Things I Thought About Recently

When we were facing Ike's onslaught and the aftermath I was forced to think of different things of varying degrees of importance. Partly due to worry about what was to happen and how we would fare in the days following. Now that things in our area are being in return to "normal", I have been remembering tidbits of my days around Ike.

I felt confident we had enough supplies, plenty of water and snack foods. We went to the store the Thursday before Ike just to pick up a few thing. Other shoppers had a glazed look in their eyes. Fear, concern?

In the middle of the storm I suddenly worried about my car's convertible top. I expected to see it in shreds. When it was safe to go out, I saw that it was fine. Whew...

Later, without power I thought what to do... no tv. Radio was my lifeline to sanity. On the other hand, after a couple of days I began to feel that I had heard all the playlists on each station. News radio was not much better. I read during the day. I finished "Marley and Me" which I had started some time ago. Now what. During a few bored moments I grabbed a handful of M&M's fully intending to mindlessly eat them. Well, I looked at them in the little container and thought how many of each color are there? Nothing else to do, right? So I divided them into colors and counted. Brown-16,Blue-10,yellow-8,Green-16,Orange-9, Red-17.

Then I looked at the football game tickets which were for the Texans game the Sunday after Ike. Hum...what will the NFL do? Play the game in another (neutral) city? A fans revolt might happen if they did that. Let's face it we are still mad at MLB and Bud Selig for moving the Astros games to a "neutral" site. Milwaukee, for Cubs fans, is a "homefield advantage! No we are not going to play our football game in Atlanta,either. Since Reliant Stadium was damaged the decision was finally made to play the game in November on a day which would have been a bye week for both teams. At least the stadium will be fixed by then so it will be a home game!

One good thing we did have on hand was crank flashlights. A nice invention. Jimmy had bought some at Home Depot months ago just because they were on sale. Crank it up and you have Light, yea! Well worth the money at twice the price.

Power companies are still working...now people are begining to complain. We have power; my neighbor down the street does not. 4 million customers (over 2 million with one company alone) is a lot to do.

I wondered what had happened on my soaps. Yikes, when the cable came on, what happened to, just name a character... Finally I could look at the "outside world" sort of. That is when the cable was on. It went off a couple of times over the weekend. Yesterday a Comcast truck was "baby-sitting" an amplifier across the street. It stayed there all day and kept the tv on. That is until they left at 10:30 pm. Huh? This morning I saw a total of 6 trucks parked across the street while the cable guys tried to figure out what to do. My fingers are still crossed.

When I went out this morning I noticed the traffic light up the street was finally working. Yipee! Four way stops are dicey at best.

Well, now that the traffic lights around our neighborhood are working, I feel better. Moving forward.