Just a quick post-storm update...... We are all fine. Our power went out at house before Ike even arrived. The winds started whipping around so bad that the powerlines snapped behind our house. Once we were in the growing dark, with a hurricane coming and a live power-line in the back yard, we decided to abandon ship and hoist the flag at his mothers house. She's a mere 40 miles further inland than us, but at least we would still have power for a few more hours. The storm itself roared through around 2am or so. It was already raining and blowing pretty hard by midnight, but I have no idea what time the actual eye made landfall. All I know is that I never want to stay in a house with a fireplace in a high wind again. My heavens, the noises that fireplace made! That scared Steph more than the storm! I've never heard a fireplace moo before, but I SWEAR, it sounded like a herd of cattle with kazoos. Honestly.  Houston was without power, cable, cell phone service initially. Power is still out to 70% of Houston. Cell phone service came back online by Sunday afternoon but go figure, service is still spotty and unreliable. For the most part, landline phones stayed intact. Water service is disrupted in some areas. There is still a boil order in effect, but my water is fine. Galveston is devistated. Boliver Peninsula is destroyed. There is one house that remains standing on Boliver right now, previously a booming seaside community. We sent Steph to stay with her Grandmother in Cypress since she has her power back on already. She's not happy about it, but at least there is AC, TV, a way to charge the Nintendo DS battery (that thing has been a life-saving device!), and a kid about her age next door to keep her occupied. There is not a single home in my zip code that has power, and we will remain in the dark until sometime next week. We have a whole lotta fence damage, some roof damage and a collapsed ceiling at the house. (I always wanted a skylight, anyway.....) And I've always hated those gutters .... so nice of Ike to rip them off my house the way he did.... I don't want to even think about all the science projects now growning in the fridge. I'm afraid to look in there for fear something might attack me! Sick sense of humor, yes, but at this point, you can either laugh or cry, y'know. My neighborhood looks like a logging convention went bad ---- there are giant trees everywhere that the storm just uprooted. Honestly, there are so many tree limbs stacked by the curbs, I actually missed my own driveway last night because I couldn't see my house over the tree debris! And we didn't loose any big trees in our yard, probably because we don't have any .... thank goodness we had those 2 large dying ash trees cut down last year or I'm sure they would have come down on my house. As it was, one of my neighbors sycamore trees just barely missed us. The clinic's power came back up late last evening - it's already gone off a couple of times today but so far so good. All the boarding animals did well. They were thirsty when we got over here on Sunday morning but all tails were still wagging! The clinic has damage to the signs, the roof, leaking ceilings, etc. We really enjoyed cleaning the cages by candlelight. That was really the most fun. Oh yeah, and washing all those nasty kennel towels by hand .... that was really fun too. I kept telling the girls that we should charge the clients extra for the candle light dining their dogs were enjoying. Sadly, the soft romantic lighting effects were lost on the dogs. The cats, on the other hand, felt that they are finally getting the sort of pampering they deserve. Oh the joys of living on the Gulf Coast! My brother from Victoria rode into town yesterday like a one man Salvation Army with a truckload of supplies for us. He brought us a generator, bottled water, groceries, a propane camp stove (and the propane), lanterns, 40 lbs of ice, homemade jelly (you need that in a crisis, you know!) and 15 gallons of gas. When in doubt, call a Boy Scout! Time to go charge the laptop battery back up! That's all from Storm Central. Sarina | 
