Anybody out there?

Is anybody reading this thing? I am thinking of giving up...

If you read make a comment... make a comment... it doesn't have to be funny or clever. I don't care if you insult me or encourage me to stop :-)

EDIT: I was informed that you need an account in order to post comments. I have now changed that - anyone can make comments now.

We have the beginnings of a pool!

Almost as soon as we had power back we also got the planning permission approved for our pool! The pool builder confirmed they would be starting the day after and off we go!

The day after, the pool project manager measured and spray painted the design onto the lawn. Because we had not seen a final design since the gas line marking and we knew things had to move a little, we asked him to get our approval before finalizing it. We're glad we did that because the design didn't quite work properly so we had him move the spa over 18 inches. Without that, there was no way the swim lane would have worked.

The marking itself is all very clever actually - the computer program they use plots fixed points that he can measure from other established points (corner of the house, corner of the yard, another previously marked point etc) and then the design is mostly fixed radii from those fixed points. It didn't take him too long - you get the idea from this pic:

The day after, the dig began:


That's the inaugural first scoop being taken :-)


And here they are a little later on having dug almost to final depth (we're going with 4 feet deep for the majority and 6 foot deep at the far end - our friends have told us the deep end gets little use so we minimized it).


Here I am with it all dug:

The day after the dig the rebar guys came and put reinforcing bars all around the pool. That was amazing to watch - they brought in all the bars and put them on the side of the pool and then did the whole pool in less than half a day. They have rolls of wire on their belts so they just pull in a bar, shape it as required and then wire it to the crossing bars as needed. They were very skillful.

There is rebar every 6 inches around the entire pool. Here's the finished job:

As you can see, the basic plumbing was also done that day. This is done so that they can pour the gunite next without waiting for final plumbing - this just fixes the position of the spa jets, skimmers and other inlets/outlets. You can just about see two pipes on the sunshelf next to the spa (to the upper right) - they will be bubblers to create some more noise and whatnot.

Today they're pouring gunite - in fact they're doing it right now... will post pics later!

So... finally we have a few pics from the storm online.


Here is part one of our hurricane survival kit:

Flashlights, battery, fan, regular radio, NOAA windup radio, spare batteries, pile of cash, mobile phone. Check.



Part two of the kit: supplies. Blue margaritas, almonds and peanuts. Looks like we're good to go. Bring on the wind!



So you may remember we had a rather long night wondering what was going on outside. Well this is what we saw from our front porch in the morning. You'll note the tree lying on the gutter of that house. As the storm continued, the wind pushed the trunk further and further into the house. Thankfully that home is not yet occupied so the builder got to claim from his insurance and no-one lost any belongings.


We had some drainage problems on one side of our house - this water is 6 to 8 inches deep. Luckily the foundation is about 10 inches high on that side so this was of little concern as it was running off slowly.


After the storm this became our new lounge :-) We would sit outside and play card while watching the world go by. One nice by-product of the storm was that all the neighbors walked around in the evenings so we'd say hello and have a quick chat with any that stopped. We grilled our dinner most evenings right there on the driveway - our neighbors must think we're crazy!


As for the rest of the street - this was, unfortunately, a beautiful old oak tree that had grown up and across the street. It did not survive the storm:


And this is our pocket park at the end of the street. Somewhere under those trees is the little sitting shelter and bbq area. We are hoping they'll fix this good as new as it was nice to have a spot to sit when you walked around:

That's about all for now folks :-)

Guess who's back...

So, we drove home last night - miserable commute as there was a big accident and the tollways are all still free so the traffic is terrible. We did our usual check of the neighborhood taking the long way to our house.

- Downed trees still on overhead wires? - yep
- New power pole delivered 8 days ago still lying on ground? - yep
- No sign of any utility workers anywhere near us? - yep

Then we noticed some differences... a neighbor was running their sprinklers (which need power to operate the valves) but he had a generator so perhaps he'd hooked up the sprinkler controller as it has been some time since we had rain... but then the house next door also had their sprinklers going and that house is still empty... maybe? just maybe we have power? could it be?

