Swine Flu and Flooding

 Despite the dramatic title, we haven’t actually had personal experiences with either one of these… yet. But, it’s been an eventful week so far in Houston!

The week started out with a massive thunderstorm Monday night. I was drugged up on some Benadryl, so I surprisingly only woke up a couple of times. Micah, who sleeps like a log despite the conditions, didn’t even flinch as huge bolts of lightning lit up the sky outside our windows all night or when the thunder crashed so hard I thought a tree had fallen. We woke up Tuesday morning to local news coverage of flooding all over Houston’s west side (our area and the area where we both work)! 

An area of Katy just North of us

An intersection underneath I-10 and Beltway 8 right in between our two offices! We both drive through this intersection several times a day, but Tuesday police divers were rescuing people and cars from about 15 feet of of flood waters!

The I-10 feeder road off Gessner near Tallowood

As long-time residents of the Gulf Coast, floods have come to be expected. But not in APRIL! We still have almost two months until the beginning of Hurricane Season!

No huge deal, though. The city has recovered quickly. All the water is pretty much gone and I’m sure insurance companies are getting lots of phone calls now! 

As if that wasn’t bad enough, apparently Houston is now being threatened by the daunting Swine Flu. This morning, the local news reported that a baby died of the Swine Flu in a Houston hospital, marking the first American death from the virus. In the city where I reside… Great! 

No worries, though. We didn’t have any flood waters in our house (or even on our street), and we’re washing our hands as much as possible! The Swine Flu is apparently only a major threat to infants and the elderly (just like the regular seasonal flu), so I think we’re safe. That’s not to say that other age groups can’t catch it… I believe we are just much more likely to recover from it and not die!

I’m really making you want to come to Houston now, right?

In better news, we got a visit from Kerri and Nick this weekend (before all the craziness)! Kerri is one of my oldest and dearest friends from Dunham, we roomed together in college and have been bridesmaids in each other’s weddings. It was wonderful to spend some time with Kerri and her newly-wedded husband! We enjoyed a hibachi and sushi dinner, spent some time at the zoo, caught three hours of the NFL draft and took in an epic Astros game (alas, we lost).

While at the zoo, we visited this little guy, who has literally earned the title of the “world’s cutest animal!” 

Not to make our little Buddy jealous, but Toby the Red Panda is pretty darn adorable!

-Laura

Post-hurricane traffic woes

One of the major “aftershocks” of a hurricane is the shear magnitude of cars that suddenly appear on the road after the storm washes through. It’s like suddenly, everyone in America who owns a car has decided to stop by your city and sightsee.

 

Yes, I know that the influx is likely not sightseers; but merely disaster recovery vehicles and probably desperate Houston residents staying in their air conditioned cars as long as possible before returning home to the heat. And the number of red lights that are still out of whack certainly doesn’t help the matter.

It can really wear you out, though. Post-Katrina in Baton Rouge was a traffic nightmare. The city doubled in size overnight, dumping a few hundred-thousand more commuters on the roads each day. And from what I hear, post-Gustav traffic in BR isn’t much better.

Well, Baton Rougeans, I can now tell you it isn’t limited to your city. Ike has turned Houston into one big traffic jam. The freeways are extra clogged and people are getting in wrecks all over the surface streets because of the blinking red lights scattered about the city. Oh, and don’t even try the tollways. The city has made them free for right now and WAY too many people are taking advantage.

The good news is that there IS an end in sight. We saw Baton Rouge get back to normal post-Katrina and the traffic leveled off. Eventually, the same will be true for Houston. Let’s just all keep our fingers crossed that it is sooner rather than later!!

-Laura

Live in the Now!

The past few weeks have been crazy with all kinds of things going on.  From a trip to Baton Rouge and fleeing from Gustav to hunkering down in Houston because of Ike, we have kept busy!  In the middle of the storms, Laura and I got to go to the LSU opener against Appalachain State, test drive her dad’s new car, become the caretakers of my grandma’s cat, and help some of the widows at Tallowood clean up their yards after Ike.  So here are a few pics to bring you up to speed.  (For info and pics from the yard clean up, go to www.tallohoodtoday.com ) 

     (Our view from the game.  Thanks for the tickets Mr. Don!)

  (We were decked out in our LSU game gear!)

