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 :-)