Rock me like a hurricane...

First, let me start off by stating that this is Brian (again). I don't know that I'll continue warning you when I have graced this blog with my presence or not, but for now, consider this your advanced warning. From now on, if the blog posting is an important matter, it is probably me. Otherwise, it's Hayley.



You should all know that I'm just kidding. Updates on the kid and what not are way more important than my shenanigans.



Anyway, several people have been asking about our status since the hurricane hit so I figured I'd post something to let everyone know what was going on (since that is the point of a blog, I think).



We made it through the storm without much to report. Actually, I issued a mandatory evacuation order for all residents of 25807 Longstone Rd - which consisted of me, Hayley and baby Frink. We decided to head up to Frankston to hang out with her parents (and, evidently, wait on the storm to hit). There were simply too many people heading to Dallas so we thought we'd take our chances on a Cat. 1/tropical storm by the time it got up through East Texas.



As it turns out, the person that made the mandatory evacuation order made a good decision. The storm did cause some damage and destruction in the East Texas area, but Eddie and Linda's faired pretty well. We lost power a couple of times, but it generally came back on in a couple of minutes. The winds were gusting though and ended up blowing water into their house through vents in the walls/ceiling. The water trickled down the inside of the walls and then deposited itself in the carpet of the bedrooms and Eddie's office. In short, no bueno. They had to call some carpet people the next day who proceeded to fill the house with loud, noisy, hot blowers to try to dry out the carpet (after they ripped it up along with the carpet padding, of course). Additionally, and more tragically, the wind blew the satellite dish slightly off kilter which dashed any hope we had of continuing to watch the hurricane coverage ("hurricane coverage" is now the code word for "college football"). There was a bit of hope though. The wind and rain (which was coming from the east) suddenly stopped after a few hours. We thought we were out of the worst of it so I hopped on a ladder and began fiddling with the dish on the roof. Unfortunately, we must have been in the eye or something because the wind and rain then slammed us again from the west. Tropical storm force wind + rain + on the roof + off kilter satellite = boring hurricane evacuation. Such is life.



Our place in Houston appeared to do better than most places in the neighborhood. We had a large portion of the roof exposed above the garage which allowed water to get in. Fortunately, it was contained to the garage area and we only suffered water damage there (that we can see). What sucks is that we are starting to get mold. As soon as someone can get out to the house, we can get it taken care of but as you can imagine, insurance inspectors and roof repairmen are in short supply. We also had a small section of the roof shingles get displaced above our kitchen. I can't see whether any water leaked in or not, but we have covered it up just in case.

(I had to go to class so I'm picking this up again, but I have kind of lost my train of thought. I'll do my best to continue)

We got water back earlier this week (so I'm told) but we still don't have electricity. Our area got hit pretty hard (ok, very hard) and there are down trees, power lines and poles everywhere around us. The power is not supposed to come back on until early to mid October. Fingers crossed it's before that! We were under a tornado warning for quite some time and the theory (someone else's, not mine) is that there were some twisters in the area. There are twisted trees, poles and street signs so maybe that's right. I just don't know because I wasn't there! We were just lucky not to have any trees fall on our place (yet). I say yet because there is a lone pine tree in our back yard that is now leaning. It's kind of in between our property and our neighbor's property. We're gonna chop that sucka down when we get the chance (I'm a lumberjack and that's ok...). Unfortunately, there were houses that had trees on (or through) them. There are two houses on the other side of our neighborhood that were quite literally split in half by trees. Pretty scary stuff.

As for our location now, I (Brian) came back to H-Tizzle on Tuesday night because school started again yesterday. Hayley continued to live large in Frankston since there was still the electricity/water issue at our house and my parents house. However, my parents got power and water yesterday so we are going to be staying there for a while. Hayley is actually back in town today to re-take her diabetes test. I think she'll be the first to tell you that she's never been very good at tests and that she picked the wrong time to fail one (reminds me of the song: "You picked a fine time to leave me Lucille"...now that'll be stuck in my head). Just kidding. We are told that they catch a lot of false positives so we hope to pass this one with flying colors.

Ok, one last funny thing before I leave for my next grusome class. You better laugh at this. I'll know if you don't...

We have a neighbor (as do many of you) that has used his huge pine tree as a flag pole since we moved into the neighborhood. He is, how do you say, a little redneck-ish (we are seriously going to email Jeff Foxworthy and say "You might be a redneck if you use the 100 ft pine tree in your front yard as a flag pole"). Anyway, the American flag is flying no more. His flag pole went limp (for lack of better words) during the storm and was bending towards his house. I suppose the threat of Old Glory coming crashing through his bedroom was too much to bear so he got his pick 'em up truck and pull the tree down. Again, did I mention he was a little redneck-ish?

That's it for now. But in summary, we are fine, our house is relatively fine, Hayley is still pregnant with (presumably) my daughter and we are living at my parents's house. If you have any other questions, feel free to ask.

Peath out.