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Hurricane Ike Slide Show

My sister-in-law, Jennifer, sent me a PowerPoint file containing a variety of pics showing the devastation of Hurricane Ike.  I've converted this into a slide show so that you can watch them as a slide show.  However, I think you'll need to have PowerPoint on your computer.  The images speak for themselves.....

Download hurricane_ike_photos.pps

The Return Home After Ike

Eric was called back to work last Thursday and had to head home before me.  I came back late Saturday night.  We were quite blessed in that our home had little damage and no debris in the yard.  Thanks to all of you who helped me create the "hurricane force field," as I can come up with no other explanation of why houses all around us were damaged, flooded, or had trees down, while our house came through almost entirely unscathed, just as though we had simply left for a week to go on vacation.

Now comes the hard part.  My phone system is inoperative, as I don't have a reliable Internet connection, so I'm forced to use my "hurricane" phone landline that I've been paying for each month since Hurricane Rita hit in Sept. 2005 as my "backup" phone in case my cable broadband service went down.  Now I'm glad I forked over the money for the line, as Time Warner seems to be in no hurry to restore services. 

The estimation for restoring my cable broadband is 30-90 days, so I'm having to limp along with some very poor quality DSL that Eric uses for his office.  It works for awhile and then completely drops, although this isn't normally the case.  Sigh.  I REALLY do not want to have to relocate to my sister's house in Houston to stay in business until my Internet connection is restored, but this intermittent service is becoming extremely painful to use.

Will you help me visualize the speedy restoration of my cable broadband service?

Hurricane Ike Miracle

Eric returned to our house in Orange late yesterday, as he's been called into work for 8 AM this morning.  He told me that it's like nothing ever happened to the house -- no yard debris, no shingles in the yard, no trees down.  The old satellite dish from our prior subscription to satellite TV was ripped off the house, and we lost a window screen. It looks as though our grass has been freshly mowed, although I'd find it hard to believe that our yard service worked this week.  Furthermore, when I asked him if there was debris in the yards of our neighbors, he said that there was, yet ours was clean as could be.  Hmmmmmm.......

I told him that this was due was the power of the hurricane force field I had asked all of my virtual pals to help me erect.  While it wasn't strong enough to ward off Ike from making landfall nearby, it WAS strong enough to protect our home.

He thinks I have a screw loose, but I choose to believe..:)

Stick a Fork in Me

I thought that the worst was over last week, when "WHAM!", I'm hit again.  I'm now writing this shortened ezine from my hotel room in Little Rock, AR.  For those of you who may not know, I was forced to evacuate for Hurricane Ike on Friday, Sept. 12, and I'm quite thankful that I did.  About 50% of my town ended up under water.  You can read more about my experiences in my blog.

I told a client late last week that I'd had a conversation with God that went along the lines of, "Well, God, they say that you only give us as much as we can handle.  I want to let you know that I've had enough and can't take any more. As the saying goes, 'You can stick a fork in me.  I'm done.'"

How Many Trees Could a Hurricane Fell if a Hurricane Could Fell Trees?

My brother lives in the booming metropolis of Cut 'n Shoot, TX.  Yep, that's the real name -- I couldn't make something like that up..LOL.   It's a small rural town just outside of Conroe, which is a bedroom suburban community outside of Houston.  He's going to kill me when he reads this, as he doesn't want anyone to know that he lives in a town with such a hillbilly name. So, while I'm revealing secrets, I'm going to go for broke.  He and my sister-in-law live on a street called Tree Monkey Road.  Are you rolling in the floor yet?  

According to his neighbors, the term "tree monkey" came about when men were hired (I'm assuming around the early part of the 1900s)  to cut the tops out of trees (lots of pine tree growth in the area) and they would swing from tree to tree, like monkeys, topping the trees,  I no longer remember why they were topping the trees, but at least it's good to know that there was a sound reason for that name once upon a time..LOL

Hurricane Ike paid them a visit, but they were pretty well prepared, as they had purchased a generator after Rita in 2005 and so have had almost all the comforts of home as they awaited the restoration of power to their area.  When I called them to find out how they were doing, he told me that they had lost alot of their trees.  Fortunately, most of the downed trees aren't in their front yard.  When I inquired about how many they'd lost, he replied, "I quit counting after 39."

BaDumDum. Wow.

Life is Like a Box of Tampax

My sister lives in Houston and was dealt a big blow with Hurricane Ike, as well.  She recently purchased a new home and at the time of purchase, discovered that the seal around the kitchen window was broken, but never got around to doing anything about it.

