Rumor has it...........

............that I might have electricity now. I'll have to go home today and confirm that. If so, it's very exciting! 8 days.

I found this link to some pictures from the storm and the damage and such and I thought they were very captivating and interesting. http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/09/the_short_but_eventful_life_of.html

*Sigh*

Things aren't looking great.

It seems my zip code has been pushed back to 'After Thursday Sept. 25' status.

Here's the map: http://www.centerpointenergy.com/staticfiles/CNP/Common/SiteAssets/doc/Est_Restoration_ZipCode_Esize_091908.pdf

I'm in the darker blue area up in the north area.
We'll see.

Hurricane Ike

The Night Before........
I finally went to bed around 2am as I listened to the storm roll in and start howling. Power was lost around 245am on Saturday morning. I was very aware of the time we lost power because as soon as it happened, the smoke detectors started beeping very loudly every few minutes, then each hour until it finally stopped. Needless to say, I didn't get much sleep that night.




Day 1

I was awoken at 7am by a call from my dad since he's out of town on business. This was probably the worst hour of the storm so I couldn't go back to sleep. I decided to take a look around my parent's house to see how it held up. Standing in the middle of the first floor, there was a strong difference between the front of the house and the back house. You could tell there was a hurricane going on in the front part, but more like a thunderstorm in the back side.
I walked around and found water in the front living room and the dining room. I started getting towels out to dry up the water but it was a futile attempt. After an hour and a half of wringing out towels, I hadn't made any progress as it got worse. I gave up and tried to go back to sleep for a little while.

So on this day, there's no electricity, no cell phone signal, but we do have water. I think I would rather have water and go without electricity (if I have to choose.)

After a visit from the neighbor, I spend the day moving out all the furniture in the front room, pulling up the carpet, cutting out the padding, and trying to dry some of the carpet in an a ttempt to save it. Since my dad is out of town, I'm next in line in terms of physical strength.

Wow. There's lots to be confident of in that last statement. Ha.

The rest of the day was hot, humid, and rainy off and on. Basically, it was a steamy day and I was doing lots of physical work so I was tired and hot by the end of the night.

This was taken during the storm from the front of the house downstairs. The trees you see in the street are just like the tall ones you see everywhere else. One of them snapped and fell over and brought the next two or three trees down with it. Fortunately, it didn't land on any houses or cars, but it blocked their driveways and the street.


This is the detention pond behind the house. It's not ever this full.

You can see the trees swaying back and forth by the fence.




This is my progress after the first day.


Another picture during the storm from a different angle. You can see the trees swaying back and forth. As you can see from this picture, the street leads up to this house. And as evidenced from the trees, the wind and rain barreled down the street right up to the house, like a tunnel. So my parent's house received the brunt of the storm. (Is that how you spell 'brunt?') And I think that's why it received the damage that it did on the front side of the house.


We went on a walk around the neighborhood to get some fresh air since the house was stifling. The neighbors had already started cutting up the trees in order to carve out a path to the street from the garage. But look at how the tree was completely uprooted. These trees are big! And this was a very common site everywhere in the neighborhood and surrounding areas.



Another tree that was uprooted. But it was amazing to see that most of the trees didn't land on houses or on cars. Not to say that none of them did, but the majority didn't. It was really amazing.

More uprooted trees.

And another one.

The street access to the detention pond is right next to the house so we're very aware of the doors during storms. But this time, they were torn off from the hinges. The one on the right is hanging on by the middle hinge.


Day 2

To add insult to injury, it rained again Saturday night and it wasn't a light rain. It was a pretty heavy thunderstorm. There were about five seconds of thunder like nothing I'd ever experienced before. My bed shook for those 5 seconds - truly frightening.

Again, didn't get much sleep. Living on a diet of dry cereal, pop tarts, and water. And still no electricity. Therefore, it's very warm at night and uncomfortable to sleep.

I spent the day pulling things out of the garage because of the water damage that occurred there. Water came in from the ceiling and doused the shelving with water so things needed to be removed and dried to give the shelves the chance to dry out.

During these days, we received many calls but most of them came from people in other countries that were watching the news or reading the newspapers. Calls came from Colombia, Venezuela, Germany, France, and Spain, and there may have been others, but those are the ones I'm aware of. We appreciate everyone's concern for our safety during this time.

The other concern during this time is that there are two refrigerators in the house, both with meat and perishables. So we went on a 'Save the Meat!' campaign. Oh, and did I mention that we don't own a generator? Our neighbor let us borrow a small generator for the regrigerator, which is why we were trying to consolidate the two appliances into one. We went on a rescue mission and packed up all the meat, a cooler-full, and took it out to my parent's land in Waller. There, we were able to cook some dinner and relax for a little bit since the stress of damaged food was lessening.

