Click here, (video) going crazy during the storm…

We dodged the bullet again. Starting Saturday about 3 pm we got 7.72 inches of rain. I was sleeping soundly when I woke up at 4:15 am to see water flowing down my big north facing window reflected in the light on my wall through the window. Rain rarely comes from the north like that.

Beh turned me facing the window and I watched the trees and bushes whip around and the rain go horizontal with our outside light on. And then, I saw what could have been lightning or it could’ve been transformers blowing up. I was awake at 5:15 am when I saw the lights go out as we lost power.

We went on our no power routine and I had cold cereal and my usual carrot, celery and radish lunch. Beh went to her house a block away and got hot coffee from a portable propane stove her brother had. He had a generator that he didn’t know how to get started, unfortunately.

I read two magazines, with other author books waiting to be read, wondering what it was like all over Houston without TV. But it seemed like everywhere power was out and my desktop phone didn’t even work because it’s on my Internet plan, VoiceOver IP, with no battery back up. Fortunately, Beh could use her cell phone. People were driving crazy around looking for water, food and gas and finding none to be found. Nothing was open for miles around… Very strange.

Thanks to that portable gas stove, I had a hot meal last night of the planned fried rice and watercress and beef salad—made from scratch and yummy! Got to bed in the dark with a flashlight about 9 pm and charged my hearing aid in my car. Beh filled me up on Saturday so I had a full tank of gas. We could charge all of our small electric rechargeable devices in our two cars.

With the windows open we slept comfortably until we got up around 7:30 am. Normally, I keep the thermostat at 79° at night. I noticed that the thermostat was at 82° and I keep it at 81° most days. My tenant, upstairs said it was unbearable for her. She tried to get a hotel but found all of them full and she couldn’t get gas even though her company offered her $150 a night if she had to stay in a hotel. And her company was shut down because it was without power… Like most of Houston.

Beh discovered she had the same camp stove stored away from some previous disaster that she forgot. She cooked me bacon and a fried egg this morning with hot coffee. Her brother discovered that there was power at her shop so she took me there for the day. But she couldn’t reach the Internet from there and her machine for credit card charging didn’t work.

About 2:15 pm today we learned that the power was on at my house and we headed home. It was amazing during the storm to see birds flying in 70 mph winds as though it was normal for them as they came in the wind and rain to our deck for food like they did every morning. It was just in time to save all of our food in the refrigerator and freezer I was worried the most about. Centerpoint had 12,000 crew out working on restoring power.

A little water came in the top of my window with that north wind and we had to move things from my desk away from getting wet. The news tells me that the winds reached 89 mph here in Houston and my 40 year old 50 foot high cypress out front lost a few small branches and looks like it had a bad trim job. The same was true down the street. On the way to the shop we saw lots of wood fences blown down and and branches in the road but no big trees down.