Hurricane Ike Turner

OK, this could be bad.

We won't really know until it actually gets here, but it could be bad. We've decided to stay here, mainly because none of our neighbors in Sienna Plantation are bailing out, and they probably know more about hurricanes than we do - especially since this is our very first hurricane ever. And anyway, we don't want to miss our first hurricane. I'm all about experiences.

So far, it looks like Ike is going to come ashore and tramp right through the middle of Fort Bend county, where we live. It's kind of hard to figure out exactly where it will go in relation to our home, because the scale they have to use on this is huge.

So, I decided to make use of blogging technology to keep everyone updated. The updates will, of course, cease abruptly in the case of a power outage, or a flooded study.

At the moment (2:45 pm Thursday), they expect Ike to roll ashore tomorrow afternoon. We may have some winds and outer bands or stuff before then, but they will likely be more like the usual rain storms that don't really hurt anything. By Friday night, we should have high winds and hard rain. By that, I mean that we are promised 75 mph winds - but the barometric pressure inside the eye suggests the possibility of 125 mph winds. If it gets that high, we may have windows blown in. Jeff has suggested that we put tape on the windows in an X shape, which apparently gives them more strength. Jeff has been in many hurricanes in his day.

We aren't really worried about flooding here in the Plantation, because we have a 50 ft. elevation and lots of strong levees.

The evacuation from Galveston has begun in earnest, and the roads started getting majorly clogged by people fleeing the low lying areas to our south - Pearland and the other 775 zip code areas - about an hour ago. I got back from my dental appointment as it was getting thicker. We're watching channel 2, which seems to be the most reliable and up to date, much as channel 3 was back in Wichita Falls (good old Skip McBride).

I have brought in all loose objects from the yard: gardening tools, buckets, potted plants and so forth. I need to also bring in the burglar warning from out front, even though it's stuck deep in the ground. If it does get pulled out, it will become a deadly missile indeed.

Feel free to leave comments on this blog. I think I have it set where you can, but I am going to go make sure in a moment that it allows comments by non-registered folks. I will put the updates on the actual blog area; check to see if there is a newer blog entry, but I plan to just keep updating this one.

---update, 9-11, 3:25 pm---
Galveston is already flooding in the lowest areas. Storm surge is already here. wow.

---update, 3:32 pm, or 1532---
They say now that we may be enduring hurricane force winds for 18 hours.

---update, 1615 (or 4:15)---
The "track" they keep talking about is mostly just an educated guess, though apparently very well educated. We just heard that the track (which is an average of the various computer models, aka spaghetti) has shifted slightly northward. This is bad for Houston downtown, but good for harB and GA and Wm. We are now predicted to be on the "clean"side of the storm, which means the winds will be not so bad (75 mph or less), and they will be from the north instead of from the south. Most of our southern exposure consists of windows, on both of our two stories. But the north side of the house has only ground level windows. The upper level is one massive brick wall.
So we will wait until tomorrow morning to tape the windows.
In any case, the wind and rain (outlying tropical rains) will probably begin about 0100 hours tonight, and won't become severe until tomorrow afternoon at the earliest, and probably Friday evening. We still get trash pickup tomorrow morning, so I will likely take it out to the street after sun up depending on how hard it's blowing - and bring the empty container in as soon as they dump it into their Tonka truck.

Meanwhile, the surge has arrived on Galveston Island already - this is a little surprising to the weather folks here, and probably means something, though I don't know what, exactly.

---update, 2049 (8:49 pm)---
A while ago we heard the neighbor hammering plywood over his windows. In the dark. That makes me a little nervous.
They're supposed to update the track in another hour.

---update, 9:08 pm---
The county judge here says that Saturday is going to be "ugly." I don't like the sound of that.

