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"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." -Morrow
"Take care of the minutes, and the hours and years will take care of themselves." -Anonymous
"Love doesn't make the world go round. Love is what makes the ride worthwhile." -F.P. Jones

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2005-09-22
calm before the storm

18:45

For all of those out there who are wondering about my situation with respect to Hurricane Rita, I, along with Sarah, Becca, Jen, Gavin, four dogs, a bird, a fish and two cats have evacuated to Gavin's parents house in Conroe, Texas, about ~40 minutes directly north of downtown Houston, ~80 miles inland. We left League City yesterday afternoon, after doing what we could for the house and the possessions left behind, hoping that it's all still there, and in good shape, when we return. While it took us 6.5 hours to go 90 miles, we are very thankful to have left when we did as the roads are now absolutely clogged, and people are starting to panic as they are stranded on the side of the road, having run out of gas from idling on the freeway.

Conroe will still receive a good bit of rain and even possibly hurricane-force winds, but with the situation of the roads, the distance we are from likely landfall and elevation above sea level (145 feet, as opposed to League City's 15), we are confident that we are in about as good of a position as it is possible to be at the moment. We have stocked up on water, drinks, non-perishable foods and have taped all of the windows.

The current projections put the storm anywhere from south of Galveston to Beaumont. For us, personally, Beaumont is the preferred landfall point, as that puts us on the "clean" side of the storm - less storm surge and weaker winds. But anywhere along here is going to be nasty. The ironic thing is, that there really is a calm before the storm. The waves in Galveston have picked up, but the weather is nice, even setting heat records. No wind, no rain. Not until tomorrow - supposed to start feeling it around noon and picking up about 10 p.m. The eye is expected to make landfall around 5 a.m. Saturday morning. One amusing thing out of all of this: the five-day-out weather forecast (or however long it is) on the weather channel only states that rain and high winds are expected on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, saying nothing about the CATEGORY 4 HURRICANE heading directly towards us, which is the CAUSE of all of the "rain and high winds".

Thank you all who have written and called with your concerns. The cell phones are pretty squirrely, but I can receive texts and messages left on my voicemail all eventually show up. I do not know what kind of power or phone situation we will have in the next few days, but I promise to let y'all know as soon as I can.

You're hurricane factoid for the day: If they run out of letters for names, then they start on the Greek alphabet. That's never happened, but they think it just might this year. Still a few weeks left, and we're already on "R".

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