I could not get into the house quickly enough! My hands shook as I tried to get the key in the door... I ran into the lounge - lights on! Air conditioning on! We have power!

Now, this may seem dramatic since it has been 'only' 10 days since we last had power, but that moment was akin to a vague memory I have of some biblical dude in a movie getting a sign from god - imagine if you will a bright light from the heavens and a chorus of angels "aaaa-aaaaaaah"... yep, it was like that :-)

There were lots of tears until Emma told me to pull myself together (just kidding but there were a few tears from someone in the house who will remain unnamed).

So then we checked the house - A/C was on, alarm was not working (fixed after we remembered to re-connect the battery that had been beeping for low voltage), TV works, cable is on, internet is on, phone is on. We are back on the grid!

Then we hit trouble - oh my god, the fridge is still unplugged... that means it's not cold yet... which means we have no ice... which means... No margaritas to celebrate?! Oh the humanity.

So I hit the store for some supplies - frozen strawberries (daiquiris anyone?), some food for dinner and some limes for future margaritas. Then it was time for the last thing, ice. Of course, that is usually a sign you still don't have power so, as I placed the bag of ice into the shopping cart, this nice little old lady touched my arm and said "oh my dear, you still don't have power? you poor thing". I explained that no, we do have power, I just need ice for a margarita... she looked a little confused and wandered away...

So last night we had lights, we had air conditioning, we had strawberry daiquiris, we had a nice hot dinner and we watched TV... fabulous!

Ike - a couple of pictures

So... we thought the winds were pretty strong during the storm... this confirms it:

I marked our location with the yellow cross and arrow... According to NOAA, we had tropical storm force winds from 10pm Friday through 2pm Saturday and hurricane force winds from 2am Friday through 7am Saturday.

I am still homeless in terms of office space. My office currently has two large machines removing the water from the space. I am told it looked something like this after the storm:

That's from another office in the same building that had similar damage...

And here's the parking entrance I (used to) use:

We're still ok - we're getting out of town for the weekend as power is not coming back until Tuesday at the very earliest.

We are alive :-)

Ok - sorry about the lack of posting in recent days.

We have been in a bit of a communications black spot since the storm. For a little while after the storm we had a landline phone and I could access the internet from my Blackberry. Sometime on Saturday the landline went out and since FEMA arrived, mobile phone access has been limited at best (at the moment we can receive no incoming calls and only rarely can we make outgoing calls from home).

But we're ok. We have no power but the house is fine. We ate our way through the contents of the fridge and freezer and now we're buying food day-to-day as we can't store it.

There's no reliable estimate on when we might be back - we heard this Friday, then the 25th and now we hear they're not sure if it will be back or not by then. So who knows!

We'll post more on the storm later when we have the pictures online!

Here's Ike

Well Ike is here... We're sitting in the dark as the power is out - I am posting this from my blackberry.

It's pretty windy to be honest... The walls are moving a bit at the moment which is, um, interesting.

We have a chance of having the eye go over us which will give us an hour of respite but it could miss us in which case we have about 4 to 6 more hours of this.

I will never moan about hurricanes missing us again :-)

But we're both fine and looking forward to daybreak!

UPDATE
It's about 6am now and we're in the thick of things and this is nuts... We had to turn up the radio as we couldn't hear it over the storm (that is when they're on air)

The windows are bowing, the walls are moving and the floor is shaking...debris is hitting the windows and we have 3 to 4 hours to go...

But we're still ok and we're STILL waiting for daybreak! And the good news is that it's moving a bit quicker...

UPDATE 2
Ok - we have daylight... That was a long night!

We've taken a look around - we can see three downed trees from the front porch... So far ours have survived but we're roughly halfway through at the moment.

The yard is a bit flooded but not so much as to need any action yet.

We have 4 hours to go... Woohoo! Time for a beer I guess.

yIKEs...