---update, 10:10 pm---
The new track says even further east. Still not good for Houston, but better for us. The good news: they say it could possibly come ashore as a category 2, which would be a wonderful thing. Also we won't have tropical force winds until after 7 am tomorrow, and no hurricane stuff until maybe 5 or so in the afternoon. But the bad news is that surge. It could reach a 20-25 ft. storm surge if it hits Galveston directly. And even if it misses, it could be 18 ft. That's well over the sea wall.

But the track, remember, is sort of an average. Some of the trackettes go directly over Ft. Bend county. If so, we will see the eye in our first hurricane.

---update, 10:50 pm---
Have you looked at the satellite image? This storm is huge! It fits neatly just inside the shape of the entire Gulf of Mexico. And it looks like it's going to go straight into the ship channel, which is really bad news for downtown Houston. Also, by this time, hurricane Rita had changed her direction, which is what many were hoping for this time around. It has not happened.

===update, 730, 9/12/08===
Good morning. The track is still pretty much right where it was, so that's probably going to be it. No sudden shift to the north, just rolling along on schedule, with murder in its eye. It's likely going to move right up the ship channel, flood downtown Houston without mercy, and we here in the Plantation can expect some strong winds and rain from the east, then from the north. We could see the eye sometime before it's all over (that would be a bonus), but most likely we'll see sheets of rain on our north facing windows. I really hope that we don't see sheets of rain blowing onto our living room floor.

---update, 1034---
I went on my morning walk. I figured I might as well, since the rain won't start for a while yet. The sky was sunny and blue at 8:30, cooler than usual, which is to say warm but not stifling.

An odd thing happened. The air had been perfectly still, but suddenly a strong, steady breeze came up from the north. It held for about five minutes as I continued down the path, then faded to a gentle breeze from the east. By the time I got back to my neighborhood at 9:30, I could look to the sky and sea clouds moving in a relatively fast arc, traveling from the east to the north and then to the south. These must have been the first signs of the hurricane.

I met some neighbors out talking on the sidewalk, so I joined them for a bit. One was surprised that so few people had boarded their windows. But others had the same view I did - we have no idea how to install the plywood necessary to protect anything. Do we drill holes into the bricks? The mortar? Won't that damage the mortar? Besides, I don't have a ladder long enough to reach the upper windows, I don't have a skill saw or the skill to shape it to fit, and besides, the Home Depots are out of plywood by now. Some had taken pictures of the long lines outside Home Depot and Lowe's, waiting to buy plywood if any came in. Another says if the winds get to 100 mph, he's going to go outside and lean in it for fun.

We're getting different estimates from different sources, but some say the winds will be 50-75 mph, some say 75-110. I don't think anyone really knows. Some tell me that tape on the windows will help protect them, others (including the Weather Channel™) insist that it will do no good at all. Most in my neighborhood say that the windows will generally be fine anyway, at least in our area.

We both showered and put on clean clothes, I'm doing a last load of laundry as we speak, and we have two large camp bladders full of water to drink, and when it starts raining I'm going to put the cell phone on the charger to top off the battery. Local officials are telling us if we're in the flood areas, to evacuate yesterday, but if we're not, "hunker down." That's Texan for stay put, hold tight. If the eye passes over us, I plan to get pictures and video if at all possible, but if that happens we will be in for higher winds, so who knows?

By the way, the comments you guys have left have made me feel good. You don't know how much my friends mean to me. Or maybe you do.

---1100---
Holy cow.
The local TV coverage on channel 2 just featured an interview with a guy who says he's going to stay - on Galveston, not the mainland. He says he's staying because he loves the elemental energy, and he has salt water in his soul. There's a TFM for you.

The authorities have a recommendation for such people: make sure you have an ID of some kind fastened securely to your body so they can ID you if you're recovered after the storm.