(Driving around in Mr. Ed’s car.  A sweet Honda S2000)

(Dusty, our adopted cat, watching the hurricane come through.)

I was also very excited to update my bumper stickers on my Blazer and to add an LSU sticker to Laura’s car.  This has been a long time coming!

 (Blazer before with a faded LSU tiger eye up top and a Last Chance Dave sticker in the bottom right corner.  Goodbye to my old, college band days.)

(Notice the new LSU, Fleur-de-lis sticker!)

                                              (Laura got a new sticker too!)

Well, that’s all for now!

-Micah

Power-full!

Well, I am glad to report that when we returned home last night we had power!!!  The folks across the street were not so lucky, but we do have power.  So, I was able to watch a few hours of football, eat some food, and feel a sense of normalcy.  Thank you LORD!

Overall, we faired very well.  Our cars are fine since now they BOTH can fit in the garage.  Our tiny tree out front stood strong and showed up alot of the trees around here that were toppled by Ike.   Way to go little guy!  Our roof had a few shingles ripped off,  but it is ok.  No water got inside and hopefully we will get those shingles replaced soon. Our little gardens out back got thrashed by the wind, but it is nothing serious.  Like I said, we faired very well.

This morning at church, we met for our service at our north campus, the Tallowood Center, since the current worship center was damaged by Ike.  It rained for a few hours this morning and apparently it was raining inside the worship center as well.  So understandably, we had to move locations.  No big deal though, it is just right up the road.  We had a nice service with about 150 people and we heard lots of stories of folks without power or water.  We feel so lucky!  Tomorrow, we are meeting to figure out who we can help and if there is anything we can do in the worship center to prevent mildew.  Something tells me we’ll be ripping up some carpet!

Well, that’s about all for now.  Thanks for your prayers through all this.  It has been an adventure!

-Micah

Change of location

As far as we know, our power is still out, but we have found some solice at the Tallowood youth facility for now. And Micah is happy because we have found a TV on which to watch college football!!

We checked on the main church building earlier and it doesn’t look great. Half of the new tin roof on the current sanctuary was ripped off. Parts of the inside of the sanctuary have very wet carpet and some standing water. Hopefully it will look better with the lights on. Nothing seems ruined – just wet.

The church’s north campus (where we are) is OK, but it has some minor damage. Several ceiling tiles have stains from water leakage.

This area of town was hit a lot worse, mainly because it has many larger trees. And it seems to get even worse the further east you go. I’m sure many of you have seen the news footage, but check out this video of downtown Houston: 

So, we feel very fortunate! Well, maybe Micah doesn’t feel so lucky – he just realized that 24 hour hurricane coverage on all network channels will preempt the USC vs. Ohio State football game! *Sigh* Too bad the LSU vs. North Texas game is not being broadcast here at all…

-Laura

Other side of the storm

Ok, I just lost a full post when my Internet signal disappeared, so this will be brief…

We’re fine, no worries. We lost power at 5 a.m. so now we’re finding things to amuse ourselves.

Keep us up-to-date with Ike news… and maybe some college football scores for Micah!!

If you’re trying to call us and text us, don’t worry if you don’t hear back. Our cell service is very weak and we can barely even get a text out.

-Laura

Power-less?

It’s almost 4 a.m. and we just lost power for the first time… but then it flickered back on. And as I was writing that, we lost it for the second time… and then it flickered back on again.

We have lost cable, so sadly there will be no more of Geraldo’s antics. And we can no longer laugh as the local newscasters endure the elements to show us just how bad the wind and rain are – as if we can’t already tell!

We keep hearing the wind whistling around the house. I’m not going to lie – it’s scaring the dickens out of us, but I guess that’s just what you hear when the wind is moving at 75ish mph!

Good news - cable is back! We’re glad to have the distraction. And as humorous as they are, the local news guys are doing a great job feeding us all the info. At least one of the stations STILL has a crazy reporter holding on at the Galveston seawall. He is literally struggling to stand up, 20-foot waves are crashing behind him and his raincoat looks as if it might lift him into the air at any moment. What lengths these guys will go to bring us the story!

Our street still looks completely clear and there are no limbs or debris in sight.

Maybe more posts later… maybe not! We’ll see what the lights and Internet decide to do.

