meme! )

I went to work today, for five whole hours. We are in noisy, ugly temporary quarters but it was nice to talk to everybody. Rob went to work, too, but was released after a while and told their department was off "indefinitely". He will get paid for two more weeks, but I'm not sure what would happen after that. I suspect that they will find them something to do, in any case. (Knock on wood.)

I am now driving a bright-blue PT Cruiser. Getting it was a pain, but I've got it now and I'm not giving it back until they decide what the deal is with my car. I have an opinion on that, I just hope State Farm agrees with me. If they try to tell me that car is repairable I'm not going to be happy.

I am so tired. I guess it's just cumulative - or else I'm getting sick, which wouldn't be terribly surprising at this point, either. Don't know which. I am going to go sleep on my lovely new Ikea bed very soon, which we paid some guys $90 to assemble earlier today. It was totally worth the money, as far as I'm concerned.

I did not know there was such a thing as the Blue Roof Program, but I knew what they were talking about the minute I saw a flyer for it yesterday. All those neatly-done blue tarps are very, very noticeable in Galveston. And I had noticed that they didn't look amateurish and they all looked rather alike. The Corps of Engineers (and FEMA, god knows) have taken a lot of heat in the last couple of years, but I can tell you that a lot of people are really happy to have those blue roofs.

I am typing on the laptop, which we have installed on a folding table, and I'm sitting on a folding chair, both of which we bought at Wal-Mart earlier. The chair is quite comfortable, actually. We are watching Titanic - I think it's on TNT - just because we flipped by a few minutes ago right when the boat was sinking. (Actually it was already on before we left for Wal-Mart. Long damn movie.) The TV is still sitting on the floor even though it's sitting right next to the new "media center" thing we bought. We're still figuring out where we want to put it exactly, and the TV is damn heavy. Rob carried it into the house and he's really strong but he barely made it, I think. If I'd known it was that bad I wouldn't've let him do it. Anyway, internet and cable, the things that matter. And our new mattress is on the floor, with new sheets on it and my mom's pretty batik quilt. We only bought a sheet set instead of a bed-in-a-bag because I decided we didn't really need a comforter that badly when we had the quilt, anyway. I'll wait til I find something I really like a lot.

The guy is coming to assemble the bed on Monday. No way I was doing it myself when we have to sleep on it for years.

We played WoW for a while this afternoon, but it was hardly the anticipated marathon. Oh well - life is just not quite back to normal yet. We met the cable guy and bought masses of groceries (at HEB) and then went and made a run by Wal-Mart too, for more pillows and the chair and things like that. I had bought a couple of pillows at Ikea the other day, but I am a multiple-pillow sort of person and I decided we needed more. There are some kind of asthma and allergy-friendly ones, I thought that sounded promising. We could have tried to salvage the old ones - they were dry, after all - but that seemed like asking for trouble. I did salvage the couch cushions (which were scotchguarded and completely unmoldy as far as I can tell) but I draw the line at something that goes right under my head.

I feel a bit guilty about not having gone to Galveston today but we were exhausted and I think we needed the day away. Tomorrow we are doing marathon packing to make up for it. If we both end up working all week it might be the last we can do before the movers come on Thursday. Whatever's not done then we will just have to get them to help us with. Hopefully we can knock a lot of it out, though.

They were supposed to come pick up my car today - I guess we will see in the morning if it's gone or not. State Farm has a "facility" somewhere around here where they are taking all the non-driveable cars until they can be evaluated. Then they will let me know. I anticipate it being totalled - as somebody said in comments, it's hard for the electrical system to ever be reliable again after that much water.

We just got back from dinner at Trudy's (North). The sheer volume of orange t-shirts in that place was overwhelming. But the fact that I had a couple of margaritas may have affected my judgment and/or sensitivity to the color orange somewhat.

The Longhorns seem to have won the game this afternoon - against Arkansas, this was, for those who don't automatically know these things. It was 17-3 pretty early on and I lost interest. Incidentally, I believe I checked when I first booked this trip to Austin months and months ago, to verify that it was not in fact a football weekend. Another thing in my life that Ike fucked up. (This was supposed to be the bye weekend, so the game from two weeks ago was pushed back to today.) However, aside from an awful lot of southbound traffic on 183 earlier and the aforementioned preponderance of orange garments, it really didn't cause us a lot of trouble, so oh well.

