Hurricane update from work
It's Tuesday, and while Gillian posted immediately after the hurricane, I'm a bit bored and decided to post during lunch everything that's happened since Ike came through.
Only about half of the people are in the office today, and I'm running out of things to do. Everyone from the office made it through okay, although most of them don't have power yet and our boss is still stuck out of town (although I believe he's trying to fly back today). TI took no damage, although there are a few tree branches here and there, and the office has been officially open since some time on Sunday. Stafford as a whole seems to have fared fairly well, although the power outages and lack of gas are still pervasive (TI has power, but the intersection at the entrance to TI is out).
If our townhouse took damage, we haven't noticed it yet. The balcony now needs a paint job slightly more than it did before, and we probably still have a roof leak, but nothing new. Ryan is still crashing with us until further notice as his place doesn't have power, and Kyle and Jamie stayed here Sunday night so that they wouldn't need to sleep in the band hall again.
Yesterday, we all slept in a bit - I tried to get a bit done for work early in the day, but the connection to the Dallas servers was fairly slow. We checked a couple nearby gas stations, but everything was either out of power or out of gas. We ended up walking to the HEB at Westheimer and Fountainview to try to get some eggs (we have all the stuff to make Gillian's birthday cake except for eggs - a month late, but still). They didn't have any, so we walked over to San Felipe to a small convenience store that we knew had power to check for the same (no luck). By now it was nearing lunch time, so we walked to the Galleria for lunch - after which we had to walk back to the condo as Kyle needed to get to the airport. All told, we spent about three hours walking around uptown and now I'm a bit sunburned.
Not including power outages, most of the damage we saw seems to involve either downed trees or lost roof shingles. Additionally, most of the street intersections seem to be damaged beyond functionality apart from lacking power, so even if the power's restored, that wouldn't fix a dangling traffic light. Most of the homes and businesses we passed seem to have escaped relatively unscathed - where there are large trees down, it seems that they fell away from nearby structures. There are exceptions to this, obviously, but most of the large trees seem to have fallen into roadways rather than onto houses.
I'm a little upset at the curfew, as it means I had to cancel RLOS rehearsals this week, but after driving around near Rice at 8:30 last night in complete darkness, I'm in full support of the thing. Twice people went the wrong way down Greenbriar or Shepherd, and without using your high beams it's almost impossible to spot the downed trees until you're almost on top of them. There were also several people we saw drive right through intersections without stopping, including the one at Greenbriar and Holcombe, probably because it's almost impossible to see where the intersections are without any surrounding lights. The freeways were eerie as well, as I'm used to lots of ambient light when driving around town, and being surrounded by darkness is a little creepy. I hate light pollution normally, but right now I can't help but wonder if it makes us all a bit safer.
Only about half of the people are in the office today, and I'm running out of things to do. Everyone from the office made it through okay, although most of them don't have power yet and our boss is still stuck out of town (although I believe he's trying to fly back today). TI took no damage, although there are a few tree branches here and there, and the office has been officially open since some time on Sunday. Stafford as a whole seems to have fared fairly well, although the power outages and lack of gas are still pervasive (TI has power, but the intersection at the entrance to TI is out).
If our townhouse took damage, we haven't noticed it yet. The balcony now needs a paint job slightly more than it did before, and we probably still have a roof leak, but nothing new. Ryan is still crashing with us until further notice as his place doesn't have power, and Kyle and Jamie stayed here Sunday night so that they wouldn't need to sleep in the band hall again.
Yesterday, we all slept in a bit - I tried to get a bit done for work early in the day, but the connection to the Dallas servers was fairly slow. We checked a couple nearby gas stations, but everything was either out of power or out of gas. We ended up walking to the HEB at Westheimer and Fountainview to try to get some eggs (we have all the stuff to make Gillian's birthday cake except for eggs - a month late, but still). They didn't have any, so we walked over to San Felipe to a small convenience store that we knew had power to check for the same (no luck). By now it was nearing lunch time, so we walked to the Galleria for lunch - after which we had to walk back to the condo as Kyle needed to get to the airport. All told, we spent about three hours walking around uptown and now I'm a bit sunburned.
Not including power outages, most of the damage we saw seems to involve either downed trees or lost roof shingles. Additionally, most of the street intersections seem to be damaged beyond functionality apart from lacking power, so even if the power's restored, that wouldn't fix a dangling traffic light. Most of the homes and businesses we passed seem to have escaped relatively unscathed - where there are large trees down, it seems that they fell away from nearby structures. There are exceptions to this, obviously, but most of the large trees seem to have fallen into roadways rather than onto houses.
I'm a little upset at the curfew, as it means I had to cancel RLOS rehearsals this week, but after driving around near Rice at 8:30 last night in complete darkness, I'm in full support of the thing. Twice people went the wrong way down Greenbriar or Shepherd, and without using your high beams it's almost impossible to spot the downed trees until you're almost on top of them. There were also several people we saw drive right through intersections without stopping, including the one at Greenbriar and Holcombe, probably because it's almost impossible to see where the intersections are without any surrounding lights. The freeways were eerie as well, as I'm used to lots of ambient light when driving around town, and being surrounded by darkness is a little creepy. I hate light pollution normally, but right now I can't help but wonder if it makes us all a bit safer.