According to the Centerpoint Energy website, the zip code where my house in Houston is sitting has 55% outage right now and is not expected to come back up until Monday. The website has some very useful maps and links if you or someone you know is in an affected area.
Tina Fey’s representation of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin for the premiere of Saturday Night Live’s new season was so freakin’ hilarious. I originally missed it because although I do TiVo new episodes of SNL, all of Houston’s regular programming was preempted by Hurricane Ike reporting. As a result I had both SNL and My Name is Earl recordings with nothing but wet weathermen.
While watching the Comets (who had relocated up to San Marcos due to power outages and curfews) take on the Sacramento Monarchs in San Marcos, one of the WNBA media dudes pulled it up on his computer. Seriously funny stuff, “I can see Russia from my house!”
Later when I couldn’t find it quickly, I decided to just post it here so that it would be easy to relocate.
Again, the best of wishes go out to everyone in the South Central Texas region dealing with the after effects of Hurricane Ike, but I have to tell you - things here are amazing. The past week I have woke up to temperatures in the low 60’s and tonight it is supposed to drop down to 50 degrees. As I walk the dog in the morning in tshirt, sandals, and shorts it is heavenly - cool enough to make me thankful I’m not the proverbial witch in a cast iron bra. That would be cold on my…. well, you know.
I am wating to hear if there is power back to my Houston home and as soon as that is confirmed, I will be heading there to start repairs.
I have gotten several emails, twitters, etc. from friends around the country wondering how I weathered (pun intended) Hurrican Ike. A lot of them had no clue that I have relocated from Houston to San Marcos, but some that were well aware of it just heard “hurricane hits Texas” and figured that means we are all hit. FYI, this is a BIG state. :) We haven’t had a drop of rain and the wind only picked up to gusts of maybe 10mph at most.
Now, I am not a meteorologist by any stretch, but it appears that the hot, dry air over Northern and Central Texas is what forced the thing to turn North and Eastward. The net result here is that last night while Houstonians were witnessing strong winds and driving rain, I was at a football game sitting in a 90 degree press box in Fredericksburg. Oh yeah, and before the game, we decided to hike up Enchanted Rock since the weather was sooooo beautiful. (hehe)
(pics from my first visit there in 2004)
I have talked with several of my friends who reported in safely and the only real damage I have heard of at my house in Houston is that several sections of the backyard fence have been knocked down and the power is out in the neighborhood. I was not surpised at either of those because the power goes out and the fence slats come down with every sprinkle or rainstorm we get.
Apparently dirt and ash from Mexico rained down on much of the I-35 corridor in the form of a muddy downpour. It was the weirdest thing ever - driving through pouring rain the consistency of chocolate milk.
This photo of Ron’s rental car ran in Newstreamz today. No, he wasn’t off-roading in the thing… this was from the rain!
Pennie and I went to the San Jacinto monument despite the rainy morning and reports of eminent thunderstorms all day. And you know what happened? For the several hours we were there, it sprinkled a bit in the morning and then cleared up into a beatiful day until we left in the evening when the rains returned. Yeah - it is nice to live a charmed life.
Built 100 years after the battle it honors, the 570-foot San Jacinto Monument stands in the Guinness Book of World Records as the tallest monument column in the world. It stands 15 feet taller than the Washington Monument. It towers over the prairie where, in 1836, General Sam Houston and his determined army battled furiously to “Remember the Alamo!,” bringing an end to the revolution against Mexico’s rule.
There was a great 40-projector slideshow presentation called “Texas Forever!” which is excellent. It tells the story of Texas from the early settlement by the “original 300″ through to the Battle of San Jacinto and independence of Texas. If monuments don’t impress you - go just to see the show.
The festival featured the typical fare - tons of vendors selling everything from sausage on a stick to your own bag of fresh fried pork rinds - yumm. haha There were a ton of informational booth set up showing everything from early blacksmithing and weaving to the archeological work being done on the battlefield itself. In addition, there were a host of bands and performers. The battle reenactment was cancelled early in the day when it appeared that it would rain all day. An ad-hoc battle reenactment was created by one of the directors while one of the bands was playing a song about the battle. They lined up all the “volunteers” on opposite ends of the ampitheater grounds and instructed them at a key point in the song to run at each other in a play battle. As you can see - some of the Texians really got into the roles.
When both sides reached the middle, several of the reenacters fired off their black powder rifles and all the kids fell down as if shot. I got lucky and got this shot right as the blast went off. Overall, it was a lot of fun for the kids and the spectators.
After we finished our day we found a very cool little state park just off to the side of the grounds and kicked back there a bit (and snapped this picture.) It was a lot of walking, a few dodging of raindrops, but chock full of good times and good company.
