Eeek! We lost our electricity at about 3AM last night and didn't get it (half of it in our case) back until about 7 PM today.

A very long day cleaning up the yards (why why WHY did we insist on having two houses), watching professional tree guys take the fallen tree off our neighbor's "Ford tough" pick-up truck (it held up to the full force of an 18" diameter tree trunk across the cab surprisingly well), listening to our neighbors' noisy generators and chain saws, driving around gawking at the damage (we feel very lucky not to have lost our fences) and wishing in vain for a store that sells chlorine to be open, and reading. I read a great chunk of Nixonland, which is as terrific as everyone says. We actually had a "cool snap" today so the high was only 85 or so and it's supposed to get down to 68 tonight - WAY better than last night, which was miserably hot, especially after it started raining hard and we had to close the windows, and especially especially after the power went out and we lost the fans.

We still have quite a bit of clean-up to do. Our street looks funny - nearly every yard has a wall of tree branches at least 6-8' tall lined up across the whole street-front. It's surprisingly attractive and orderly looking. We're behind most of our neighbors in green-wall-making, which we blame on having two yards to do (plus the pool, which I've spent hours fishing branches out of), but in reality is probably because of the time we spent reading during the hot(ter) parts of the day.


Thanks, flist, for posting the Tina Fey video from Saturday Night Live - they didn't even broadcast the show here, just endless "storm news." It's really bad here - after two days, people are beginning to run out of ice and bottled water and it seems many of the outlying communities don't have water or sewer either (thank goodness we have both, though we're not supposed to drink the water). It seems like a lot of people are driving around listening to their car radios, ready to pounce on any store that's reported to be selling water and/or ice or any gas station selling gas (which you totally need for driving around looking for water and ice!). The last we heard is that school is probably canceled until a week from tomorrow, which is kind of disastrous for my kids' classes and my son's college applications, National Merit Scholar application, etc.


Anything interesting going on in the world while I was gone? Besides our nation's banking system collapsing and Robert Pattinson making Rupert Grint read Twilight?

Well, after much experimenting, consultations with my electrical engineer father, and fiddling around with voltmeters we have figured out what the deal with our electricity is. Basically, half the circuits/outlets in the house aren't working at all. This means the air conditioner condensing unit isn't working, because it needs the full 220 volts. However, weirdly, all the outlets that weren't working were forming a weak circuit somehow through our air conditioning motor, which is why they all seemed to work, but the refrigerator and the microwave wouldn't cycle on. So now we have turned the A/C off and all those circuits are dead and we're wondering whether we accidentally fried our A/C motor permanently.

Anyway, now we have all mission-critical appliances (fridge, cable box, TV, phone base, computer) plugged into extension cords. The A/C won't work until we get our power fixed, which may be some time, but some of the ceiling fans work and we have a few electrical fans we can drag out and plug in (if we can find enough extension cords!). We're not supposed to take showers to conserve water, and the pool is way too green/brown to swim in.

The other house has the same problem but the A/C does work over there - it might be a 110-volt unit. If it gets too hot in here we can move over there (if, of course, our friends who we invited to stay there until they get their power back don't take us up on it). In the meantime, we chant to ourselves "3% 3% 3%!"


School is canceled for Monday, at least. I hope everyone around here has a safe, dry place to sleep tonight!

The Storm Story, continued ...

I finally went to sleep for real at 5 AM with the eye wall still hitting us pretty enthusiastically (to those of you who asked: NO I don't consider my record to be intact even though the eye didn't go over us, because we were just outside of the eye and got the full force of the eye wall for hours).

My husband woke me up at 8:30 because it looked like the house was going to flood - the water was halfway up the lawn and rising, though he wasn't too worried because the rain had just stopped. I encouraged him to wade out into the street and clean out the storm drain (hey, it was his turn for a heroic quest!), which he did, and after about twenty minutes of anxious watching we could tell that the water level was going down - YAY HUSBAND! It's all drained away now.

