Bloggin' With Bitchass

Ike... Has Left The Building... Part III Of The Series...

It was sometime after 10AM when I woke up enough to get off of the couch and take a look outside. The wind was still blowing, but not nearly as hard or as sustained as it was when I had last fallen asleep, and so I figured it was safe to go outside. I put on my old tennies because I figured they were gonna get wet, and ventured out the front door.

The first thing I saw when I scanned the front yard was leaves and small branches everywhere. Then I noticed a rather large branch had broken off of my tree and was laying in the shrubbery. That's when I remembered my car in the driveway. I walked out to the front of the garage, not even wanting to look, but when I did, there were no other large branches down, just a bunch of little ones, and there were leaves all over the sides of the car like they had been glued on. But to my relief, there was not a scratch on it.

As I looked around, I noticed much more damage to the neighbors house on my right and also across the street. There were huge branches that had broken off of the trees, any one of which would have caved the roof of my car in. Everybody in my subdivision has 6 foot wooden privacy fences, and it looked like everybody had lost huge sections out of theirs. The wierd thing is that both of my side fences that run from back to front are decrepit old things that lean and you can knock a board off of them if you bump into them, but neither of them had a single piece missing. My neighbor wasn't so lucky. The fence he had was almost new, I mean it still looked like brand new wood, and most of it was lying on the ground with big broken sections in it.

I thought I'd better look at my own property, and so I stepped back and looked at the roof, not knowing what I was gonna see. But the roof looked OK, and so I started around the house to check out the back. As I walked, I noticed pieces of shingles lying on the ground, and so I looked up a second time, but still didn't see where they might've come from. My neighbors houses didn't look like they had lost any either.

As I rounded the corner to the back yard, I was expecting to see my chimney blown down at least. But there it stood on the corner of the roof, with it's chimney cap still on and not even leaning. I scanned the back side of the roof. That's when I saw where the shingles had come from. A couple of rows of shingles had blown off right below the ridge, from the right end of the roof to about 2/3 of the way across. I know thats gonna cost me, but still, it's not nearly as bad as I was expecting.

The back yard was covered in leaves and little branches, but my two trees were still standing, pretty much intact. Then I noticed the little steel shed where I keep my lawnmower and garden stuff. The neighbor directly behind me had about a 30 foot bald cypress tree, and it had broken off and fallen right onto the top of my little shed, with all the branches covering it like it was in a little green grotto. I went over and opened the door to see how badly the roof was crushed, but there was no damage at all. I looked behind the building and found that the fence across the back of my yard was holding the tree a few inches above the roof of the shed. Talk about close calls!

The only other significant damage I saw was that a huge branch had snapped off of their tree, but it had fallen in a direction away from my house, and it was big enough to where it could've done some damage to my roof if it had fallen on it. I went back into the house took stock of a few more things.

The electricity was still off, obviously, but I was surprised to see that I still had water running at full pressure, and I still had gas. They were both great signs, because it meant that not only could I take showers and flush the toilet, but the showers wouldn't be cold ones and I could cook things on my gas range. Having the power off was not a good thing, but at least with water and gas, the house might get uncomfortably warm, and the refrigerator wouldn't keep the food cold, but the house was livable and I could survive in it until the power came back. I went to the kitchen and made myself a cup of coffee. Instant coffee never tasted so good.

I sat on the couch and drank my coffee while I listened to the radio. The news wasn't too good, especially for Gaveston and the areas. Galveston was hit really hard, but the Bolivar Peninsula and a little area called Crystal Beach were almost wiped clean, according to the newspeople. A lot of the residents who defied the evacuation order still haven't been located, and a news item just today theorized that a good number of them had been simply washed out to sea, and they will probably never be found.

Electricity was out all over a wide area, with the power company estimating the number of customers without power at about 2.25 million. The forecast for getting power back was pretty grim, anywhere up to a month, with some of the hardest hit areas maybe taking longer. That was a scary thought, and I wasn't looking forward to living without air conditioning, lights, or refrigeration for anywhere near that long. The news stories all morning were sobering, but through it all, Vash kept it light by singing away cheerily in his cage. I don't think he likes storms very much, seeing as how I had found him as a baby after he had gotten blown out of his nest, and he was probably just happy that the storm had passed.

I won't go into a lot of detail on the stuff that has been going on around Houston, because it's all been reported on the news, but there are a few other things I wanted to touch on. Trying to sleep on Saturday night was horrible, because even though I had opened all the windows, there wasn't any breeze outside and it was as steamy as a jungle on the equator. I'd drop off to sleep for an hour or so, and then would wake up sweating. I'd get up, go into the bathroom, towel down and then lay back on the bed and try to go back to sleep. This process repeated itself over and over until morning.