The quilt show was very nice. I went around with Anjea and her mom, which was sort of a hoot. Her mom is very opinionated, that was the hoot part. (She was, for example, aghast at a quilted grasshopper with only 4 legs. The conversation went something to the effect of: "But it's not accurate!" "It's artistic license, Mom." "I don't care!")** I did take some pictures but I don't know where the card reader I bought in Celina is, so I don't know when you'll see those. The Best of Show quilt, in particular, was really stunning.

Both of our bosses were heard from today, apparently for completely unrelated reasons. Mine wants me to do some stuff involving sending a couple of e-mails. Rob's wants him to come back to work on Tuesday, which was a bit of a surprise. We figured all along he was likely to get called back earlier than I was, but we still didn't expect it to be quite that soon somehow. (Although that will be 2-1/2 weeks since the storm, actually. Time flies.)

Which means I really need to make some hotel reservations for someplace for the next couple of days, in case we have no power at home still (or worse). Typically, I have been avoiding this. I may continue to avoid it until tomorrow morning, or not, I don't know. I know that I don't want to arrive in the Houston area tomorrow afternoon and have to wander around looking for a hotel. I am going on the assumption that hotel rooms are not as hard to find as they were a week or so ago, since a lot of people have gotten their power back and - presumably - gone home.

** I don't get the impression that Anjea will mind this bit of levity at her family's expense. I hope I'm right about that! (She can retaliate with funny stories about me and my sister, if she cares to, having been witness to a bit of my family's craziness as well.)

(Incidentally, the icon has no particular relevance to anything. It just amuses my slightly foggy brain right now.)

(Written earlier tonight)
We are at the Hampton Inn in Moline, Illinois, and there is no internet. There is supposed to be internet, but there is not. The front desk is extremely apologetic (especially since I am now a Hilton HHHonors silver member thanks to my frequent hotel stays) but there is no internet just the same, and they're not sure when it will be back. Sigh.

I got on WoW again before dinner, briefly, and it seemed to be working fine. Columbine, as usual, managed to find the answer even though he disavowed any knowledge of Windows Vista - he still knew where to look, or figured it out. (I had to left-click on the icon and click 'run as administrator' to get it to install correctly.)

I am going to have to post the entry I wrote yesterday - or maybe it was day before yesterday, I'm not sure - before I post this one so you will have the background about all the indecision about what route to take coming home. But we decided to take the more northern one. If we really had more time to screw around I would have gone all the way to Fargo, probably, because I am crazy, but this is about as far north as we are going. In case you are not all that up on your Illinois geography, Moline is one of the Quad Cities, across the river from Davenport, Iowa. You know last spring when they had all those floods? That was partially around here somewhere, I believe.

We went across Indiana and Illinois today, and made sort of a big circle around Chicago. Tomorrow we are going to drive ALL the way across Iowa and poke our noses into Nebraska before we start south. It's a long way to go just because I think I-55 is boring, isn't it? Well, I don't care.

Now it is 10:20 - at least if I have my time zones right, but I'm pretty sure I do because we are west of Chicago and I KNOW Chicago is Central - and the internet came back just about the time Col gave up on me showing up to play WoW and went to bed. Which is just as well under the circumstances but frustrating. We will have to try again tomorrow.

So let's see, what haven't I covered? It's rather difficult for me to remember right now. I applied for FEMA assistance yesterday morning (back at the Lima Panera Bread) and got an automated call from them last night saying we were approved for the hotel expenses - sort of frighteningly efficent, isn't it? We still have no real idea what is going on at home so we may try to find a place to use for a home base until we find out for sure whether our apartment is livable or not. We can have assistance for a month from the time of the storm - I think they said until October 14th. I think we were eligible for some other kind of reimbursement also but I forget what it was. Nothing big.

I am generally much better today, just mostly travel-weary. Regarding what I was stressing out about yesterday, my father-in-law correctly pointed out that if there had really been as much water in the vicinity of our apartments as my father was trying to imply there was, not only would my car have moved but the dumpster it was parked next to would have, too. Here is the satellite picture as linked from the Galveston paper:

The original is on flickr, and really gigantic, but if you blow it up all the way and look at the right spot, you can clearly see my car right where I left it, and the dumpster right where it was, too. So I think it is fairly unlikely that there was all that much water - at least not, you know, probably not six or eight feet or anything like that. That's not to say my apartment is not wet, but still. I am back to having hope. And I thumb my nose at my father.

