We're safe

Sitting through a strong Cat 2 hurricane is pretty scary. We're far enough inland that we didn't have to worry about storm surge, but the wind pretty bad. I guess we had 90 mph gusts at our house. I'm happy to report that my house came through without a scratch. I had an old crappy tree in the back yard go down but it managed to miss my house and not take down a fence with it. My neighbors all came through ok. Damage seems to be limited to lost shingles, downed fences, broken tree limbs, downed trees. We lost power early on but our service was restored on Monday morning. Fortunately a cool front came through on Sunday. Saturday was hot, muggy and miserable but its been very pleasent since then. We still do not have internet service restored. I'm at the League City Civic Center where the city is providing free internet, wireless even.

I'm not back to work yet because of the storm. I work for one of the big chemical plants around here and they only wnat hourly folks and those necessary to get the plant restarted. I'm not one of those.

We were very fortunate. Just 26 miles down the road is Galveston City where a real disaster is unfolding. My biggest problem is I don't have internet. Thier problems start with no food, no water, no power, no home and get worse from there. Please keep these folks in your prayers and consider donating to the Red Cross, Salvation Army, or some other organization helping out.

It is hard for us here to really understand what is going on. All the news we can get comes from either the local ABC or CBS affiliate. In this internet age I'm used to being able to find out what;s going on anywhere at any time. Now all I really know is what is going on in my own back yard and what Channel 11 chooses to tell me.

I have no idea when I'll be able to post again. Hopefully I've still got some readers left. If internet is not restored by Friday, I'll be back to the Civic Center and I'll make a brief post.

Hurricane Ike

In the Houston paper this morning the headline said people were getting storm warning fatigue. Early this morning they had Hurricane Ike heading right for Houston, making landfall sometime on Saturday. As of 5 PM today, they have it making landfall at Corpus Christi Texas which is about 100 miles from here. We'll probably still get a good blow here but I wouldn't expect to evacuate. But we're going to be on pins and needles until probably Wednesday. By then the storm will be 3 days out and predictions from that point on a pretty good.

As a consequence of all this, my blog will probably be dark for a few days. I'll try to make a quick post if we have to bug out. Please keep everyone on the Texas coast in your prayers. It my not hit my town, it's going to hit somebody's. And of course don't forget about the folks in Cuba and Haiti who are and already have been hit pretty bad.