O'Rourke

The Seabrook Sailing club where we kept our boat was a total loss. We had just spent $25,000 on new windows (they weren't even done getting painted yet. The building has been there since 1946. The new windows lasted 10 day.

Fortunately for us, Greg & Tracy had retrieved the boat while we were away this summer and Hurricane Gustav was threatening. I had forgotten to ask them to get the sails, and forgot to get them myself when Ike came, so they were still in the sail locker when Ike hit. Miraculously, they washed up and a guy who lives by the club retrieved them. They're in pretty good shape!  Hopefully tomorrow, I'll have some pictures of my pool as it looked when I got back post Ike and how it looks now.

Forwarded to us via email, and apparently not from Letterman...

10. Decorating the house (with plywood).
9. Dragging out boxes that haven’t been used since last season.
8. Last minute shopping in crowded stores.
7. Regular TV shows pre-empted for ‘Specials’.
6. Family coming to stay with you.
5. Family and friends from out of state calling you.
4. Buying food you don’t normally buy . . . and in large quantities.
3. Days off from work.
2. Candles.

And the Number One reason Hurricane Season is like Christmas: 

At some point you may have a tree in your house!

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. 

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