Hurricane Ike

We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming of the East Coast Adventure Recap to bring you thoughts on Ike.

Most hurricanes have not given me much pause except to feel badly for those affected by it. Houston, the place where I technically call home, (i.e. the place where a majority of my belongings reside), is now the bullseye target of Hurricane Ike.

I'm not there right now, which is both a good thing and a bad thing, really.

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Good in that I don't have to scramble to find gas before the stations run out or the price is gouged so unreasonably.

Good in that I don't have to fight for a gallon of water, or batteries or non-perishable food items.

Good in that I don't have to suffer a power outage for goodness knows how long and live in the uncertainty of knowing the latest status on the impending storm.

Good in that my apartment is on the 2nd floor and is towards the rear (north?) end of the complex). Also blocked by several buildings in terms of wind gusts. That might be bad, too.

Good in that my car is here with me and not subject to possible flooding in our parking lot (it does that minorly when it just plain rains)

Good in that my area of Houston and the areas that my friends/family/colleagues live in are NOT in the mandatory evac orders for Harris County.

However, it's not all good.

Bad in that I haven't been able to get ahold of anyone in my apartment complex leasing office to find out if they think we're in any danger of flooding (we're near Buffalo Bayou) and/or if they're boarding up at all.

Bad in that I have a large front window.

Bad in that I have no idea really what's going on anywhere near my apartment because a) I don't always believe the media and b) no one is really paying attention. So I'm really quite clueless. And none of my friends live really close to me nor would I ask them to go check for me.

And most pictures I see of businesses near me are all boarded up... don't know what that means exactly except they might want to prevent against looters.

And let me tell you, it's weird to recognize places that I frequent in the videos and pictures. Empty shelves at my Krogers. My Exxon station all out of gas. Stores near me all boarded up.

Bad in that I really don't know if I'll be able to get home before my next contract. I have everything I need for it, but I haven't seen my apartment in awhile and I really need to.

Bad in that there's a lot of unknowns and I worry by nature (hence why I do what I do for my job).

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So all I can do is wait and see... and hope that it gives my friends and me a miss and that I can come home sometime next week.

I'm glad I went to Galveston several times last year, and I'm sorry I didn't get to see the Kemah Boardwalk. May those areas/structures be spared as much as possible from devastation.

Here's another funny thing about me and Ike. After it makes landfall and dumps a lot of rain on Houston, it gets directed straight here via an obliging jetstream. Yeah, the tracker puts it straight over St. Louis. As if we need more rain here (they're already 16" or so past normal rainfall for the year.

I just can't escape it, can I?

Note: there might be another follow-up post before I resume the East Coast Adventure Recaps. There's at least two, if not three, blog entries left to cover the DC portion of my trip.

Stay tuned and think good thoughts for my friends and colleagues who are "hunkering down" and waiting out the storm in place.