Hurricane Ike

Earlier this week we finally got our internet back. Power has been back since the evening of Wednesday the 17th. Now that we have everything we need to blog, I thought I would try to start catching you up on all of the action around here. This first post should give you a little taste of what it was like during Hurricane Ike at our house (or outside our house anyway, I didn't get any indoor action shots of me holding the doors closed against the wind or placing Raquel's cake pans in the attic to catch the water coming in the roof).

It started with a few wind gusts on Friday late in the afternoon just to let us know the storm was approaching. When we went to dinner at our next door neighbor's house we noticed this tree across the street, it hadn't even stood the first little gust.

Here is some video early in the storm, about 2AM on Saturday morning, when the front part of the storm is passing over Houston. This is shot out the back door of the house (looking northwest). The light you see is over Interstate 10, which is about 2 blocks from the house and you can barely make out the rain moving horizontally past it right to left.

This next video looks out the front door of the 2nd floor of the house at about 6:30 in the morning. By this time the wind was blowing out of the south and west, as the storm had turned north and we were on the back side of it.

Here's another from the back patio at about the same time. The storm has obviously calmed down by this time, as the wind is not as bad as the original video.

Here's a final shot out the front of the house with some commentary. I tried to keep the camera lens from getting wet and it interferes with the shot, even then you'll still notice the water get blown in on the lens.

It was shortly after this video that I talked with Dad and John about still having power, and then went to bed at about 9:30 since Raquel was up and the storm was winding down. Only after that did we lose power.

Pre-Hurricane Ike

Ok need to get at least one pre-Ike picture up so that we can compare it to any post-Ike pictures in case there are any differences.

Here's a few of the house. Notice the big pecan in front. Hopefully it withstands the storm. If not, we're either losing power or a chunk of the house, or both. We'll let you know.

The Bathroom

OK, OK, I know its about time I got off my lazy duff (more about that later) and posted a blog entry. Since I have a little free time (Raquel is in Brazil for 2 weeks with family and business) I figured I should get a little something put together for my loyal readers. So here we go . . .

Below are a series of shots showing the progress (or lack thereof) on the famous bathroom remodeling project.

This one gives you an idea of the mess that we've made of the floor in order to move the pipes around.

Here is a shot of the same basic area from a different perspective, the perspective that lets you know the walls need a little help too.

Time to get off my duff and make some progress on this thing. Fortunately I wasn't doing the plumbing when this was taken.

In yet more perspective (the perspective that lets you know that even the ceiling was not left undamaged in this deal), you can see that progress is now progressing, as the ladder feet have something to rest on, and I'm fastening some hardibacker to one wall.

Here is more evidence of progress, as you can see the new stairs have taken shape, and I'm working on the raised platform for the shower.

In yet another sign of progress, the tub frame is pretty close to finished. Pretty cool huh? Raquel is dreaming of countless hours of hot baths in this thing.

South Africa - Part 2 - For the kids

Did you know that they have penguins in Africa? I didn't!They're so cute!

Check out the video. You're really going to like it.


There were adult and baby penguins all over the beach that day. The babies were furry and didn't have a white belly (just like the one in the poster below).I also got to see zebras on my way to the cheetah sanctuary. This is a cheetah. In this place cheetahs are rescued from hunters and cared for until they are ready to go back into the wild. The ones who cannot go back (because they've become too nice) become part of an educational program to teach people about cheetahs and the fact that they are endangered animals. In this place you actually get to pet one.Next door to the cheetah sanctuary was a birds of prey sanctuary. There I got to pet this pretty eagle. He might look mean, but he's not really.

This one is called a secretary bird. I joked that she takes the notes from the rest of the birds in the compound. You can see her beautiful eyelashes if you enlarge the picture.

This cute baby owl was taking flight lessons for the daily bird show. The trainer wanted him to fly from the perch to his arm to eat a little piece of meat, but he wasn't that interested. The trainer said that the baby owl knew he would get a snack whether he flew or not, so it was hard to convince him to do any flying. He might be lazy, but he's still cute. Ostriches are everywhere in South Africa. This one decided to cross the road ahead of us just as we were driving by. People here like to carve empty ostrich eggs or put light bulbs inside them to make lamps. Very cool.

