Taking it EasySeptember 4, 2006 Since it is a holiday today and everyone is probably out eating hot dogs and throwing frisbees, I'm sort of phoning this one in. The post below is one I put together a year ago but never uploaded. Back then, I felt like I wasn't being sensitive to all of the people in the area who had really suffered during hurricane season. But really, my only point with this post was to show that we were all okay. The history here...we had just moved back to the US, and last year's hurricane season was our introduction to Houston. We were living in a temporary apartment while closing on a house. We decided to stick it out and stay in Houston, even though most of the city got the hell out. I was pretty scared, actually. The whole time was really strange...being back in the US was still such a shock, and then just when I'm starting to get familiar with this city, it was turned upside-down. This was also before I got Lasik surgery. It's strange to see myself in glasses now. |
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Impending doom from the tv... |
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We were watching tv and checking forecasts from our command center. |
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Our preparations included storing water... |
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stocking up on food... |
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And creating a safe room, which Chris calls "The Hunker Bunker". (Phrases like "hunkerin' down" and "batten down the hatches" were used CONSTANTLY around here on the days leading up to Rita.) Our Hunker Bunker was really just the bedroom closet, but it's big enough to hold furniture, it that ever became necessary. |
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This is the biggest window in the apartment, and the most at-risk for being blown in. Chris taped up all of the windows, just in case. |
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In the hours before Rita, all was quiet... |
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...Because half a million people were parked on the freeways trying to get out of town. (This is the main reason we stayed.) |
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Businesses were closed and boarded up. |
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It was pretty much a ghost town. |
| Then Rita hit. But not like we expected. We kept looking outside, waiting for the trees to really start moving around. Sometimes the branches would sway and we'd think "Here she comes!"...then they would stop swaying. Then it would start raining, and we would think that this was really it, but then the rain stopped. The fact is that everyone thought we were going to have a hurricane, and we didn't. At least not in downtown Houston. |
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Now I'll show you some photos of the hurricane damage from our neighborhood. Here is a branch we found on the ground. |
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This is the worst of it. This tree was blown over and dented the carpark cover. |
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Here's a lesson to everyone...don't try to fly a kite during a hurricane. It will just end up tangled and torn. |
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This garbage can fell over. |
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There are leaves in the pool. So if you were worried about us, you can stop worrying now. |
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The dogs never missed a moment of sleep. |
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The evening after Rita, we found only one open restaurant, so we ate Japanese food. Here is Chris and his post-Rita Sapporo... |
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And me and my post-Rita chopsticks. We were very lucky. And other good news...the new house didn't get any damage from the storm. Whew. We're still on schedule for closing and moving in. |
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My email - staci@verypink.com |
Chris' email - barkless3@yahoo.com |
