Catchy Name Needed

Exactly one TV truck on the Seawall this morning. Which suggests to me that the Houston media haven't gone on full alert about this yet. But....

Our forecast takes the center of the storm about 50 miles south of the Louisiana coast today, then inland into the upper Texas coast near Galveston mid morning on Tuesday. Squalls are beginning to affect the southeast Louisiana coast this morning, and will spread westward along the Louisiana coast during the day, reaching the upper Texas coast tonight.

That sounds, um, kind of ominous. We haven't decided whether to do the wait-and-see thing or whether to preemptively get the hell out (at least as far as Houston). Stay tuned.

That's not right at us but it's too damn close for comfort. I do NOT want to have to evacuate again.

I found an HEB receipt in my Franklin Planner today that I feel like I ought to keep as a historical document, or something. It's from the HEB in Bryan, pre-hurricane Rita. We bought gourmet bread because it was the only kind of bread in the whole store, and organic milk for the same reason. We bought carrots and lettuce (green leaf) and coffee because my aunt wanted them, and we bought blackberries - even though they were more expensive than gas - because I love them, and we bought spring water because they did have that and we were surprised, and we thought it might be a good idea to have some more just in case. (I think there's still a few bottles out of that case in the refrigerator.) People were a little crazy in HEB that day, but the cashier (whose name is Nellie, according to the receipt) thought we were the crazy ones when we said we thought everybody was getting hysterical for nothing, because the hurricane was going to turn and not hit us. We weren't psychic, we just had been watching way too much TV, and it had already started turning by that time. (We had that gourmet bread for dinner Sunday night before we left for home, though. It was yummy.)


I get a lot of catalogs this time of year, because I order a lot of stuff online, but the last couple of days I have gotten a couple of the stupidest catalogs ever. I've been trying to figure out why I got these catalogs - is there a "tacky catalog" mailing list I got on by accident? Now I admit, I have a soft spot for certain kinds of kitsch, but a fiber-optic Irish angel is not one of them. Neither is a comical moose print.

Oh, and goooooo Astros! (I am skipping quilt guild to watch baseball, that's how big this game is.)

We went to Wal-Mart Thursday and it appeared that the Red Cross had beaten us there. At least, that's what we were theorizing. There weren't a lot of items that were completely gone, but a lot of the staples were visibly depeted - not so much the traditional staples like flour and sugar, but more the kind you would use to cook for a modern-day mob - pancake mix, Zatarain's rice dishes, even pizza. And when we left we saw them wheeling out a huge palette full of stuff. There is a shelter in the Methodist church here so I'm assuming that's where it was going.


Overheard in the ER:
-- Nurse to unknown patient down the hall (I'm guessing it was one of the evacuees, who all seemed to be quite elderly), very patiently: "This is a hospital. I'm your nurse."
-- One nurse telling another how much it sucks to work here. (This is really the reason this entry is friendslocked* because saying that, especially right within hearing distance of a patient, could get her in very much trouble. It was really an extremely inappropriate comment, don't you think?)
-- Apparently a lot of people here are on call to go to Louisiana for Search & Rescue ops. It's interesting that they hadn't (as of Friday) been called out.


Not that this is really going to surprise anybody who knows me, but the worst thing about being in the hospital? No computer. I imagine that I might could've borrowed a laptop from work (after all, it wouldn't even be leaving the premises) but I don't think we run to campus-wide wi-fi just yet, so it wouldn't've done me that much good.


I said I was going to have a rant in me soon, and it came out on paper while I watched the news in the hospital the last couple of days. Check Whys & Wherefores - hopefully I'll manage to get it into the computer soon.


*unlocked long after the fact

Weather report: surf was up (but not like the first go-round with Ivan), tides were back down towards normal. Lots of surfers, of course. 3 TV trucks - but not the same 3: this time it was CBS, ABC, and a Spanish channel. I figure everybody else sent their trucks to Sabine Pass, or even into the wilds of Louisiana, since that was where it was actually coming in last I heard. Except after it comes in it's supposed to swing over this way and dump a bunch of rain on us. (Jesus, I hope it doesn't go out to sea again! We might never be rid of this damn storm.)

Before somebody from Louisiana decides to slap me, I don't actually think southwest Louisiana is a bit more backwoods than far southeast Texas is, although that's not saying much because in general I think that once you get east of the Houston metropolitan area, that corner of Texas is about as redneck as you can get. (Think Vidor. Jasper. You get the idea.) (Now it's somebody from Orange or Port Arthur who's going to slap me.)

My sister's moving to Austin next week. (Along with her family. There's been some marital friction there of late, so that's not completely a foregone conclusion.) Good, maybe I'll get to go visit once in a while. Ever since they moved to Conroe a couple of years ago I've hardly seen them at all, anyway. I'll hardly know the difference.

And that reminds me that I've sort of been meaning to write a journal entry about my sister and our relationship. I need to get around to doing that. But not tonight.

Well, since I keep writing about the weather lately, and it is hurricane season and all, I will keep going, and tell you that we had even higher tides today. They were talking about flooding on Bolivar and down at Jamaica Beach, and they kept saying that it had to do with a strong east wind that was blowing all the water across from Florida. (All the water?) Well, then finally this afternoon they said that that strong east wind had also blown the remnants of Ivan back across the Gulf, and it was somewhere south of New Orleans, and threatening to form back up. And guess what direction it's going?

No TV trucks out there today. (Lotsa surfers again, though.) But if that thing really does become a tropical storm again, those trucks will be back by tomorrow.