Headline: Hurricane Ike Ruins Wildcard Race for the Astros

Well, I figured it was about time to post a blog about Hurricane Ike...and how he ruined the Astros chance at the NL wildcard spot. Here ya go...

Let me just start off by saying that we are fine and our house is fine! Praise the Lord! On the other hand, my heart aches for the citizens of Galveston Island and the Bolivar Peninsula. I'm sure you've seen the pictures...not pretty. Rhett and I have a lot to be thankful for...well, we always have, but events like this just serve as a much needed reminder of all our blessings.

Here's how "Hurricane Ike Weekend" played out for us...

All week long, we'd watched and tracked the storm. At first, they said it was headed for Louisiana. Then, it was headed for the Corpus Christi/Brownsville area. I think on Weds/Thurs of that week, it started to become more of a reality that it would actually make landfall near Galveston/Houston! We had already bought a bunch of batteries when Gustav formed a few weeks earlier, so we were cool there. Rhett did go to Wal-Mart that Wednesday to get non-perishable food items and more water. The evacuations of coastal and near-coastal areas started and Thursday arrived. Thats when "pre-Ike anxiety" began!

We went to work as usual, but you could just tell that people were in a state of semi-panic. We all wanted to go home & prepare our homes & families for the storm...but it was business as usual at my pharmacy. We were told that we'd be open on Friday and that we needed to try to come in if possible (storm was projected to hit early Saturday morning), but if we missed it would be excused (just not paid). I decided not to go in on Friday. I drive all the way into downtown from NW Houston, and I didn't want to chance getting stuck in the evacuation traffic. Rhett's work closed, so he stayed home as well.

I spent most of the day doing laundry and cleaning my house. We also topped off our gas tanks and brought in the patio furniture. We live far enough inland that we were not too worried about flooding or boarding up our windows. The only thing we were worried about was a tree falling on the house. We have two large oak trees in the front yard and one really tall pine tree in the back...and our neighbors have trees as well. We watched the news all day long, which probably didn't help with my anxiousness! The weather was nice, so we played in the backyard with the dogs. They didn't know Ike was going to pay us a visit...here are some pics:

Tag chewing on a pine tree branch. Yummy!




Rio running from Dad. Tag wondering why Rio took his pine tree branch.

The girl...in desperate need of a haircut.

We lost electricity around 9:15pm on Friday night. We had just finished watching an episode of Flip That House, and were about to get some ice cream when the lights went out. We had almost an entire gallon of ice cream that we knew would soon melt, so we enjoyed that in darkness. I was surprised that the lights went out so early. The wind really started picking up around 11pm. We camped out in the living room with the pups. Rhett tried to go to sleep and mostly succeeded. I could not go to sleep for anything! The wind was crazy! I had my weather radio properly tuned and listened to the weather broadcast. Ike made landfall near Galveston/Bolivar as a Cat 2 around 2am. We didn't get the heavy rains until around 4am. Luckily, our dogs could care less about storms. They slept through most of it. Rhett woke up periodically to check on our heavily swaying pine tree in the back yard. Again...SO thankful we didn't have any trees fall!

After the sun came up & things started dying down, we were able to check things out. We had a lot of branches down in the front yard and our gutter on the back of the house malfunctioned, but other than that everything was fine! Here are a few pics:















We got a call from our friends Jenn & Jarod (our travel buddies) that they had roof and water damage at their house not too far away. They had stayed the night with our friends Karen & Keith who live in our same subdivision. We gathered a bunch of towels and buckets and slowly made our way to J&J's house. They were not so lucky. They have a two-story house with virtually no tall trees in the subdivision, so a lot of the houses there had roof damage from the wind. The ceiling in one of their extra bedrooms had caved in from all the water leaking in through the attic. We did what we could to put buckets out to collect dripping water. The forecasters said all day long that we would not get anymore rain, so we thought the worst was over for J&J...but it wasnt.

Sunday morning, it started pouring at around 3am. We got a call from Keith & Karen at 6am to head to J&J's b/c things had obviously gotten worse. By then, the kitchen ceiling had collapsed and their master bath & bed were getting wet, too. We moved all their furniture and belongings to the portions of the house that weren't taking on water. Things were a little chaotic. I felt so bad for them. They have been staying with K&K since then (except for a couple nights last weekend when they stayed with us). They did get a new roof put on a week after Ike, so they were blessed with that rather quickly. Now, they have to take care of getting everything else fixed.

My sister and her family weathered the storm at their home in Pearland, and they were all fine as well. My aunt and uncle evacuated to Austin from their home in League City. Believe it or not, they both got power back before we did! (they're both further south than we are). My parents were without power for about a week.

Life without electricity is no fun. Work without electricity is even worse. I had to go in to work the Monday after. We had 2 generators, but it just wasn't enough. We could only power so many computers and lights. Not fun. Tuesday, we were asphyxiated by gasoline fumes half the day. Wednesday, still no electricity and hot as hell. Thursday, we blew a generator b/c the boss lady was determined to power so many freaking things with it. Finally, we got power back on Friday around lunchtime. That was probably the worst week I've ever experienced at work. We do business with vet clinics and pet owners all over the U.S. so we didn't have the luxury of just shutting down. I hated every minute of it. Traffic since Ike has been a million times worse than it normally is....fun stuff.

Each day, as soon as I got home from work we would hop in the car and drive until we found an open restaurant. Eating out and basking in the electricity and A/C was the highlight of each day. We did finally get electricity at home the Thursday after Ike, so we were out for 5-ish days. It could have been a lot worse...our friends Karen & Keith were in the dark for nearly 2 weeks! I think now, nearly all power has been restored. Life has slowly gotten back to normal here in Houston. I think it will be a long while before things go back to normal along the coast, though.

Now, to explain the title of this blog...

The weekend of the hurricane, the Cubs were supposed to come to Houston to play the Astros at Minute Maid. My 'stros were doing so great & were on a roll leading up to that weekend. We were fighting hard to take the NL Wild Card spot! Since they obviously couldn't play here in Houston, they moved 2 of the 3 games (3rd one was not played) to the Brewer's stadium in Milwaukee! We lost both games! Then we lost a few more... Although we didn't go down without a fight, I'm blaming Ike for ruining the team's momentum. STUPID IKE!!!!