Short version: we're okay. We now have power, water, and phone/internet/cable. No damage to the house, just lots of tree limbs down.
Lots of random thoughts during this whole process:
- I should probably have turned off the sprinklers
- Power line fuses blow up with a really eery green light
- In the future, trying to cram ourselves into a single closet is not a good idea
- When you don't have power, you can't get "Barbie and the Diamond Castle" out of the DVD player
- Abby turned 5 during a hurricane
- Our power was back up in 24 hours, our water was drinkable in 72, and our cable/phone/internet was back up in about 60. Lucky.
- Dog-sitting for nervous part Shiht-zu during a hurrican is sub-optimal when you want to try to sleep
- Lot's of people are idiots - the radio had tons of call-ins from people "watching from our back porch"
- Hurricane is a good way to meet your neighbors (during clean-up)
- Our block is really industrious, most people had their debris out on the curb by Saturday night
- Our weather is great right now, seems like a big cost to pay for nice weather in Houston in September
- Why is UH open for class today? Most of my grad students are still without power and water
- Several of our faculty are without power or water, too
- But beyond that, one of my colleagues wife had their baby on Saturday, during the hurricane (no, they did not name him Ike)
- Wind can be really, really loud
- Thanks to the roof guys who fixed the leak around our chimney a few months ago, it held up great
- Can't say the same for the caulk job around the front windows, most of which leaked during the storm
- The girls school really got hammered, and now we're wondering what we're supposed to do with them
- More broadly, how are people supposed to get back to work if they can't send their kids to school? Not saying that closing the schools is wrong, but it is kind of a catch-22
- Got to use a chainsaw for the first time in a long time, very fun to destroy things
- Lots of wet organic matter lying around in our yard, so we've got a jump start on the compost pile we wanted to start
I'll try to post some pictures later today or tomorrow.
Thanks to everyone who e-mailed, called, or just thought about us during the storm. We appreciate it.
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3 comments:
very glad you are all okay. congrats to Abby for her big number five.
i've recently seen a power line fuse explode. someone drunkenly ran into one near my apartment in the middle of the night a few weeks ago. the loud FRAAAPZZT woke me up and i could see the light from the arcs two blocks away. freaky.
wonder how many people "watching from our back porch" wound up with a roof shingle wedged in their frontal lobe. maybe that's why they were calling.
i too used a chainsaw recently, first time for me ever. Dad and i had a rare (and extremely overdue) rite-of-passage moment where he and i cleaned up grandpa Schutz's nice little saw, and he showed me how to use it to cut up some of his own fallen branches (insert Tim Allen grunt here, URH URH URH).
you may want to spread out that organic matter and let it dry out a little before piling it into a compost heap. too much moisture is not good for the kind of decomposition you want.
Glad you're back and OK!
Chainsaws are, despite being a power tool, one of the most primal things a man can wield. Raw destructive power. It's awesome.
Good call on the compost. It dried out a bunch by the time we cleaned up (too heavy to carry sopping wet), so we should be alright. We'll get a chance to get it aired out as well when we move it into the actual bins we're building.
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