Hurricane Photos

A little hurricane pictorial. We were very fortunate not to have any catastrophic damage, but here are a few photos from my stomping grounds.

Privacy is highly overrated.

For sale: One recreational vehicle. Slight hurricane damage. Perfect for the guy who wants a Fixer Upper!


Traffic signals take on new meanings.

My roof post-Ike. Don’t be envious of my fancy tarps.

My roof as a “pile.”

My roof takes a swim.

And you thought metal was tough.


Too bad we don’t actually use firewood here in Houston.

How to Wait for a Hurricane

We evacuated on Thursday afternoon to stay with our friends Marjorie and Kirk, who graciously allowed us to bring our two kids and two dogs, and invade their home. We got there a day and a half before Ike made landfall, so here’s what we did while waiting for emanate doom!

Drank heavily…

Watched TV…

Obsessed (and laughed) over CNN’s repeated proclamation that we were all facing CERTAIN DEATH if we did not evacuate. (you can’t see it, but I swear that is what it said)

Danced in the wind and rain. (Okay, only the kids did that, but it looks like fun, right?)

More later…

P.S. As of this morning, 26% of Houston (616,000 homes) still do not have power. 🙁

Surviving Ike

We’re still here! Things are not really back to normal, but I do have electricity and Internet access, so that’s a good start.

There have been ridiculously long lines for gas…

and groceries…

and even when you get inside, the selection is limited. (Poor Flamin’ Hot Funyuns…no fun even when food is scarce.)

And of course, limited electricity means not much air conditioning, which is very hard to live without in Houston.


As of this morning, 36% of the city still has no electricity. Most of the traffic lights aren’t working, so traffic is a nightmare…and there is debris everywhere…

But we are still here!

More photos soon…

I am so f*cking OVER you…

HURRICANES!

This is like the umpteenth time I have had to pack up my stuff, my kids and my animals, and get the hell out of dodge. After living in Houston my entire life, you would think I would have the hang of it, but I honestly don’t remember having this many true “threats” in the past. Granted, I live a lot closer to the coastline now, but still. It’s a pain the ass.

So, it is times like these that I am really glad we have a Hummer, and Father Al and everyone else who gives me a hard time about my H2 can just SUCK it. It is packed full of stuff and now I just need to cram in two kids and two dogs and hit the highway.

More soon.

If I hear that word one more time…

HR Chick: Can we jazz it up some? Maybe make it a little more salesy, you know, add some sizzle…some jazziness. If we could make this introduction a little more jazzy, I think it would be great. Just jazz up the company stuff and add a really cool, jazzy section about what a career in that department can do for them. The whole thing just needs to have more JAZZ.

Me: (Jabbing pencil in my eye)

“What the F*ck?” Wednesday

I was playing with sweet little Scarlett’s toes and noticed what looked like a small cut on the bottom of her foot. Upon closer inspection, it looked like a splinter…but then I realized it was a HAIR. A hair, but a splinter! A hair splinter? WTF??

Of course, Dan thought I was out of my mind, so I did an Internet search and found a few websites that mentioned such a thing….apparently hair stylists and dog groomers occasionally have this bizarre experience too.

So, I got out the tweezers and after a few minutes, I had the damn thing out. It was one of our bulldog’s hairs. Can you frickin’ believe that?

I know it’s blurry, but that red line on her foot is where a hair was embedded. ICK!

It tastes like cardboard, but…

My company does a lot of work with our local food bank, so last week my department spent an afternoon filling bags of food for school children (who are participants in the school lunch program) to eat over the weekend. It was very rewarding…and sad…but then, as always, I found some humor in the situation.


We were walking by the rows and rows of food, when I noticed several HUGE boxes full of NutriSystem food.

These pictures don’t do the boxes justice….they are like 6 feet wide by 5 foot deep, and filled to the top with crappy NutriSystem food. (And I can say that because I tried NutriSystem earlier this year and made it for about a week before I couldn’t handle it any more. Of course I didn’t think to throw my extras in the food bank barrel at the grocery store…mine went directly into the trash can.)

So, I never got the chance to ask, but I wonder if they are distributing this food to the hungry. (If you’ve never had NutriSystem food, let me explain that nothing requires refrigeration…not the hamburgers or the chicken or the fish…think MRE, but not as tasty.)

What do you think? Would you be pissed if you got a box of diet food from the food bank?

On a side note…kudos to Continental Airlines. They are now boxing up all the uneaten snacks and sending them to the food bank (they used to throw them out!). So the kiddos got some good snacks…peanuts, raisins, granola bars, cookies and the occasional snack-sized candy…that they weren’t getting before.

“What the F*ck?” Wednesday

I received this letter in the mail with my August water bill. You are more than welcome to click on the image to get a full-size, readable version, but let me sum it up for you.

Dear People who use water in Pearland
Over FIVE months ago we started putting some crappy chemical in your water supply that will kill your fish. It will also kill you if you have kidney problems and use a dialysis machine. Good luck with that.

Sincerely,
The Dumbasses who run The City of Pearland


WTF? So, I am now curious how many fish and/or people have died so far…and what idiot didn’t think it was important to send this out, oh I don’t know, maybe BEFORE they made the change?

I’m not sure, but…

…I think my company may know something we don’t know.

These hand sanitizers magically appeared at every entry way recently. And I just noticed that my badge has an Avian Flu/Pandemic hotline on the back.

Hmmm
….

I am so f*cking OVER you…

SHOES.

I don’t know what the deal is, but this is the second pair of shoes that has crapped out on me at work. (I’ve only been working for 31 days!)



Last time, the heel came off, and the strap was attached in between the heel and the sole, so I was walking around barefoot until lunchtime. Today, I am just making a very loud “THAP THAP THAP” noise as I walk the halls…unless I carefully slide my foot without lifting it up. (But then people might think I am making fun of the handicapped, so I should probably stop that.)

I attempted to glue my shoe back together, but all I managed to do was glue the bottom of my pants to the top half of my shoe. TGIF.