The background for the interview was the sight of the waves crashing against the seawall, splashing thirty feet into the air, and coming down in a huge foaming mass toward the camera. That's right: the 15 foot seawall in Galveston is about to be topped. When it does, soon, they will remove all the reporters and cameras, because the island will be underwater. Not just flooded, you New Age moron, underwater! The nearest land will be the coast of Texas, and all the elemental energy in the world will not enable you to swim that far. Each wave crashing into the island's pathetic little seawall has enough force to kill you if it hits you while you're treading water.

There are some brave souls who are going to ride this one out on the mainland, and they are risking their lives to do it, but staying on Galveston island when this thing actually comes over it, with a 20 ft (or higher) surge? Stay tuned as we clean the gene pool.

I think I will close this entry, and begin a new one. See the menu at the left for a link to Riding the Storm Out.

Comments are still enabled!

Morning walks

My morning walks take about 80 minutes to complete. I usually see at least some birds - no idea what they're called, but they're white with long necks and legs, and they're cautious but not really timid. I have occasionally seen deer.

When the levee makes a sharp, right 90º turn, it's high above the low ground on the left. You actually look down on the houses, behind their fences. Below are trees, fairly old trees, that stand tall. One of these has branches hanging within reach of the trail. In fact, you kind of have to stay to the opposite side on the trail, or else duck your head a little. There are grape vines hanging in the branches there. I saw some clusters of little unripe grapes, and next to each tree there is one grape vine growing up the trunk and mingling with the branches and leaves. Since that's too much coincidence for even an optimist like me to assume, the HOA or the developers or some really thoughtful resident must have planted one vine by each tree a long time ago - kind of like when I planted two oak trees in my front yard last year in Midland. Only the grape vines are still there, unlike the oak trees, which are gone because some attractive, stone-hearted California girl ripped them out to make it easier to mow (but I'm not bitter).

Some day soon those grapes will ripen, and the little animals in the area will enjoy them. Maybe somebody on the trail will eat them, who knows? Maybe I'll be the one. And I started thinking this morning: who else will even notice the grapes? Just other walkers like me? I doubt that the runners, the joggers will even see them. They're going too fast, thinking about their young, active things. Only the walkers, in our old man shorts, and our old man socks, and our old man t-shirts will see them, because we're the ones limping along with our old man DNA unraveling.

That's how you age, you know. Your DNA keeps replicating itself, following its instruction set, and there are tiny errors that creep in as it does. I don't really understand the process (as if you did, either), but they describe it as being similar to the little plastic ends on your shoelaces. They keep the DNA from unraveling. But they start to wear out, and the new cells have the DNA strands a little more weak and damaged, and so you get old and inflexible, until eventually you die (but I'm not bitter) like the useless refuse you were always meant to be (no, no no - I'm not bitter, honest).

OK, strike that. I'm useful refuse. Yeah, that's better.

Meanwhile, hurricane Ike is on his way, and nobody is sure where he'll step ashore without wiping his feet. It looks like he'll hit Rockport, then move up to San Antonio, and then go rain on Wichita Falls, my old hometown. We have to have a little fun.

That visit home

When I went north to visit my old stomping grounds (and a fat auld man like meself can do some serious stomping when he takes a mind to, ye ken), I made a short visit to my old house on Brazos in Midland (Midland on the Brazos, as it were).

I was curious about whether the new owners (who incidentally promised to take over the RO unit contract and then left me stuck with the bills for four months, but I'm not bitter) had appreciated any of the things I had done there. No, they hadn't. The garden space was removed, along with all the walkways I had put down. All of them. The pond is gone. The running stream is gone. They probably ate the fish. The two baby oak trees are gone too. Just a normal, boring yard, front and back. And I could have kept the other compost bin, but at least they gave it to someone down the alley.

I'm glad I at least kept the decorative rocks - the petrified wood, and all those.

What do you expect from California imports? No appreciation for the finer things.

Well, rain on 'em. I'll grow my avocado tree here, and enjoy the occasional hurricane.

Photo by wm

The Palin scandals!