-Laura

Ike, Ike baby

Despite the time, I don’t think we’ll be going to bed any time soon! Ike is bearing down on us right now and things are a bit nuts outside.

The wind is blowing incredibly hard and the little trees around here in the ‘burbs are moving like crazy. It’s very weird to see the rain blowing sideways and around in circles. It’s like it can’t make up its mind.

Amazingly, we still have power! I don’t know how long that will last, but it’s nice for now. We’ve been amusing ourselves with Wii Mario Kart, mildly entertaining movies and, of course, Geraldo on Fox News!

I would have pictures for you, but Micah won’t let me outside anymore. Yes, I know, he’s probably the smart one.

We’re hearing reports of windows blown out in downtown Houston highrises, some tree branches hitting houses in the Tallowood area and some power outages south of us.

Here in Katy, the wind is loud, especially echoing through our chimney, but we remain just fine!

-Laura

yIKEs

What a day!  I woke up this morning with the stark realization that a giant hurricane is heading our way.  This required several immediate actions from me.

1.  I had to cancel the 8th grade dinner we were having on Friday night for our new 8th grade class at Tallowood.  We sent emails and phone trees and even updated our blog.

2.  I had to venture out to the store to buy food and supplies.  So, I went to the local H-E-B to get gas, water, hurricane type food, and a few other essentials.  There was quite a line at the H-E-B gas station so I decided to pass on the gas and I went inside.  And what a sight that was!  Soccer moms everywhere!  I went to work quickly getting apples, Wheat Thins, water, chips, Chef Boyardee (you can eat it cold!), cereal (you can eat that without milk!), Gatorade, hot dogs and chicken (I can grill them up if we lose power!).  After I filled my basket, I made my way to the front of the store to get in a line. That was a problem though because all the lines were stretched down the aisles.  So I found the shortest line I saw and… 40 minutes later I was heading to the car.  This may sound like a long time to wait to checkout, but it was kinda therapeutic.  These days I don’t get much time alone with my thoughts, so this was a nice slow-paced change from my normal runing around craziness!

3.  I had to move my grill (with its LSU cover) from the back yard all the way around the house and into the garage.  I can’t risk having that damaged from the strong winds of Hurricane Ike.  Thanks for the help Laura!

And as far as hurricane’s go, I’m starting to get a bit of a complex.  Laura and I were in Baton Rouge right before Gustav, but before it hit, we hit the road for Houston and escaped the carnage.  And somehow in the evacuation, we managed to gain a cat from my grandma in Lake Charles.  We took in her cat, Dusty, so she could evacuate for Arkansas.  All that to say that it seems hurricanes are follwing us!  Or wait… maybe it is Dusty.  Either way, we’re in trouble because this hurricane is HUGE and heading straight for Houston.  But as one of our friends, Stephanie, said on Facebook, “our God is huge-r!”

One last thing.  My dad and I were talking earlier today and is it bad that we agreed our biggest concern about the hurricane was that we can no longer watch the LSU game on TV?  In Houston it is only available on Pay-Per-View (ESPN Gameplan).  Oh well.  Hopefully we’ll have power Saurday night and we can keep up with the score somehow. 

Well, that’s all for now.  Be safe!

-Micah

Game On!

Great news Tiger fans – the game is on for this weekend!! The Bayou Bengals will face off with North Texas in Tiger Stadium this weekend as originally planned.

The stadium’s disrepair after Gustav and the possible impending doom of Ike were not looking very good for this weekend’s gridiron battle; but thankfully, the show will go on. Football is part of the culture in Louisiana’s capital city and the people there need a distraction this weekend. No, they’re not “devestated” by the hurricane’s effects, but I know things are getting frustrating for those folks who STILL don’t have power, have a tree on their roofs or maybe are just getting sick of all the traffic. Katrina wasn’t fun at all… and this sounds much worse!

Speaking of our beloved Baton Rouge, I got a kick out of this blog post from 225 Magazine. It very adequately describes the mixed feelings of everyone over there.

Oh, and Ike… Yeah, that nasty little devil looks like he’s heading toward the Texas coast! He should steamroll straight in to Corpus Christi by Saturday as a category 3. Joy. As the coastal cities evacuate, Houston is bracing for evacuees and traffic. Keep those folks in your prayers as they get out of harm’s way, and pray that Ike doesn’t take a sharp turn straight toward Houston!

-Laura