South Africa - Part 1 - The Adult stuff

Raquel just came back from 2 weeks in South Africa on a business trip. Here are a few of the cool pictures and videos that she brought back.

This is Cape Town, an old Dutch colony at the foot of Table Mountain. This is a shot of the marina looking at Table Mountain in the background. Raquel's hotel is the tallest white structure behind the light blue building on the left side of the picture. On the weekend Raquel got to go to the top of the mountain.

This is Raquel's co-worker, Steve. Joining Raquel and Steve in this picture is Mervin, their driver for the 2 weeks, who Raquel learned this day was a Christian. It was pretty neat, Mervin came to Raquel and asked, "are you a believer?" Raquel said yes, and then he said, "washed by the blood?" Raquel said yes, and then he said "I knew it, I felt it in my spirit." So we got a warm invitation to stay in his house next time we are in South Africa.

After Table Mountain, Raquel got to go to the Cape of Good Hope. As you can see, not the most Southern tip of Africa, but the "most south-western point" of Africa. A little bit of local learning: Raquel learned that there is another location which is actually the most southern point of the continent where the locals get pretty upset because they constantly get upstaged by Cape of Good Hope.

Raquel also got to see a few of the famous South African wineries. She went just to taste the grape juice and eat cheese, but the stuff was so good that she got drunk...... no not really .... but she did bring back some really good wine. Her favorite winery was this one (Fairfield) with a beautiful main house, gorgeous gardens and where you could walk among the vines. (Yes - my honey is a sucker for a pretty garden, as you can tell by all the pictures of our own garden on the blog.)

The goat is a part of the label for the bottles. (Neil says they use him to stomp the grapes.)There was a historical winery that had the old giant wood wine vats first constructed by the Portuguese. This place also had some beautiful carvings at the ends of the barrels telling the story of wine making in South Africa. There were over a dozen carved barrels in a room called "The Chapel" where they do parties and have classical music playing all the time.

Here is Raquel experiencing a little bit of local culture. This restaurant called "Mama Africa" served dishes from all over the continent. This is a shot of the menu. You don't actually choose the dish, they bring you one of each kind just for you to try.

Old Bathroom Pics

OK, we found a couple of pictures of what the bathroom used to look like. You have to check out this post and the one with the bathroom project from before.

Here is the old outdoor jacuzzi that started this adventure by leaking into the breakfast nook downstairs and caused us to rip the sub-floor.This picture looks to the right of the one above. It is the end of Raquel's old sink and vanity area.

Today the plumbers are here again and we hope to get well on our way to ready for inspection. They're busy putting all of the pipes in the walls and floors (and the attic too if you can believe that.)

Bathroom Project

OK, we've talked about how we've needed to work on the bathroom, and how we are going to work on the bathroom, and how we have worked on the bathroom a little bit already. Here are the first set of pictures. I can't seem to find any "before" pictures for some reason (honestly I'm not sure we took any, I'm don't know why we didn't think of that.) So this series is after the destruction and "before" we really started fixing anything (except the electrical - which we did most of before these shots and after Neil learned what 120 volts feels like). These are taken from the center of the room, circling around to show the whole room.

Along that wall was where the old outdoor jacuzzi bathtub was (the one that started this mess by leaking into the floor and down to the dining room below). You can see the drain line from it coming out of the floor on the right. On the left would have been Neil's sink, and on the right would have been Raquel's sink which was in a long cabinet. The lumber leaning along the wall is from our beginning to disassemble the shower enclosure.

This is turning to the left. Neil is in the doorway to the master bedroom and the other studs (to the left of him) used to be part of the shower enclosure (you can see the pipes for the shower head). The door to the left of that is the master closet.

Circling more to the left, you can see the master closet door again, the little toilet room, and then to the left would have been Raquel's sink and the beginning of the cabinets.

We'll try to keep the blog posted with periodic updates on our progress. It might be a couple of weeks though. Raquel just left for just over a week in South Africa. I am at home today while the plumbers are doing the rough in work. The next steps will be to get the rough in plumbing inspection and rebuild the subfloor (they are busy cutting it up right now).