Ike Update #4

Wow. So. Don't even really know where to start here. I don't think I'll be able to get this all in at one time. At least not without stopping to go charge the computer again. We still don't have power, we're running on the generator at this point. The news has been saying it could be anywhere from one to three weeks before power comes back. Also - everyone I know is alive and well.

Everything seemed fine until about 10 or so last night. It got really windy and started raining so we all moved into the house to watch a movie. I was happy when the power went out because it meant we could stop watching Rambo. Bad movie. I don't recommend it. Not the point... Everything went off at 11:30pm. I stayed up until midnight before I was so tired I couldn't stand it. I went to bed then, but was woken at 3 in the morning by the wind blowing outside. It scared the bageezes out of me so I got up to see where everyone was. I found JR, Sara and Travis hanging out on the covered front porch. I went out to find that several trees in the area had already fallen across the street and a little in Jacen's yard. Here's the best of what I can show you a Category 2 hurricane looks like:

I stayed up for about an hour before I couldn't take it anymore and went back to bed. It was too stressful to stay up and watch. At least while I was sober. When we got up in the morning we went out the front door to assess the damage. Thank goodness we didn't stay out on that porch because look what we found (this is why we put plywood on the windows):

We walked around the neighborhood in the rain to see how the neighborhood made out. There is so much damage I can't even begin to explain to you. It is mostly trees and fences and carports, so nothing TOO serious. The craziest thing is the woman across the street lost 5 trees in her yard alone. The biggest one being a giant pine that landed in the road. Thankfully, we can still get out the other way. We had to move a bunch of small branches out of the road, but it wasn't bad.

My sentiments exactly:





It amazes me how people band together in a time of need. Travis had the chain saw out and was cutting through the branches in the front porch, when a bunch of the neighbors came over and helped us pull the pieces to the street. When we were finished with that, we went across the street to help a couple get a tree out of their driveway:

We do have the TV hooked up to the generator, but I think we all have a little bit of cabin fever. We couldn't help staying outside. Dana, Sara and I decided to take a walk down to Brais Bayou to see how high it was. I looks to be half full right now, which is still significant, but you could see where the leaf debris was and it was about to fill up and over the banks. We were only a few blocks from Dana's apartment by that point so we decided to keep walking to her place. It was a disaster. I'm pretty sure that every single tree in that apartment complex is down. Including the one next to Dana's apartment. The roots from the tree pulled up the fence and the concrete slab of her patio:

Ugh, more later. I'm tired and it is HOT. Plus everyone keeps calling and texting me. Oh and by the way, no electricity makes for cold showers.