hurricane ike part one

i'm really not sure why i started this running timeline of hurricane ike. probably out of sheer boredom sunday morning. but, now that i'm online for a few minutes, i'll post it here for posterity. i'll split the timeline by each day and post them seperately. i'll start with friday evening / saturday:

Friday Evening
I watch Fox News all evening reporting live from Galveston. Geraldo is the main entertainment as he practically gets blown away by the wind. Finally a little after midnight, I shut down my laptop. I crawl in bed and watch Fox News until I fall asleep.

Saturday, 4 am
We lose electricity. I wake up because my fan turns off. I go back to sleep.

Saturday, 5:10 am
I’m fully awake now. The wind is pretty fierce.

Saturday, 5:20 am
Amanda texts me. We chat back and forth for a few minutes, deciding Hurricane Ike isn’t so great.

Saturday, 5:30 am
A tree falls in the front yard. But, it is way too dark to see exactly what happens. The wind is too fierce to open the door fully and look safely. So, we sit in the living room listening to the radio and the wind. This goes on for another couple hours.

Saturday, 6:30 am
I text Jamie. They are safe and they have electricity! Lucky ducks.

Saturday, 6:45
Daylight starts breaking through the rain and wind. We can see which tree is in the front yard now. It’s extremely close to the house and we’re lucky it didn’t break off further down the trunk. We discover 3 more trees down. Are pretty certain one has taken out part of the back fence.

Saturday, 7:30 am
I go back to bed for a couple hours.

Saturday, 9:30
I pick up a book and read by the window light. The hurricane winds are over. They have slowly ceased over the last few hours.

Saturday, noon
Dad and I decide to take out the Teryx and check out the neighborhood. We’re pretty sure we got the worst on our street. Probably small tornados were touching down around our house. Though one of our neighbors nearly had a tree in their bedroom – it stopped just short of that. Decker Prairie Rosehill Road is a mess. Several power lines down. Most of them have trees sitting on top of them. 2 houses have trees lying on their roofs. Allenwood has several trees uprooted and laid over. Amazingly no one seems to have a tree in their house, though.

The rest of the day:
Play dominoes, warm up fajita meat on the grill, read more, chat with neighbors in the yard, text friends to find out how they fared. My cell phone is not working well; calls in and out only go to voicemail. Texting works better, but I usually have to send the text 6 or 8 times before it goes through.