You have no doubt been reading in the various media that scandals are breaking on Sarah Palin as the waves break on the rocky shores of Atlantis. Like Atlantis, she is sinking fast, and is proving to be the worst possible choice McCain could have made for his VP. But they aren't telling you the half of it, my loyal readers.

It appears that to celebrate her election as governor of Alaska, Palin had Jewish and black babies ground into sausage for a Republican fundraiser. To obtain these babies, she had the mothers forced to become pregnant, and by the way, all their mothers had to run marathons after their water broke.

She attended a church that had its members dance naked under a full moon as a sacrament, as George Bush speeches were played on the PA system. They then sacrificed baby seals on the altar at the stroke of midnight. It appears that the video has been censored from the libraries all over Alaska, even though it had been required viewing in the public schools up until the day Palin accepted the nomination for VP.

And though she claims to have been opposed to corruption, she accepted campaign funds from the Chinese communist party. No, wait, that may have been someone else. But she has yet to deny this allegation, or prove her innocence.

She is also an unrepentant heterosexual who buried fourteen virgin librarians under the newly poured cement of the children's book section. It also appears that she refused to attend Ellen Degeneres' wedding reception.

Worse yet, it appears that she didn't floss on March 3rd of 2005.

Her campaign staff does not deny any of these allegations. They are obviously circling the wagons in sheer terror of more scandal breaking by the hour. This is the worst political nomination since Karl Marx wrote the Declaration of Independence... in the original Spanish.

Hope and Change - I hope I get to keep the change

Last night's speech at the Obamopolis was pretty much the same formula followed by both parties for the last forty years. It's tried and true, and they've learned it well and will not depart from it.

It's also meaningless. If you found yourself inspired by it, you really need to investigate this thing called reality.

In the first place, he cannot keep any of those promises. It is literally impossible at this point to either lower taxes or increase social spending. How in the name of all that is sane can we do both? The economy in this country is stretched to the breaking point. Eight years ago, I would have said "he can't do that without printing more money and saddling us with inflation." But that is already happening to finance the war in Iraq. To squeeze any more out of that sponge, we would have to go into hyperinflation, which cannot last - just ask Mexico, or any other pitiful country that has tried it. You didn't know your dollar is worth less? Bucky, it lost 14% of its value last year. Why do you think the price of groceries went up so much?

We can't raise taxes because that will trigger the rest of the recession that we've been warding off with garlic and silver crosses. I won't use the D word (depression), because that would cause widespread panic.

We can't borrow the money, because we've already borrowed about all we can from our friends in China. Yes, folks, we are in debt to our eyeballs to the only major communist nation on Earth.

And yet we're going to start paying for college educations for anyone who wants one? That's not even close to being possible. We need - or rather, our government needs - every filthy little penny it can scrounge off the Walmart parking lot, just to avoid bankruptcy. Ron Paul is not the only politician who understood this, but he is the only one willing to tell us the truth about it. The others keep assuring us that, yes, we can! Folks... we can't!

I want to be sure that you noticed the Surely we can agree part of the speech. You know, we may differ on abortion, but surely we can agree that abortions should be as few in number as possible. This is a technique that has been developed over the years, and it's absolutely necessary for this kind of speech.

You see, most of the public doesn't pay any attention to politics. They will hear only two speeches that have to do with politics, and those are the State of the Union address, and the Nominating Acceptance speeches. When a politician makes either of those speeches, he must keep his voting base comfortable with what he says, and yet somehow make every one of those politically sleepy voters hear what he wants to hear. So he must never take a bold stand in those speeches, even if his stand is already well known to those who have paid any attention at all. So he says "surely we can agree," and those folks out there hear "I agree with you about abortion, war, taxes, spending, and your mom, and anything else you care about."

So you see Obama's deception? So you'll vote Republican? Wait til you see McCain's speech. He will do the same thing when he accepts his nomination. He'll be as humble as Obama was, if not more, and he will promise tax relief, fiscal responsibility, and new programs.