We're still basically sitting here waiting for the storm to arrive.

I thought I'd sneak in a post before I close down for the night.

So far so good up here in Woodlands - it's a bit breezy so far but the storm hasn't got this far yet. The wind is getting up a bit now and we are expecting to lose power at some point so I am going to close down before that.

We're doing fine so far - how bad could it be sitting around watching TV, eating pizza and drinking wine :-)

crIKEy...

So Ike really is on the way...

Hard to believe at this stage as it is hot and sunny outside with only a moderate breeze... but we are told it's going to go right through this part of The Great State of Texas (tm). Galveston is in some trouble - they're predicting Ike will push a storm surge of about 20 to 25 feet onshore... their seawall is 17 feet. They were already flooding this morning and the storm was still hours out in the gulf.

We went out this morning and put away the patio furniture and the grill so we won't have those flying around later on. We're as ready as we can be. Unfortunately there is plenty of construction going on in our area and they didn't do too much to prepare... so we have dumpsters full of construction debris and houses partially finished all over the place so if it's as bad as they say it's going to be we're going to have quite a mess to clear up tomorrow afternoon. And when I say bad, they're talking about category 1 hurricane force winds as far inland as North Houston and 12 hours of tropical storm force winds for most of the area.

Here he is as of an hour ago:

It seems that English men have a tradition of doing ridiculous things in the face of adversity (the Brits in the movie singing 'Men of Harlech' when faced with seemingly overwhelming enemy Zulus comes to mind)... so if it's bad, I shall don the rain gear and my bicycle helmet for protection and go for a walk in the wind :-)

Now where did I put that helmet...

Ike - he's big, mean and not going to miss

So Ike appears to be the real deal...



Here's a picture of him from a couple of hours ago:



For reference, the Gulf of Mexico is almost a thousand miles wide from the Mexican coast on the left to the Florida peninsula on the right... it's a big storm.


We have been somewhat comforted by the distance between us and the gulf - we're about 80 miles North of Galveston... but Ike has hurricane force (100mph+) winds extending out over a hundred miles so we may be in for a breezy weekend.


We went out today to stock up a bit more just in case. It was mayhem.

We drove about 20 miles to the South to buy a few things and we got caught in the evacuation traffic on the way back even though the news said there were no issues... apparently 15 miles of stop and go traffic is 'no issue'.


We also decided to heed the warnings and fill up the car just in case. We drove past loads of gas stations before we found one that even had any gas to sell - people were lining up in the road to fill up their car and any gas cans they could find.


The store was out of bread, almost out of water, out of plastic bags to carry out your shopping, out of almost all the soup and cereal too. And the lines! My god...


But anyway, we're back home and safe. It was a gorgeous evening with blue skies and no wind... I guess this is what they call the calm before the storm! We have plenty of water and plenty to eat so I guess we wait to see if Ike is coming.

For the love of all that is holy...

Ok... so we are now officially at the "For the love of all that is holy, look at the size of that thing" stage.


They do seem to have a point:

So we will not be evacuated or anything like that but they have mentioned that the Woodlands will get some heavy weather if it continues on its current track... that means possibly 90mph+ winds and up to a foot of rain.

Of course, it's still quite some way off and it could turn away between now and tomorrow:

I am working from home today - they are announcing evacuations for the coastal areas already so I am just going to avoid getting caught in all of that.

They say we should have a hurricane kit available with all sorts of foods and supplies. We have pared this down to the absolute minimum - alcohol and peanuts.

Think about it - it's all you really need. Peanuts are packed full of protein, they don't produce smelly garbage AND they're salty which forces you to keep up your fluid intake, thus staying hydrated... and alcohol kills bugs and helps you get to the "don't give a crap" stage by the time the winds get up to danger levels :-) And we'll have a margarita every now and then - that fresh lime will ward of the skurvy...