(I put some annotations on the Flickr page, to give you an idea, if you're interested.)

The longer this goes on, the tenser I get. It busts out occasionally, although mostly I am holding it together pretty well. Mostly.

I'm at McDonald's. Not surprisingly, McDonald's internet is not great. I have also done some internetting from the Celina Wine Store, which is a combination liquor store and restaurant that (surprisingly) has good and free wi-fi. I spend a lot of time on the Galveston Daily News website, trying to figure out what's going on in Galveston. I also have spent some time banging my head against the wall because I couldn't see the damn screen, but today I found a plug to hook the laptop into, and so the screen brightness is not as much of a problem as it was. (Yeah, I know there's a way to fix it, but that was part of the headbanging, that I didn't know anything at all about how things work with a laptop. It's just the learning curve.)

I bought some clothes, including a hoodie because I was afraid I was going to be cold up here, but so far I haven't actually needed it. I don't get up early enough in the morning - it's warmed up by the time I get outside anyway.

Sitting in McDonald's and hearing people talking makes me despair. I guess I should not take the Celina McDonald's clientele as representative of all of Ohio. (Middle-aged mom: "Sarah Palin is awesome!" And then she claims to be a Democrat. I had to bite my tongue. I'm of the opinion that if you admire that woman you can't be much of a Democrat.)

Tomorrow I am probably going to go meet

karen_d somewhere in the vicinity of Toledo. We figured out (or rather she did) that that was sort of halfway. There seems to be a bead shop around there somewhere. Karen and I tend to put on the shopping when we get together.

Alright, they finally posted and said that there will be no classes for at least a week and normal clinical activities will not resume for at least two weeks. That's not to say they couldn't call us back earlier, but at least a week seems likely. So unless we hear something in the morning to stop us, we are probably headed to Ohio sometime tomorrow. We're just going to drive on up there and take our time (going, at least) and kill two birds with one stone. It doesn't sound like the power will be back on in Galveston any time soon and right now there's no water, either, so home isn't liveable even if everything turns out to be okay there. Hopefully they'll give us 48 hours on having to return and we can get back in that time if we really need to. (It's two loooong days or 3 shorter ones, from here to Ohio.)

We went to Wal-Mart and looked at the laptops and as usual with Wal-Mart and electronics, I got frustrated because they were all locked up and stomped out. We'll have to find a Best Buy somewhere, or maybe an Office Depot or something.

We are starting to cautiously hope that the fact that we haven't seen our apartment building on CNN (or anywhere else) is a good sign. There are some indications that there was a lot less water west of the San Luis. But we haven't seen any pictures whatsoever from down that way, so we don't really know. And we won't be able to get back onto the island for at least a couple of days so the suspense will have to continue.

Not much news out of Galveston yet. We are just waiting to hear. My dad called and said the oak tree in their front yard came down and hit the neighbors' house, but luckily the neighbors weren't there. He lives in the middle of a damn pine forest (on the north side of Houston) and they had pretty severe wind so there are trees down all over the place. Still not much wind here, but a lot of rain. Looking at the radar I'm not sure why there's not more wind.

I just woke up - hooray for sleeping pills. It's windy here but not bad, and obviously the power is on. (I've had my cell phone turned off because among the things I forgot to bring was the recharger.) If what Rob is telling me is right, about the storm surge, our apartment has probably been underwater during the night.

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mellicious

December 2024

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Page generated Jun. 26th, 2025 12:09 pm

Catchy Name Needed

Looking for a name since 2003

Entries tagged with ike

Random prompt time

The cult of Zyliss and Pyrex

Weird night

The premature eulogy

Extra filtered for your reading pleasure

A few random-ish things

Wow. And WoW, too.

Moving day

Saturday night's alright

Oh yeah, and....

Where's Waldo?

[redacted], TX

First night at home

Football weekend in Austin

Quad Cities (I think)

Breathing

On the road?

(no subject)

Rainy Saturday

Morning