Ike hit Houston, she lost power, and then the sheets of rain came down.  She realized that rain was pouring into her home through the broken seal in the kitchen window.  She and my niece were frantically brainstorming ways to stop the leak.  Should they stuff the leak with rice? How about oatmeal?  Then she remembered she'd purchased a big box of tampons at Sam's Club recently.  She and my niece proceeded to stuff tampons and sanitary napkins around the seal.  What a brilliant idea!

This turned out to be a great solution, as both are quite absorbent...LOL  So, when the sanitary products had absorbed as much water as they could hold, they ripped them out and replaced them with new ones, and continued to do this until the rain stopped.

Let's hear it for the power of tampons!

Surviving Ike

Made it to AR late Fri. nite without much of a hitch -- no 28 hour drives to get to an evacuation point that's only 7 hours away. Just exhausted.  Spent Fri. nite watching the storm hit Houston and bury Galveston via televised broadcasts on The Weather Channel, CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News.  Geraldo Rivera graced Galveston with his reporting dramatics while hanging onto a palm tree as the storm entered Galveston, and Anderson Cooper must have felt compelled to show us that high water didn't intimidate him as he continued to broadcast for several hours in his hipwaders from a highway in Bridge City covered in hip-deep water. 

All the places Eric and I visited during our honeymoon/wedding in Galveston are severely damaged or no longer exist, I'm quite sad to report.  Ike turned slightly to the north, despite coming into Galveston, and the severe storm surge (15-20 ft) hit Beaumont, Pt. Arthur, and Orange.  Lucky us..;)

Discovered on Sat. that about 50% of Orange was under water, including the ares all around our neighborhood.  Our neighboring city, Bridge City, where most of Eric's co-workers live, had 95% of the city under 5-8 ft. of water.  Orange and BC have no levies or seawalls, so both cities took the brunt of the surge. 

Late Sat. a friend called and said that other than a missing screen, our house appeared to be undamaged and unflooded, despite the fact that our neighbors experienced flooding just a few blocks away.  We're quite thankful for that fact. Given the state of the rest of the city, it's downright miraculous..:)

The family of one friend who evacuated with us lives in Bridge City, and they're all now homeless.  Another couple who evacuated with us, Lori and James, discovered that their house was completely under water, and James' brother sent them pics of their fridge and mattresses floating in their house.  James' dad stayed in their house because he didn't want to evacuate.  When water started coming into the house, he fell asleep on their washer and dryer.  The washer and dryer started floating as more and more water entered the home, and he ended up stuffing pillows into trashbags and floated out of their house for several miles before being picked up by a rescue boat. We were all quite relieved to discover that he was ok, as no one could reach him until later on Sat. Those are just some of the incredible stories we've heard about how people have survived the storm surge.

If you're interested, you can see pics and video at:

http://www.beaumontenterprise.com
http://www.kogt.com
http://www.orangeleader.com
http://www.kfdm.com

The hotel we chose isn't the best, to say the least (vastly different from the description on their site).  And, unfortunately, Ike followed us to Arkansas and sent tornadoes behind us.  They struck all around Little Rock on Saturday, and we lost power early Sun. morning.  Kinda sad to evacuate 400 miles from a storm and still experience loss of power and services.  Sigh.

By Sunday afternoon full power was restored, along with AC, Internet access, phone access, and our room fridge and microwave, finally.  Unfortunately, that did not take care of the large animal (possum, raccoon, or very large squirrel) that was trapped in the ceiling of our bathroom, vigorously digging into the insulation and wiring and metal fan casing, knocking debris into our bathtub.  We were finally able to get a much improved room late Sun. nite and moved all of our stuff from the old room to the new.  So far, so good..;)  At least we don't have what appears to be blood spatter marks on our mattresses, as found in Lori and James's room.  Believe it or not, we're staying in the most affluent section of Little Rock, but must be in the dumpiest hotel.  It appears deceptively upper-crust from the outside..:)

We've learned that restoration of power and services will take at least a month, as much of Orange isn't even accessible at this point and won't be until the water recedes.  For the moment I'll be staying here in Little Rock.  The good news is that power in Houston is being restored much more quickly than anticipated, so I might be able to relocate there in the next week or so, which would be great, as Houston is only 2 hours from Orange, rather than 7.

Plans are at the moment to set up my office tomorrow (Monday) in our new room, and hopefully be able to hit the ground running on Tuesday.  Well, maybe not running -- how about a slow stride?? <g>

Future plans include moving the hell out of SE Texas.  I'm done with hurricanes..LOL

That's all for now folks.  I think I'm headed to bed..;)