The hardest thing to find in the days after the storm were ice, water, and gasoline. I had stocked up on bottled water and had almost a full tank of gas, but I needed ice in the worst way. The fridge kept things cool for about a day, but I had to start looking for some to put in my coolers. On Sunday morning I listened to the radio to hear the locations that supposedly had ice, but by the time I would get to them, it would be gone. I wasted almost half a tank of gas just driving around looking for ice. I gave up and figured to get an early start the next day.

I got lucky again, and on Sunday night, a cool front came into the area, and sleeping was a lot more comfortable. I even had to get a light blanket and cover up by the time morning rolled around. It has stayed on the cool side at night ever since.

The next morning, when I got to the Krogers, they had a line in front of the ice machine, and I found out that people were waiting until it spit out some bags of ice, and then the line would wait for more to be made. A guy guarding the machine told me it took 30 minutes to make the ice, and so I mentally counted up how long it would be before I got any ice. It was way too long to wait, but I had nothing else to do, and it was better than driving around and wasting my precious gasoline looking for it. And so I resigned myself to wait.

At that point, something that I consider a small miracle happened. As I stood back near the end of the line, a guy walked in from outside and asked if we were all waiting for ice. I figured he was a customer and told him yes, and also how long he was probably going to have to wait. But he wasn't a customer... He said, "I have some ice out in my truck, and its free, so if you want some come out and get it".

He didn't have to ask me twice! I whirled the shopping cart around and followed him out to the parking lot with about 5 of my fellow back of the liners. He led us over to his pickup truck, and in the back were 2 huge coolers with bags of block ice in them. He gave me four 10 pound blocks, and away I went to get my precious cargo home. It was an odd feeling as I wheeled the cart across the lot. I was actually a bit worried that somebody might be desperate enough for ice to mug me for mine. But I got my ice home and into the coolers without any bloodshed.

All of the food in my fridge and freezer was thawed by this time, and so I had to throw out almost all of it. Two full trashbags worth... While the fridge was empty, I spent a couple of hours giving it a good cleaning, and this is the cleanest that thing has been in probably 5 years.

On Tuesday morning I went out to the Krogers for more ice, and this time they had a pallet full of cube ice sitting there. I had to pay about $3.50 for a 40 pound bag, and I got 2 of them, which almost didn't all fit into the coolers. $3.50 a bag for frozen water was a bit steep, but considering how hard it was to get, I probably would've paid $10 a bag.

After dropping off my ice, I went out to try and do some shopping. But first I had to try and find some gas for the car. Most stations I drove past had bags on the gas nozzles. Some stations were out of gas, while others had gas in the tanks, but didn't have the electricity to work the pumps. The few stations that were operating had lines of cars a block long waiting to get in. I figured I could wait another day and maybe more stations would be getting their power back. And so I stopped into the Krogers again and picked up a few things and then went back home to do some yard cleanup.

Later that afternoon, while I was cleaning up branches, I saw my porch light go back on! Holy shit! The power was back on! I worked for a little longer while I made sure the power was gonna stay on. About 10 minutes later, just as I was about to go back inside and start turning things back on, I heard the now familiar sound of power lines shorting out a couple of times, and my porch light went back out. Shit!!!!

About an hour later, I saw 2 big power company trucks down the block in the direction that the arccing sound had come from. A crew took a bunck of poles and other tools and went into a back yard, and within a half hour, the power was back on again. I waited to make sure it was gonna stay on, and when I was pretty sure it was, I started turning things back on. Lights came on... then I plugged the fridge in... that was good, so I plugged the TVs, the stereo, and the puter back in. Everything was working so far. Holding my breath, I turned the switch on the thermostat to "Cool". The air conditioning kicked on and within a minute, there was cool air coming out of the registers! Then I checked my cable, but it was still out, and so I tried doing a refresh on it, and after about 15 minutes of playing with it, I noticed the cable box resetting itself, and my picture was back. I went to the puter and did a renew and reset, and my Internet connection came back up. Bitchass was back in business!

About that time, my boss called me and said that the power and server were both back up at work, and so everybody was supposed to come back in the next day. On my way into work on Wednesday, I turned around and stopped at a gas station when I saw that the owner was taking the bags off of the pump nozzles as I was going by. He must've either just gotten the tanks filled or he just got his power back on. Whatever the reason, I didn't much care. I only had to wait for one car in front of me, and then I got my gas and left.

And so, all in all, I made out better than most. I have to file an insurance claim for my roof, but at least I have a roof to sleep under. As I write this, there's still over a million people without power in the Houston area, and a lot of families still have members missing. As good as it feels to have my air conditioning and other conveniences back, there are others who are still suffering out there. It's a really really sad situation. My heart goes out to everyone who's worse off than me, and I hope that they all get relief soon.

Well, I'm tired, so that's all for tonight...

And y'all better hope there's not gonna be any more hurricanes this year or you're gonna have to sit through another long story!

Later!

little bitchass