Last Friday my family and I were bracing for Hurricane Ike to come our way. And come our way it did. I live on the far north side of Houston, so the damage in our area was not so bad. But Galevston and areas right on the coast appear to be almost completely wiped out. I am sure you can find plenty of photos of this on the internet and news. Their tales are being covered and are terrible. They give me nothing to complain about. So as I go through the details of our past week, I am not complaining! Just documenting!

Friday, Septmember 12 – finished putting all the backyard things into the garage, filled up the bath tubs with water, located the flashlights, put the cars in the garage, etc.

That night the wind started to blow. It blew, and blew, and belew. The power went off sometime early staturday morning. I think about 3 AM.

Saturday, September 13 – no electricity but we did have natural gas and running water. Our neighbors had started cooking all their food, and brought us over some chicken nuggets.

We had a fallen tree in the back. Also part of our fence had fallen down. No damage the house though..

We went to go check on my mom, who lives about 1.5 miles from us, and check on another friend, but they were not home. Then we went to go check on a 3rd friend who lives 2 streets over. We had dinner with them. (Also, the friend that was not home had come to our house!! So we missed each other.)

That night we lighted the candles to see at night.

Sunday, September 14, 2008 – Still no lights. Checked on Mom. Checked on Friend. Kids played there a while, then came home. We cut off limbs on the tree to make it lighter. then we uprighted it and tied it down… In retrospect, I’m not sure this is the best move. I am wondering if it will survive or if it is a bigger risk keeping it uprighted than cutting it up and forgetting it.

Friend’s family and my children went to the tennis courts and cleaned a court that had a lot of debris on it. We spent more time cleaning, than playing tennis. But it started getting dark, and we noticed the tennis lights came on. We started talking about this, and some other people at the tennis court mentioned that their lights had come home earlier in the day. I was hopeful that our lights came on. Not the case. Our lights were still not on.

Monday, September 15, 2008 – still no lights
Went to work for an hour with my youngest son. Had trouble working and entertaining him, so didn’t stay long. When I got home, I was pleasantly surprised to see my wife had made it back to Boston. She was supposed to come on Saturday but the flights were cancelled.

Tuesday, Septemeber 16, 2008 – still no lights
went to work for a few hours. charged up laptop (have the EDVO card so I can connect at home with the laptop to the internet…)

Wednesday, Septemeber 17, 2008 – still no lights
went to work for half a day. Mom, who lives on other side of the neighborhood got lights early in the morning. Our friends who live in a different part got lights too. We still do not have lights. A lot of our neighbors have generators… we do not…

Thursday, September 18, 2008 – still no lights….
Went to work for the full day… pretty much
Call me dad in the evening to see how he was doing. while I was on the phone with him, his lights came back on. So, he agreed to let me borrow his generator. We went out and got the generator. By the time we got back, it was past 10, and I was tired… It was dark.. I needed help carrying the generator, and too late to ask a neighbor.

Friday, September 19, 2008 – still no lights.
asked neighbor to help me carry generator. Let them plug into a socket. decided to stay and work from home today.. I’ll try to publish more details later…

It is great having a generator. Thanks Dad!