High and dry

I tried to post another blog the other day, but the electricity blinked out for a few seconds at the parents' house, and I never did get back to it.

So. The word is Very Good about our house. We did not get any water inside, not even in the garage, that we could tell. So my baby sister's car is fine. We can't get it out, but it's fine. See, we only have a key to the front door of this rent house. The front door is a double door that had to be barricaded against getting blown in by a 2x4 bolted down to the door frame. (The bolts are permanently installed.) So we can't get in the front door. And with the power off, we can't open the garage door. We now have a generator (imported from Kansas, because apparently you can't buy a generator in Texas for love nor money), but haven't been able to get across the causeway to do anything about it. One of the trees got a little torn up. There are some shingles missing from the ridgeline. That's about it, for our house. But the island is in such bad shape, there's no point in going down yet. (Besides the fact that they won't let us come.)

The sister on the cruise--the cruise ship docked in New Orleans. They rented cars and drove to Austin to put the kids on a plane so they could go back to work.

Our church had essentially no damage. The only one on the island in that kind of shape, I am told. Friends who rode out the storm on their boat came through okay, though the boat was damaged. Another friend, who lives on the mainland where they said just to hunker down, had two big trees fall on their house and they had to evacuate their house in the middle of the night when the winds were blowing hard. But they're okay and their pets are too.

They are going to start classes for A&M Galveston on the main A&M campus next week. I've got a temporary berth for the boy to stay, until he can find something else, or until they move back to Pelican Island. They're talking about being back on their own campus by the end of October.

I've gone up to stay with the in-laws for a while. I like to see the fella face to face at least once a week. He did go down to check things out yesterday (which is where the house report came from), and Galveston College is in great shape too. The storm broke 5 plate glass windows. Two in a hallway, one in a faculty member's office, and two in classrooms with little besides desks in them. Their buses didn't even get messed up.

It's going to cost a fortune to get everything put back together. Hopefully, not too much in terms of time.

I'm trying to get some writing done, and have actually been doing pretty good at that. Ten plus pages to the good this week.

Y'all take care.