It remains a mystery to me how someone can declare that he is going to lower taxes for 95% of us, and be believed, and then tell you he is going to create a truckload of new entitlements, and again be believed! I think my problem is that I continue to overestimate the intelligence of the average voter - something that Obama or McCain will never be guilty of.

Rain drops

I like rain. I like the sound of thunder, especially rolling thunder. It's like having a really good outdoor surround sound.

But I especially like rain because it's so much better for the lawn and garden than the water from my yard hose. Plus, I don't have to pay for it. Plus, it cools everything down so that my electric bill goes down for a while.

I am alone this weekend, because GA is off on a business trip to Louisiana (motto: a corrupt, yet delightfully unrefined government), so I'm here taking care of the cat. On a whim, I took the pickup out for a short drive to the nearby fruit market to buy two tomatoes and an avocado. Avocados are always good here, for some reason. Rich, smooth, creamy. And I made my entire lunch out of it - not bad for $1.89, eh?


Now, I can make an awesome guacamole, but if it's just me I like to do the simple 'cado prep. You just cut the avocado in half, remove the pit, and fill the seed cavity with lime or lemon juice. You can actually eat it out of the skin, but if you're at home, just scoop it out into a bowl. Add salt to taste, mash it up, and serve on crackers. Yum!

Now, for some time I have made it my practice to stick all avocado seeds into the ground in my garden. Sure, most of them have been irradiated to control pests, and I have no problem with that, but once in a while you get a virile young avocado seed, and it will sprout. I did this in Wichita Falls and then again in Midland, and they look kind of neat just sticking up out of the middle of the black eyed peas.



But here in Houston, I have the added hope that it doesn't freeze here every year. The plant could actually become a tree. Now that could be problematic if I get caught, because I don't think the avocado tree is on the approved list in our HOA. But I figure by the time it gets tall enough that my neighbors will even see it, it will be too late for anybody to object. Besides, each of my neighbors has a yappy dog, which is against the HOA rules, too, unless you keep them quiet, which is impossible.

So before I even mixed in the lemon juice, I took the seed out to the backyard and shoved it into a small area I had prepared with some extra sand and compost, because avocado trees like good drainage, and we have mostly clay here. It started raining within five minutes of coming back inside, and that's a Very Good Thing™ when you're sticking seeds in the ground.

And then, with the rain pouring down, and the rolling thunder playing on the Outside channel, in 5.1 DTS, I pulled out my cell phone and scrolled down the list, and called my favorite cousin Ginger, in Kentucky. I love chatting with her; she always makes me laugh, and the smile lasts for at least an hour after we hang up.

So I had my walk, I had my avocado, I had good company (electronically, and that counts), and I can still hear the rolling thunder outside. Life is good.

Best hurricane ever

Those of you in west Texas are now getting rain, if you're going to, from the little hurricane we sent you from the gulf coast. We had a little flooding from it, though the news folks had to look for it to get some good video. Here in Sienna Plantation, all we got out of it was a good, rainy day. I wouldn't even call it a soaker, but it did mean I could postpone watering my yard for another couple of days.

GA got a day off out of it, because the area where she works is subject to flooding, and even though it didn't actually flood this time, when it does flood it causes some major problems, traffic wise.

So we stayed home, and decided to use the day to pack up the two Sprint phones we had to return to that brilliantly staffed organization.

You see, she is provided this Blackberry by her employers, who also provide her data services via the Sprint people. And the opportunity arose to allow the employees to add phone service to their Blackberry devices. Great idea. So we figured it was time to switch from AT&T to Sprint for the sake of efficiency.

So they assign this guy to facilitate all these new Sprint customers in their new phone service, and I asked him to recommend a phone for me. I told him I didn't want data, really, but let's get me a good phone. He recommended the Instinct™ and I had to agree it looked like a really cool phone. It has a touch screen, a virtual qwerty keyboard, and other features for the 21st century.



