It has been a busy time since my last post. I took a vacation the first week of July, which was very relaxing until I came down with a major sinus infection that Thursday, just before my monthly Adventures in the Green game. I had to cancel that as I was running a fever of over 101 DegF for several days. My fever slowly dropped, but I was certain I needed to cancel our weekly Monday game and take some sick leave from work.
During this time, Hurricane Beryl went from "it will hit land in Mexico" to "it will hit land in southern Texas" to "it will roll right over the entire city of Houston". It started hitting parts of Houston before dawn on July 8. I lost power around 7:00 AM. [It would not return until Friday, July 12.] As the house grew too warm and stuffy, I discovered that my back patio was comfortable for me (still running a fever) and sat out there as the center of the storm rolled over us. In the picture below (from the app Weatherbug), I live in the vicinity of the blue flag. The lower red flag is downtown Houston, 26 miles away. [That is not a typo and yes, I count as living "in Houston".]
Luckily, my MIL has a whole-house generator, so even though her area was without power, she had it plus air-conditioning. I was reluctant to go as I was still ill, but she insisted. So we [and by we I mean my wife, who was a hero that day] spent the afternoon packing for a multi-day stay before heading over.
Monday night, the internet went out and cell phone service dropped to barely reliable as no electricity also meant that the cell towers and internet nodes also had no power. Tuesday internet returned but dropped again during Wednesday. Wednesday evening it returned as CenterPoint reconnected more of the power grid to that area.
Friday, our neighbors texted us mid-day that the power was back on in our neighborhood. I drove over during my lunch break to verify that the A/C was running and cooling the house [it was]. Not all the traffic lights were back on and people seemed to have forgotten the rules [or actively chose to ignore them], making that drive a bit harrowing, even for a native.
Due to work and a desire to have our regular Date Night that night, my wife and I did not return back to the house until the next day, Saturday. We got home in the early afternoon, did some unpacking, ran laundry, and straightened up the public areas of the house as I had a City of Heroes LAN party scheduled for Sunday. We also dumped all the spoiled food from our refrigerator to get the smelly stuff out of the house.
During the LAN party the next day, the tree removal guys showed up at the neighbors with a huge crane to hold the tree while they cut it apart. They removed the cut up tree from the property...only to dump it on the cul-de-sac island in front of our houses. OK for homeowners, not so much for tree REMOVAL companies.
At work the following week we did our best to catch up on projects that were put on hold due to the hurricane. The writer I'm working with did not get her power back until Tuesday, eight days after the hurricane. I have friends who did not get power back until July 19, 11 days after the hurricane.
As I write this, power has been restored to almost everyone. People who had trees slice into their homes or sheer off their electricity connections and/or fuse boxes are still waiting on electricians to reconnect their homes to the grid. The City of Houston and Harris County have only just started removing storm debris in residential areas this week. We received a check from our insurance company for food lost [best rider in our home insurance and worth every penny] and have started replacing food.
In summation: I do not recommend getting ill just as a hurricane lands on your city and things have returned to mostly normal at this point.
Later!
