So here. An update.
We are currently battening down the hatches and watching the slow, but steady, progress of hurricane Ike as it is making a bee line for our little homestead. Kari tells me that winds over 90 mph are predicted in our zip code. Personally I think that it isn't going to be that bad. At least I hope it won't. I was wondering, as our neighbors were boarding up their windows, if they were over reacting or if I was being foolish. I would like to think that my years of living in Florida have given me a little more perspective on what is going to be a dangerous storm and what isn't than your average Texan. It seems to me that, with the media hype, the people around here have become a little irrational where storms are concerned. The last two hurricanes, the ones that didn't even rain on us, caused near mass hysteria. This one looked a little worse and I at least went to the store for batteries and canned food. I decided not to buy ice yesterday for fear that it would melt before we needed it... Next time I will get ice early. At the four gas stations and three grocery stores that I visited today there was not an ice cube to be found. So I am making as much ice as I can before we lose power. I am pretty sure that we will lose power at some point. But we have done about all we can do for now. We picked up everything lose around the back yard and tied down all the patio furniture. And now we wait.
I have found that my wife is definitely getting to know me well. As I was clearing a space in the garage for all the junk from the back yard she appeared in the doorway. She studied me for a moment, with arms crossed and a smirk on her face, and then said "You are just making room and not cleaning the whole garage...Right?"
Wow, she is in my head. I was only going to clean a little bit. "Yes dear, thank you. You do have a valid concern there. I am only making room...for now." My Dad said that he can relate. He would have cleaned the garage.
One nice thing about nasty storms is that it motivates me to clean out the refrigerator. It needed it since it hasn't been cleaned since the last storm.
I can tell you that if we lived on the coast we would have left by now. Kari was telling me that 40% of Galveston residents elected to stay in their homes. Now that is moronic. I we were 6 feet above sea level and had a view of the Gulf, well we would be gone. Right now Galveston is getting pretty well hammered and we have heard reports of people being rescued from roof tops in Bolivar, on the coast east of Galveston.
So we are sitting and waiting. I guess time will tell if I have the only voice of reason in the midst of this doom and gloom media frenzy, that the local politician are just eating up. Or if I am just one of those morons that the newies love to film while standing in front of a pile of rubble that used to be a house trying to explain why we didn't leave.