These are some of the scenes in the area. Trees have fallen everywhere over the power lines and into the roads.

These were all taken while I was driving so they're not the best composed.







This is one of threes in the house that fell on the house. From what I hear, you have to wait until the insurance company can come out to see you before removing it. Not sure if that's totally true, but that 's what someone told me.



Day 3

Still no electricity, but God sent nicer weather our way and the temperature went way down. It's UNHEARD of to have 60 or 70 degree weather in September in Houston. UNHEARD OF. So it was nice to be able to enjoy the nice day.

The UPS guy made a stop by the house and the mailman did, too.

I learned how to start a generator. Definitely a life skill to remember.

Day 4

Still no electricity. Picked up and headed over to Ashley's to get some work done. And calling friends. And texting friends. And taking pictures in the area.

Day 5

Still no electricity. Picked up and headed over to my cousin's to get some work done. Many business are still closed, but I'm realizing that many people already have power. Some people didn't lose anything during the storm, or only lost power for an hour. Some only lost power, some only lost water. Some lost both. But by this point, most people have it all back.

Not this area. No sireee, bob.

And traffic lights are still down.

Day 6

"Sixth verse, just like the first. Another day - much, much worse." You may have to be a girl scout to know that reference. And no, it's not much, much worse. It's just still inconvenient. I'm thankful that things didn't happen any worse. Still no electricity and I picked up and went to Susan's to work for the day.

Day 7
Today.
Still nothing. A lot of people have power back, but not us. You're able to send a text to the radio station or something and they can give you a report on your zip code. Here's what I received:

As of 11pm Wed night, Centerpoint says this zip code will have power 80% restored sometime after Mon Sept22 due to extensive damage.

So that's where I'm at.

I hope this really long entry didn't bore you, or you skipped over it.

Storm Ike

We've survived the storm but we're still without power, day 4. (I'm working out of Ashley's house today since she's fully up and running.) I'll write and post more later.

Some storm trivia

As is normal when everyone is talking about only one thing, I was wondering about storms and how they're named. I found an article that went into an explanation about how storms are named but it doesn't get too technical, so if you're interested, here it is: http://www.theroot.com/id/48006?GT1=38002

Then, I also started to wonder about when Hurricane Diana might make it's appearance on the radar (not that I'm asking for it, I'm just wondering.) My name is 'Dianna', but I respond to any variation: Diana, Diane, Beth, Maria, Denise, Rose, etc.

What? you may ask. Those are all names that I've responded to over the years by various people, some of them even lasting as long as 9 months and I never knew why.

Back to the topic at hand. I found another article that talks about retired names. It seems that once a storm passes through and causes major destruction (i.e. Katrina), then the name is retired.

I'm out.

Both Diane and Diana are on the retired list. WOW. I mean, like, that's it for me.
Here's the retired name article: http://www.usatoday.com/weather/hurricane/names-retired.htm

I don't think they'll ever stretch to put 'Dianna' as a storm name.

It's coming

I'm preparing for the storm in my own way. From what I've seen, there's not nearly the mayhem there was last time. I'm just saying that based on the traffic and evacuation status.

I'm staying here and just getting ready to 'hunker down.' I stopped by the store to just pick up a few things and I got the second to last box of Pop Tarts, and it was the store brand at that. The peanut butter area was also cleared out except for the expensive jars. The chip and cereal areas had large empty spaces in places. The bread was completely gone.

To be honest, these aren't things I normally buy (Pop Tarts, peanut butter, etc.) but it seems that a storm like this is a good enough excuse to break from our disciplined eating patterns when we must restort to non-perishables.

All that said, I'll be shutting down and "closing the office" for a little while the storm passes over. So if you're expecting something from me soon, I ask for some patience until I can be back up and running again.

On a different note, it's so refreshing and exciting when something actually works. The past few months have been a time for newness and change as I replaced old equipment and bought new software, etc. So, many things have changed. That being said, there's also a learning curve that comes with many of these things. I was starting to get behind on several tasks because I wasn't able to do everything I needed to, and then when I was finally ready to get everything done, I wasn't sure it would work. I held my breath as I tried one particular process for the first time and was so incredibly happy that it actually worked without me having to call for technical support! That being said, I was able to crank out several things to get them into the hands of my clients. Whew!!! Yea!!

I hope to blog Amanda and Mike's wedding before the storm - that is my intention. Hopefully that is what will happen.