Ike: Recovering from the storm

Yes, we'll remember Ike for a while in Houston. But it could have been much worse, at least for me and mine.

I'm safe. My kids and ex are safe, and they even have power back on, not too many blocks away from me. The water pressure is coming back up gradually, and there's been no significant flooding in my immediate area.

There was some very impressive wind, though; I've seen worse, but not often, and not by very much.

The power went out fairly early on Friday night in my neighborhood, and a large tree in my own back yard has toppled over onto the distribution line leading from the back of my lot to the house. The line hasn't broken, but it's stretched almost to the ground. And from days gone by when I used to defend the local electric utility company* on its electrical contact cases, I have an enormous respect, bordering on paranoia, for downed or damaged power lines — I've seen too many amputees and mourners from incidents when people were just as sure as they could be that those lines weren't energized — so my dog and I will be staying well clear of the entire area, and I'll be waiting for the professionals to put the situation right.

Right now I'm working on my laptop, recharged from my car battery, connected to the internet through a dial-up modem at 26.4Kbps. It's like I've suddenly been transported back to 1987. But that's okay — there was a time when I was very grateful to be connected at that speed, and I lived through those days fine.

As a consequence, though, I'm unlikely to be posting much in the next couple of days either here or at HughHewitt.com. Many thanks to those who've emailed or left comments with good wishes. From me, for the next few days, anyway, you should just assume that no news just means no news, not that it means bad news.

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*One of the first posts I wrote when I began blogging in 2003, titled Electric heroes: a memoir, was about lessons I learned and respect I gained through that representation. It's a bit melodramatic, but sincere.

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UPDATE (Sat Sep 20 @ 12:35pm): Still no power, still no internet. Via dial-up and laptop (charged by car battery), I can do email and minimal browsing, but not enough to stay current and do the research needed for my normal blogging. This marks a little over a week without power, which is getting tiresome, but things could be much worse.