Are you wearing your high heeled hurricane boots?

No. They were out of stock in my size. |catfight|

Sending all my positive Karma your way Toby!

My thoughts are with you guys...here in AL gas has gone from $3.59 ro over $4.00 in one day...something about a pipeline being shut down,

Ike is just gods way of thanking Texas for W...

|buddy||hurricane

Toby, my thoughts are heading your way. Hoping for the best. Be Safe.

yesterday IKE gave some tough time to the population living near texas coast. i hope everybody is fine and healthy

I heard that there is an umbrella and galoshes advisory for coastal Texas.

If I'm reading this correctly, Toby is SW of Houston & it looks like the eye went just NE of the city. Not that 20 mph less wind speed is anything to cheer about when you're talking hurricanes.

I'm sending Toby that text message right now :D

YESTERDAY!?!?!?! It made landfall about an hour before you fucking posted!

Good luck Toby - it sounds really bad down there. |shocking|

Here in Austin, 180 miles inland, we have some wind, but it looks like the whole thing took a NE turn and is gonna pass us up completely - not even any rain at this point, which is kinda bad for us 'cause we could use a few inches of precipitation.

It was a beast. No damage here but there are a few trees down in the neighborhood.

We're on generator power, but we have Internet and coffee.

What more does one really need?

A/C would come in handy.

Open a window, I'm sure there is a breeze blowing.

Toby Glad to see you came out of that monster ok. We watched it on CNN when it hit landfall all i can say is Wow. Been watching a bit of the after math on CNN .I hope you got lots of gas for that generator :) .

JOKE THIEF!!!!! |angry|

Toby, good to hear you are doing fine.

Whew glad you're OK Toby :D

Is Lady Designer around? Hope she's ok too.

We haven't heard from LadyDesigner. She's not far from me, just a bit to the south. Most likely without power, and I don't know that she has a generator.

Texans game postponed due to roof damage.

Who is this?|catfight|

The footage on the news looks awful :(

Looks like power is out for just about everyone in the Houston area. Hope they can get restored soon.

Ike made for some funny video footage of that clown Geraldo falling down
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HW0M-DvkEn8

Here's a few quick photos of the neighborhood.

Our front yard - photo

Neighbor to the west - photo

Neighbor to the east - photo

Neighbor across the street - photo

in that last one is that a tree on someone's house?

No, the tree is still standing but it did lose a pretty good size branch. That tree is a bit closer to the house than the ones on our side of the street.

Awful lot of flooding there I see, been watching channel 11 (khou) in Houston on the direct tv to get a local perspective.

Glad to hear you are OK Toby, sure hope to hear from LadyDesigner soon.

I watched that over and over, too f'ing funnny! That Geraldo Rivera is such an idiot... |jester|

Glad to hear that Toby is okay, but 4 million people without power has gotta suck! I read on CNN that it could take several weeks to get everyone restored.

Could you imagine being in Galveston and having your house burn in the middle of a hurricane? How surreal is that?

Weather here was bad too. We had a severe storm and several tornadoes roll through Kansas City last night, including one tornado that touched down about a mile from my house. Luckily, other than a few trees downed, no one got hurt.

At 1st I thought it was still really windy, but then I realized the leafs I see on top are from the tree in your front year :D

You look to have faired pretty well. I saw a lot of the footage from Galveston & that looked bad.

You Gulf & Atlantic people can keep your hurricanes. Below is a picture of Ramster enjoying the worst storm I've ever seen |snowman2

Toby glad to see you made it through. Hope LD faired as well.

Still nothing from LD ? sure hope she's ok :).

Toby, glad you're Ok. Do you have a decent amount of gas stockpiled to run your generator?

I've got my in-laws in from Galveston and my father-in-law's house had a few feet of water in it, according to some of his friends that weathered the storm. Sounds like it's gonna be a while before ya'll get power there. We went without power for 9 days with Gustav...just got cable TV and internet back last night (12 days).

We're in pretty good shape for gas. We had 30 gal. to start with, and used part of that yesterday. We've run one cord over to the neighbor to keep his freezer running, and when he went out this morning to check on his Veterinary office he brought us back another 10 gal. We also have some friends just south of town that have power back on, and they've offered the 20 gal they have left if we need it.

My biggest concern at this point is figuring out how I'm going to get to Atlanta on Thur. if Hobby airport is still not operating. I may be bailing out of here on Wed. and driving instead. At least the car has functional A/C.

That isn't much gas at all unless you are just running the generator for a few hours each day.

I've got a 5500 watt one that I run 24/7 after a storm. It uses about 10 gallons each 24 hours.

After being without power for 3 weeks after Wilma and having to pay someone a lot of money to drive a 55 gallon drum over from the west coast I now go into these storms with close to 200 gallons of gas stored in two 55 gallon drums and a bunch of 5 gallon cans. I modified my generator fuel line so that I can run a line back to a 55 gallon drum and run it off of it.

I'm always afraid to leave my house unattended after these storms. The house right next door to me got looted after Wilma. My office is right next to their house but there is a wooden fence between us and I didn't even know they had been robbed until my neighbors got back into town and told me.

I have two 5000 watt generators (they can burst to 6250 to start things). I ran 2 window A/C units, a refrigerator, a bunch of lights, 2 TV's (only able to play dvd's but same energy drain), and either the coffee pot or the microwave...all on one generator. I'd swap generators each day to keep either from getting too hot. Each generator has a 5 gallon tank. I determined that a generator can run a bit over 12 hours on 5 gallons of gas. Another thing to keep handy is SAE 30 motor oil...most generators will kill the engine if the oil gets low. I hope this helps in your plans to power your essentials...I just went thru it and know what you're going thru.

Man, Atlanta is a pretty far drive from Baton Rouge, and from your area with...sheesh! A thought, I'd imagine that driving to Dallas is out of the question because of the hurricane damage. You might want to book tickets out of Baton Rouge Metro Airport, drive here, and fly to Atlanta from here. I'm pretty sure that we have direct flights, and our airport is a "mom and pop" ... usually no hassles or waits. The wait to get thru security us usually measured in seconds.

Tickets are already booked, and I'm not sure what my options are as far as rebooking etc. I'll know more after I call Delta tomorrow morning.

It's only about 13 hours from here to Atlanta. I'd probably drive as far as Montgomery on Wed, then on into Atlanta on Thur morning.

If I do drive, and we still don't have power by next Sunday, then I won't be in any rush to return to Houston. I might go visit some friends in Daytona for a couple of days.

Well, good luck with everything...glad to hear that you came out of the storm Ok.

Since the topic of generators came up, for the future it might be worth considering going with a natural gas powered generator instead of a gasoline powered one.

I'm thinking about having one installed in my house to prevent losing power during the winter the way they did in Oklahoma last year. I already switched my wood buring fireplace to natural gas earlier this year. The total cost for the gas log and running the gas pipe was about a $1000, but it will be well worth it if the power goes out during a snow/ice storm.

I think the natural gas generators cost a couple thousand dollars, but the the local gas company is offering rebates, and the generators are permanently installed, so you end up with a permanent backup generator.

One of our long time neighbors just moved in June to a new house he had built in Pearland. One of the things he insisted on during the planning stages was a natural gas generator that would run the entire house and A/C. It kicks on automatically if the power is off for more than the alotted time. He's considering it money well spent right now.

I really wish natural gas was were I lived. It's about a mile away from me in the commercial area but not in the residential area where I'm located.