He said that I was almost certain to decide that I wanted the data plan with it, because it is such a cool phone with the data plan. I sort of thought he might be right, and according to what he said, I could add the data later if I wanted for only $30 a month. Awesome!

So after discussing it with him, we decided to go with the $99 a month plan, which included two phones, and the third phone (for my in-laws, who wouldn't otherwise bother with a cell phone) for an additional $10.

And it is a Cool Phone. I loved that phone. But when we got the first bill, they wanted me to send them $228 and some coins. Wm's heart stops for a few beats. Wm is Scottish. That means cheap.

So I called billing, to discuss the matter calmly. I told the nice lady that this wasn't acceptable, and why. She explained that the Instinct™ has to have the data plan. It can't be phone only. So the only way they could give me what I asked for was to sign me up for three separate plans: a phone for Ga, and a phone for me, and a phone for the in-laws. None of this share talk stuff for an extra $10 a month - three separate plans!

So I made her understand that this was not good at all, and that what I was told I could have was the one plan with two extra lines, plus data for one phone, mine. Oh, no, we can't do that. It has to be phone & text for all, or data for all.

"But that's not what the rep said."
"I can't help what he said. It has to be done this way."

Well, I didn't want to pay for data for my in-laws - shoot, I can barely get them to use the cell phone, and they only want to know how to answer it and make calls - but I really liked the Instinct™ and everything. So I guess I could...

So now GA finds out something that makes things really complicated. She can't have the data plan for her Blackberry, because it will conflict with the data service provided by her employer. So now we have a problem: she can't have data, and I have to have it, on the same plan. Now remember, it's only a policy that prevents them from adding data to one phone - it is NOT a technical issue.

I spent 90 minutes arguing with this bimbo about my problem, trying to make it clear that what she was telling me made it impossible to do business with them. So finally, with the phone getting very hot on my ear, GA and I decided that going with Sprint was a horrible mistake. I asked to be transferred to somebody who could cancel our account.

And this person says, sweetly, "Why didn't they just offer you the data on your Instinct™ only?" I explained that this was exactly what I had been asking for for the last 90 minutes, and could we please cancel our account and get instructions for returning the phones. She complied. A week later, we received the return kit, which is a plastic mailer bag and a UPS label, and a sheet of instructions. Now comes our little hurricane, and the resulting day off. We pack up the Instinct™ and the little phone with big buttons we got for the elderly parents. There on the instruction sheet, it says "DO NOT PACK MORE THAN ONE PHONE IN A BAG." But - but - we have two phones and only one bag. I call customer support.

"Oh, you can't mail them to us," she explains, "you have to return them to the store where you bought them. And you have to have the original credit card receipt."
"But I don't know where that store is. We did this through one of your reps, and he brought them to us."
"You have to return them to the store where you bought them."
"But the other person said to mail them in. She sent us this bag."
"I can't help what the other person said. It has to be done this way."
I handed GA the phone so she could get information about where the store was, and it was in downtown Houston, and the hurricane is upon us. Worse, I can't find the receipt.
I called the rep, the original one, and he says that we can take it to any store. It doesn't have to be the same one it came from. And you don't have to have the original credit card receipt. Just the other paperwork.
Another 90 minutes of cell phone air time has gone by.
Off we go, in the rain.
I'm expecting to have more idiocy to deal with, but the guy in the corporate store where we brought the phones says, quietly, "you just need to return two phones for credit? That's all? No problem."
We didn't even have to wait in a line. He was even able to straighten out the billing mess, which hadn't been done, contrary to what we were promised by the billing department. We were only charged for what we were promised would be the cost of the plan we asked for.
The moral of the story is this: if you are a Sprint customer, and if anything goes wrong, go to a corporate store to resolve the problem. The people at tech support are total morons.
Oh, and this: the Instinct™ is a cool phone. Really.