Back to the motherland

We have received word that our house has gotten power restored, so we plan on heading back to League City tomorrow morning. We will fill up on gas and get some groceries before we head out, since supplies are still limited. We have some work to do, like taking the boards off the windows and cleaning out the fridge. Fun stuff. Jeff is scheduled to work starting Friday for a week. I have no idea when I'm going to work. I'm going to try and work a couple of nights this week. We'll see. My nephew is getting christened in Louisiana next Sunday, so I have to go home for that. Jeff will unfortunately not be able to make it. Duty calls. So anyway, that's our plan as of right now. Hopefully we can get things back to normal fairly quickly.

The Refugee Lifestyle

Lauri and I have left Houston and are now staying with Family in Fredericksburg TX. Lauri has not been called in to work relief at the Hospital yet, and NASA is not expected to reopen until "no earlier than Thursday," so we will be here in Fredericksburg until that time.

The house in League City fared very well during the storm. We rode out the storm at my Aunt's house in The Heights in Houston (just west of Downtown). The winds were tremendous, the eye of the storm in fact passed right over our League City house, and very near my Aunt's house. The house shook as the winds of the eyewall came through. A scary time, but the house stood strong.

I was able to get into League City right after the storm passed on Saturday evening. The house, surprisingly, had no damage from wind or flooding. The storm surge was not as extensive as expected, so it did not get all the way into our subdivision in League City. Kemah, the town next door, had a lot of storm surge problems, though. We are quite impressed and pleased with the house, it withstood the worst that Ike could throw at it, and survived without any issues. Here is a post-Ike picture, taken on Saturday:



While our house was OK, the city is not. Most of the street light signals are blown away, with power lines dangling in the street. There are many trees snapped and fallen, same with power poles. Some homes have damage, and there is extensive flooding. There will be lots of cleanup to do, but it will get done in time.

To give you an idea of the water level, here are some pictures of Clear Creek, taken at what was the access road from the FM 270 bridge, between NASA Rd 1 and FM 518.

quick update

jeff and I are in Fredericksburg. We arrived here around midnight. Our house had absolutely NO damage to it. We are truly lucky. More later. Gotta get some sleep...

Hurricane Ike - Evacuation Status

Getting ready for Hurricane Ike to come ashore, don't have a lot of time to write... Here are the details:

Lauri and I have evacuated with Bromley and Maggie to my Aunt Nancy's place in The Heights (downtown Houston). We will ride out the storm from here, assess damage, and then likely move out from here to somewhere that has power after the storm has passed.

We have boarded the house, taken everything that was important to us, and left the rest. They are forcasting storm surge to be possibly in excess of 15-18 ft in the Clear Lake & League City area, with sustained winds between 100-110 MPH. Our house sits at about 16 ft elevation, about 5 miles from the bay. Basically, we packed up what we could, said a prayer, and left. Depending on how the storm goes, we might have significant water in the house.

We will try to post pictures and status after the storm passes, once we can get power. Take care, and stay safe! We will do the same...

Update

Well, it's been a week so I figure I would update everyone. My family is doing fine in Louisiana. Everyone but my grandparents in White Castle had power back on as of yesterday. Hopefully they will get power back soon. They have a generator, so they are doing ok. Everyone is trying to get things back in order and then Ike shows up...We thought at first that he was headed straight for us, but now it looks like he's headed out west. It's still kinda early to tell, and of course, he could turn at the last minute, but I think we will be ok. We did not go home this weekend for the christening. There was no power at the church. It might be resceduled for 2 weekends from now. We'll see. Other than that, we are doing fine. We finally talked to Fingers (the furniture store we were having problems with). Our chest of drawers is in and going to be delivered on Friday and they are going to fix the china cabinet when they are here as well. I'm glad we are getting this resolved because the store is getting bought out by another company and I was afraid I would not get our issues resolved in time. So we'll see on Friday if everything is to our satisfaction. I hope Ike stays away so they can come.


I guess that's all the news for now.

Back at home

We arrived back at home at 6pm tonight. A little bit of traffic on the way home, but not terrible. We saw about 80 ambulances on I-10 headed west. Not sure what that was about, but very odd. The dogs slept well on the way home. They had a busy three days. We had a total of 5 people and 4 dogs during our stay. We were almost outnumbered! Besides our two dogs, Jeff's parents have their golden retriever puppy, Macy, who is about 6 months old and Carrie, Jeff's sister has a puppy, Cami, who is about 6 months old as well. The puppies wanted to play 24/7 and our dogs didn't really want any part of that. There were some tense moments, but no blood was shed. Lucky for Cami! She was the instigator! But we had a great time and lucky for us, Gustav headed straight to Louisiana. Not lucky for my family and friends, who are spread all along I-10/I-12. Everyone got some of the effects of Gustav. Only power outages and minor wind damage. My dad got some water in his house, but I don't think it was very much. So everyone did ok. My nephew is supposed to get Christened this weekend coming up, so we hope everything is still on for that. Otherwise, back to work for Jeff and I starting tomorrow. Hope everyone had a good weekend, but I know Gustav screwed up most people's plans, no matter if you were in Texas or Louisiana. I have some pictures from the weekend. Enjoy.