The yard was a shambles. We didn't lose any trees or really big branches, but we lost - *counts* - about a zillion quadrillion medium-sized and small branches, and the entire yard (and pool) was covered with tree parts and roof shingles. Our next door neighbor, however, had a tree (the tree right on the property line between us) fall across the cab of his pickup truck in the driveway. We did lose both fig trees (at least down to the roots), and the roof that goes from the other house to its garage, and the chimney cap from the other house, and the wood latticework thing that was at the end of our front porch, and the gutter on the other house.

The good news was that WE HAD POWER - making us apparently one of 3% of people around here who do. The sort-of-bad news is that the electrical circuit that goes through the center of our house, covering the refrigerator, microwave, kitchen light, and computer center wasn't working properly. It's actually very strange - it's working a little bit, enough to make the lights for the refrigerator and microwave come on, but not enough for the microwave to cook or the refrigerator motor to cycle. My husband finally figured out what the problem was and hooked the refrigerator up to an extension cord, so that's fine now. While he was doing this, I slept some more, finally getting up at about 2 PM.

I still can't get the wireless router to work and I thought we didn't have internet for hours, but when I hooked the computer directly to the cable box - YAY, internet! So I'm writing this on my old desktop and my daughter is suffering the agony of having her laptop not connect. And I miss my Mac!

I haven't been out walking around yet - too busy trying frantically to rescue my two loves, the internet connection and my poor, poor pool - but my husband and kids report that our immediate area is one of the worst around here in terms of downed tree limbs and debris, except that the metal roof of the newish community recreation building is torn half off. Some of our near neighbors don't have power, though, so again we're very lucky in that. It's very hot and humid - I thought it was supposed to be cooler after a storm!

I've just caught snatches on the TV of the damage in Galveston (which looks awful) and downtown. I haven't seen a proper report of how bad it is in Baytown, League City, etc. where the storm went right up the bay and hit. I can't believe how fast the sucker is moving north, nor how much rain it dropped around here, considering how fast it was moving.

Our A/C doesn't seem to be working properly - it's hot in here! I wonder if our power levels are low, or maybe the intake or fan is clogged with leaves. I'd better go check!


I hope very much that darcey321 is all right! I expect she doesn't have power to report in, though. :(

We lost power at 1:51 and got it back at 4:15 (yay!). The eye is to the east of us right now, so our winds are at the worst - bad enough to wake us all up but not really that bad. The streets are full of water but it's not over the curb.

I'm turning over staying-up-and-worrying duty to my husband and trying to go to sleep for real. The air conditioning feels GREAT!

Went out during lull and collected scattered pool floats and pieces of plastic pool chest. Quest successfully completed, with daughter's help. It's wet out there! Husband and son sound asleep. Eye of storm halfway onshore. Weather still not too bad here - probably no gusts above 70 yet.

Eye wall supposed to hit us at 4 AM, just over two hours from now. The good news: no tornadoes so far. The bad news: Brennan's Restaurant burned down. I always wanted to eat there and only managed to go there once in the thirty years I've lived here. Too late now! Power has gone out about six more times, but always come back on. Am so sick of stupid TiVo animation could throw things at TV.

Dog somewhat disturbed by continued wind noises. Cat unperturbed. Will try to nap some more.

Finally some rain and some very choppy, gusty winds, perhaps 40-50 mph. House creaking enough to wake me up from a nap.

Power went off briefly again.


ETA: Sounds of many transformers exploding but evidently not ours. Plastic pool equipment chest fell apart.

... I'd think it was over.

Light sprinkling and breezes of about 10-20 mph. No big gusts in a while. Power still fine.


(no, this isn't the eye yet - just a lull between storm bands)

Situation much the same. Winds gusting to 50 or 60. Still no rain.

Very pretty outside. Pink/purple light on the bottom side of scudding clouds. Winds gusting in the 40-50 mph range. No rain to speak of so far.

One major branch down already in the other yard.


ETA: Lost power, but it came right back on.

ETA2: And again. These brief power outages are very annoying if you have TiVo and it has to power up again every time. I'm losing valuable minutes of seeing video of surrounding areas covered by high water!

Wind starting to kick up a bit. Storm is still pretending to be headed right toward us. Swerve, baby, swerve!


(yes I know that sounds selfish, but really it would be better if it hit NOT in a major population area)