Hurricane Ike - be very afraid... maybe

So we have another hurricane on the way... Here's Ike wending his way across the gulf:

Now we're only just in the dreaded cone of death and destruction or whatever they call that thing (you can see Galveston bay again just inside the North-East edge of the cone) but when we went to sleep last night we were 100 miles away from trouble... so Ike could be coming closer.

Frankly I am bored of hurricane season already - I think I preferred living in earthquake country where you never knew what was coming. Here we get a week of "oh Hurricane X is coming. It's a big one. Prepare the hurricane kit. Ooooh, look at the cone of death and destruction, look how bad it's going to be. START PRAYING. KEEP PRAYING. FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY LOOK AT THE SIZE OF THAT THING.... Phew! It wasn't as big as we thought and it missed anyway. And now to our intrepid reporter who is looking like an idiot standing in a puddle in the Walmart parking lot in his storm gear trying to make it look worse than it is to justify the hysteria we whipped up"

Then we'll get a week of normalcy before the next one fires up the cycle all over again.

So let's see what Ike brings us...

M is for Margaritas

So when we were in SF we went to Macys - they had a rubbish sale on most things but the kitchen sale was half decent... I spotted something I have read about online that I have been secretly coveting for some time (since we thought about moving and putting in a pool).

Yes, I saw the Margaritaville DM2000 Premium Frozen Concoction Maker in the sale...



I had to have it and we had spare 'bag' capacity to check it onto our flight so we bought it... and we had to carry it up to the top of Nob Hill to the hotel, and then man handle it around the airport, onto the parking shuttle and then it wouldn't fit in the car so I carried it on my lap for 20 miles to the house.

It was so worth it!

So far I made 2 sets of margaritas (tequila, triple sec, fresh lime and a splash of orange) which were good... but last night I made strawberry daiquiris... fantastic! This thing is phenominal! It has settings for margaritas, daiquiris etc - all you do is tell it what you're making and how many and hit the button - it shaves enough ice, blends it all at the right time and out comes a frosty beverage!

Thankfully you can't drink and drive in The Great State of Texas (tm) so I have not been able to drive around in my little convertible listening to disco music drinking strawberry daiquiris!!! Otherwise I think I might have been shot by now!

One of these things is not like the others...

So it's a perfect day here in the Great State of Texas (tm)...

For some reason related to what is now tropical depression Gustav, we have picture perfect weather - it's a balmy 72 degrees this morning, the humidity has disappeared and the sky is a gorgeous blue with not a cloud in sight.

I hope this is a sign of things to come!

So this morning on my commute I was listening to a CD from Mika... if you haven't heard of him, here's a fairly representative video:




So, not the most, erm, masculine man in the world...

As I mentioned, I was driving in listening to this gentlemen... in my little Mazda convertible (which I admit is not the most masculine muscle car in the world)... wearing my bright pink candy stripe shirt...

... and I looked around at all the huge pickup trucks and even bigger SUVs around me and thought to myself "one of these things is not like the others..."

Hurricane? What hurricane?

So we headed out to San Francisco this weekend as we had the Labor Day holiday. We had an absolutely fantastic time - it was nice to see some of our friends again and spend some time in beautiful California.

Thankfully it didn't make us feel like we've made a huge mistake moving to Texas so that was a plus!

If anyone we saw is reading this - we had a fantastic time and we can't wait to be back or see you in Texas :-)

We were worried we might not make it back to TX given the size and ferocity of hurricane Gustav. When we left TX on Friday there was nothing but scare tactics from the local news organizations so we were expecting the worst. We even sat in San Francisco on Monday wondering whether it was worth going to the airport for our flight.

Well it was all a bit of a non-event for this area - Gustav came ashore further East than we feared and it helpfully kept going Northwest at a fair pace meaning that it weakened quickly and missed Houston completely. We landed at midnight in fairly flat conditions, 81 degrees F and with a completely clear, starry night sky!

In fact the biggest issue we had was getting our clothes, a case of wine and a margarita maker into the Mazda... thank goodness it wasn't raining as we had to put the top down and lay the margarita maker on my lap for the journey home!