Friday Morning Update

It is 3 a.m. and I just woke up after going to bed before 11 p.m. Yes, I know. Not a lot of sleep, but that has how my sleep has been recently. Not more than about 3-4 hours at a time.

Throughout the evening, we continued to get the house ready to go. We could move by now!

We tried to take the basketball goal apart to be able to get it inside house, but to no avail. It is tied down as much as possible to the side gate on the west side of the house. We didn't just want it left out front to become a missile to our neighbors. We also didn't want to just put it in the back yard where tornado-like winds could hurl it through the back window at us inside the house.

We wanted to take care of the basketball goal for the safety of ourselves and our neighbors, plus we also wanted to be able to pull both of our vehicles in the garage. My truck is already backed in and loaded with my other computers in case we are able to get out of here (i.e. if the traffic lightens up somewhere). Although the TV pictures on Channel 11 KHOU (from 4 hours ago on Interstate 45 heading north just north of here) were incredible -- 10 plus lanes of red tail lights!

Gena and Waverly finished getting the second spare bedroom that sits on the east side of the house ready to go. I believe that the closet is packed full. (I didn't open it and look.) Everything is against the western interior wall and as much as possible is above two to three feet in case there is some widespread flooding. We just don't know. (We need to bring the shovels inside in case of snakes. NOT my favorite things to think about, but I remember the reports from three-plus weeks ago re: Katrina. We also put the fire ant stuff up high, but where we could get to it. (Not sure if it could be used once water went down to kill them on the surface --- who knows. I'm not Mr. Fixit or Mr. Outdoors.)

We've got just a little bit of work left to do in the morning to continue to get the house ready and then it is just going to be to sit and ride it out. Not much more that we can do.

The landfall prediction models are holding the same, as of 1 a.m. Central time. No significant turns in any direction. The next update from the National Hurricane Center comes in about 40 minutes or so from now.

One thing that will unfortunately happen post-Rita is that there will be tremendous criticism of local officials about the traffic going out of the city of Houston that forced many people to stay and ride it out who may not have. BUT what can you do? Call for mandatory evacuations every time any storm system comes into the Gulf? As soon as they thought that it might be a major system, they mobilized and thank God that people listened. Perhaps, too many of them listened!

Back for some sleep as the worst will be here in about 24 hours from now.