O'Rourke

Well, we did pretty OK through hurricane Ike. Cheryl rode out the storm at Clear Lake Hospital (5 stories high and rated for a Cat 4 hurricane) while I took the girls to San Antoinio to stay at Julie & Dan's bed and breakfast.  Aside from keeping everyone safe, our next biggest fear was flooding from the storm surge. Fortunately the predictions of 18-22 ft storm surge (our house is around 12-17 ft) didn't pan out. Mostly due to a lucky last minute storm jog to the northeast, bringing the eye straight up I-45 instead of just to our south-west.  Also I think the models aren't designed for very wide storms over very shallow water, but that's just the geeky scientist in me talking.

So the worst in-storm experience any of us have to report is that Cheryl was trying to get some sleep during the middle of the night as the storm raged overhead.  And her complaint isn't that she couldn't sleep. She was dead-tired from all the hurricane prep they had been doing, so sleep wasn't a problem. The problem was that the wall started leaking and she and her head nurse had to move to another room. Fortunately for Cheryl, she was actually in a bed. Her boss had drawn the short straw and was sleeping on the floor. Can you say "soggy sleeping bag"? Can you say "bad performance appriasal"? Actually her boss was just thankfull to have the help. 

This was supposed to be Cheryl's weekend off, so we had actually made reservations to stay out by Sea-World for Mackenzie's 5th birthday, but had cancelled when an earlier storm prediction had Ike dumping tons of rain there all weekend. Shouldn't have canceled those hotel reservations. So instead, while Cheryl worked her you-know-what off all Friday, Saturday and Sunday,  Dan, Julie, Ryan, Sean, Allison, Meghan and Mackenzie enjoyed a beautiful sunny weekend in San-Antonio. Good thing it was sunny, because this is a one bedroom appartment with a small extra room (large closet). My hearing is still recovering from all the kids running & screaming. I think we still owe the lady on the first floor a pitcher of Margaritas or something. 

So after sitting tight for a day, Dan & I bribed Julie into watching all 4 kids while we grabbed some supplies took off around 5am Sunday morning to go assess and repair damages. We spent the morning looking over my house and neighborhood. Fences down on 3 sides of the yard, one large tree limb across the front of my roof, 2 decent size sections of missing roof, and one really murky looking pool. No significant water damage and our canoe was still even in the back yard. Then we went down to Dan's house and  checked out his place. Lots of missing shingles some missing gutters (well not missing, they were in the back yard) a little water in the back door and some fence damage. We then spent the rest of the day looking after his place. Some of the supplies we picked up were some large blue tarps. You have no idea how big a 30'x60' tarp really is until you open it on top of a 2 story house. Cheryl came down to meet us after getting off work and then we headed back up to my place. We didn' t have electricity, but fortunately we have a gas stove and a gas water heater, so we got showers and a nice hot meal. 

At my house, we got all the plywood off the windows, the tree limb off the roof, and patched up the holes. Propped up some fences and collected lots of firewood. After working 3 straight 16 hour shifts at the hostpital, Cheryl got to be "on-call" and for her day off, she got to drag lots of branches down to the street. Everywhere you look in my neighborhood, people have a wall of branches head-high. I feel like we're ready for the British to invade.