Hurricane Ike

A brief telling of our adventures due to Hurricane Ike.

I got two days off of work before Ike made landfall.  We stayed Thursday and Friday at Jason and Cristen’s near downtown Houston with Ryan.  We watched hurricane coverage and Season 4 of “The Office”.  Sophie was a trooper.  She slept through the whole thing.  It probably helped that she was already a little sick so we loaded her up with Benadryl.  Saturday evening, Maren’s mom called to say she miraculously had power so we all packed up and crashed at her house (as well as approximately 97 other people).

Sunday morning, I checked out the house.  There appeared to be no damage to the house itself (which has turned out to be true), but we are soon to be the proud owner of three new fences.  Our big tree in the backyard lost two branched, one of which was already dead.   This was reponsible for one fence.  Our neighbors had two huge trees felled by the hurricane.  One knocked over another fence.  The third fence was a casualty of old age and strong winds.  It needed to go and the hurricane provided the impetus for its removal.  We had power intermittently for four hours on Sunday, and it returned for good Monday.  Since then, Maren and I have enjoyed a vacation of sorts.

San Jac has suffered damages at all three campuses though I don’t know to what extent.  Based on emails, they are encouraging people to stay away from campus until needed and it seems there is some flooding and roof damage to my building.  It tough to tell, but the latest email projects us going back to work September 29.  Awesome.

Maren works at the Chase Building downtown.  It lost windows up to the 37th floor.  So she could not return to the building until this Friday.  She did work from home, so I guess saying she was on vacation was a little misleading.  Amidst all the hurrican drama, Morgan Stanley suffered on Wall Street and Maren worked furiously Wednesday to help with damage control.  Things appear to be better now, but at the time it was uncertain of Morgan Stanley would still exist Thursday.

Quickie

I should be monitering my students taking their test, but…

San Jac is closing for Thursday through Sunday, so I have a four day weekend.  With beautiful weather, I’m sure.

Meanwhile, the Astros may move Friday’s game to 1:05.  Anyone want to go?

Rhapsody in Blog

It’s been a good while since my last post.  Truthfully, I don’t feel like posting now, but I owe my readers a little something now and then.  So here you have a few unrelated snippets.

Sophie got her first haircut this weekend.  Maren finally broke down and let her have some bangs so now she can see without tilting her head at a 45 degree angle.  I think she’s still hyper cute and she reminds me of Haley Mills a la “Parent Trap” (not “Saved by the Bell”).  Plus, since I’m responisible for droping her off at school, I’m responsible for her hair.  For the first time.

I’m teaching five sections of College Algebra and one section of Trig this semester.  I’m glad I taught College Algebra this summer.  I’m sometimes excited by Trig.  It was the first math topic that got me excited about math.  However, it’s the first time I’ve felt if I were to develop a course from the ground up, I would tackle it in an entirely different way than their textbook.  That part is frustrating.

The other night as Maren and I were going to sleep, my brain was doing something funny.  If that is any indication of what the brain does when we are asleep, it’s no wonder we don’t remember most of our dreams.  It was the most random collage of images.  It was like watching the T-1000 from “Terminator 2″ on acid.  So I’ve decided the only dreams we recall are the ones that we can make any sense of.

I freely admit that I am a bad driver.  My biggest fault is my tendancy to speed.  That usually compounds everything else, but speeding is the root of it.  Otherwise, I would say there are many things that I do right on the roads.  I never cut off other drivers.  I make lane changes well in advance.  I seldom ride others bumpers, though my impatience gets the best of me in certain situations on certain roads.  But, on the whole, I do not pretend to be a good driver.  This has earned me a certain reputation among friends and I have tried to handle it all graciously.  However, I am increasingly annoyed by friends who consistently poke fun at my driving while they are not the drivers they pretend to be.  If I can admit to being a subpar driver, you can, too, my friends.

Two weeks ago, I finished Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut.  It was a fair read, but I don’t feel much after having read it.  I’ve been trying to get into The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett.  After roughly a week, I am 30 pages into the book and I haven’t picked it up in 5 or 6 days.  Only 943 pages to go.  Maybe I should read something else.

So, I hope you’ve all gotten your fix.