FEMA POD

Raquel got to take the week off after the storm, but Neil's agency went right back to work. Since all of the facilities were out of power or unusable we were asked to work at FEMA POD (Point of Distribution) sites. FEMA trucks in a bunch of food, water and ice to a regional distribution point, then the city and county governments are in charge of setting up local distribution points and handing out the stuff to the population. When we showed up to volunteer that day, we had county building permit employees, TSA screeners from Chicago, and eventually Customs and Border Enforcement agents helping out. These are few shots of Neil and his staff helping out. They're in the cool red shirts. (These pictures were taken by one of Neil's co-workers).

Here we are unloading the trucks to get ready for the people to come through.

This site was set up in the parking lot a large church. Once we unloaded and got set up, cars flowed into the parking lot and around the church building to where we were. They flowed right through and we tossed stuff into the trunk or through the windows. Neil was traffic control dude at the front of the line, trying to keep the cars flowing in so we could keep the line moving (it stretched at least 2 miles after we got started).

Notice the cops in the background. I'm not sure what they were there to do (show the uniform I guess) because all they did was sit around on that car like it was a doughnut shop.

Overall it was a good day. This was the Monday site, it was well organized and efficient and people moved through pretty well. The 2nd day wasn't so great. The trucks didn't get there until 1PM, and there were a lot of people walking through, which meant that some of them stood in line from before 6AM until 1PM in the warm Houston sun waiting. After two days of this, our administration building got power back and we moved in there to start trying to get back to our regular jobs. Raquel was lucky, in that she got to stay at home the whole week.

By Monday the 22nd, both of us were back at work in our regular buildings. Raquel had to be careful though, there is still glass all over the streets and sidewalks downtown, and they've erected the scaffolding type covers over the walkways around her building to protect people from glass that may still fall from the buildings.

Ike and the Plants

Some additional Ike damage pictures that we thought were cool included what happened to the plants during the storm. I mentioned in the last post that the pecan tree looked a little light in the leaf department, well, this happened to any plant that had leaves sticking up into the wind. The wind literally shredded or ripped the leaves off of the plants.

Here are a couple of shots of the pecan tree. If you blow them up you can see how most of the leaves look like they've been half eaten by bugs. This was the shredding by the wind. You'll also notice the distinct lack of pecans on the tree. They ended up coating the driveway and front yard. Too early for us to find them tasty, but the squirrels still like them.

Moving to the side yard, the climbing rose was totally stripped of its leaves on the branches that reach up into the sky.In the backyard, the same thing happened to the bougainvillea. The leaves from the bougainvillea ended up coating the back of the house. Looking out the back windows was like looking through polka dotted windows, and the walls looked like they had a tan and green polka dotted paint scheme.In the end, God protected us from major damage, for which we are grateful. Other than the pictures on this and previous post, we lost some shingles and took some water damage inside the house, plus we lost a few of the garden plants. Not too bad considering what could have happened. In the neighborhood just across the freeway from us, a lot of their trees dropped onto the houses.

Post-Ike Post

OK, we've got the Pre-Ike Post, then the Ike post, now its time for a Post-Ike Post. By mid-afternoon on Saturday after the storm it had calmed down enough that everyone was out of their houses and wandering around, so we wandered out ourselves to take a look at the damage. Our neighbors that we had dinner with the night before were just starting their tour, so we joined them and took some pictures of the neighborhood.

Here's the front corner of the house. The pecan tree seems a little light in leaf department (more on that later).

You can see a couple of our small trees are leaning from the wind and the ground being so soft from the water. Its hard to tell from this angle, but the fence is leaning out away from the house at a pretty good angle also. We stood the trees back up and braced them, but I wasn't about to take on the fence with my bare hands. Its still leaning.

There are some pretty good sized office buildings just a block or two away from us. The black one is 1 block down and one over from our house, it lost all of the sheet metal from the top super structure of the building. The sheet metal was laying all over the neighborhood.

On the other side of the black building we came upon this fence all ripped out and twisted like a big whirly-gig. (I don't know what that's supposed to be.)

Later in the afternoon we got out for a short drive. This is the bridge over Buffalo Bayou, looking east toward downtown. This is about 15 or so blocks south of the house. The bayou is normally about 30 feet wide. You can see that it expanded some to accomodate all of the rain.

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.