(no subject)

[amedia]

It weakened substantially before it got to my town. No damage to our house, even when the air raid tornado sirens went off.

We never lost water.

Our water heater is gas-powered. I never saw any point to that before, but apparently the natural gas mains are buried too deeply for the hurricane to damage, so we have had blessed hot water.

Hubby has a thing for candles.

metherion has a thing for batteries (something to do with all those little portable electronic games, I guess), and didn't take them back to school with him.

Hubby has a thing for barbecuing.

The local HEB grocery store is giving away two bags of free ice every day to everyone who drives up and asks for it.

Hubby has a thing for good wine.

Our employer has power, and we are allowed to have mini-fridges in our offices. I now have one, and it's full of... what else... barbecued meat!

Hubby has a thing for tiki drinks, so we (him, me, and his sister who lives in town now) had very strong hurricanes the night of the hurricane, in the right kind of glasses and everything.

Our planned evacuees from Houston decided to hunker down and stay put. They are okay (yay!) and we took the extra supplies to our church, where they were joyfully received. This Sunday our pastor lectured on karma - okay, he called it "what goes around comes around" - a bunch of his former parishioners from Port Arthur, who held fundraisers when our area needed help, are now up here being helped by our parish.

My sister got hubby a novelty gift a few years ago - a flashlight with a built-in radio. At the time it was, "Hey, that's cute." Now it's, "Hey, this means we can give a radio to my sister-in-law and still have one for us."

We had to buy a new fridge when we moved here - Texas is one of those places where people take the appliances with them when they go. I remember that from California. Anyway, it turns out that new fridges are VERY well insulated, and with the free ice we're keeping both sides pretty cold.

Did I mention gourmet barbecuing and wine to match? We had recently visited the fancy grocery store in Houston and we just have to cook everything right now. Saturday night we had rabbit in a paprika-garlic marinade with an Italian Primitivo that went splendidly. Last night it was buffalo burgers with homemade mango catsup and a Spanish Rioja. There was enough to feed the sister-in-law and nephew, too. Tonight, Chinese-style squab and a Muscat d'Asti.

We have one, count 'em, one, landline telephone that doesn't need electricity to operate, so we could talk to people without using up the cell phone batteries. Phone service was off for a while Sunday but resumed Sunday night. Hubby's sister doesn't even have a landline, and most people we know don't have a non-electric landline phone, so we were very lucky. We were able to call & reassure our parents, and were touched to receive concerned calls from all of my siblings. The Golden Child (ahem, I mean, my brother-in-law, a.k.a. The Yuppie from Hell) was entirely unworried about his only brother and sister down here in the path of the storm, but after substantial swigs of their hurricanes - the kind with rum in them - hubby and his sister called and let him know we were okay and had a nice chat. [snert]

One bad thing: our electrical company has a misguided sense of priorities. Having admitted that our town was one of the hardest hit in its service area, it announced that it would fix everyone else first - starting with Dallas (wtfomgbbq??!!!) - and get to us around the end of this week. Phooey.