Considerations for Considering

Ok, I got power back on thursday. My whole side of the street did. How did we celebrate? Well, we all ran out into the street to stand outside in the dark and talk about how happy we were.
The other side of the street still does not have power two days later. This surprised me, because I had expected that the wiring for our neighborhood went down one side of each cul-de-sac and back up the other side to the main trunk. Apparently not. Turns out that from across the street to about six blocks north of us, no one in the neighborhood has power (except for the guy with the generator running 24 hours a day... yes, even the hours between midnight and 6.00 am - torches and pitchforks, anyone?). What we have deduced from the scattered bits of information that we can pick up is that CenterPoint restored power to hospitals and fire stations and such first, and now is concentrating on getting power back to main arteries and intersections with stoplights ("They" have reported an increase in traffic accidents, apparently due to people's inability to treat a broken stoplight as a 4-way intersection) before the entire city's population runs out of gas (I saw one gas station in operation today which had run out of gas last week, so we are getting SOME fuel deliveries, but many stations around town are either inoperable due to lack of power or damage, or are out of gas) on their much-increased commutes home from work.
I have been leaving for work at 6.00 am, which is when the curfew lifts, to avoid worst of the stoplight issues. But that's another ramble.
I live one street away from Hammerly, which qualifies as a secondary artery. I am on the side closer to Hammerly; the people whose backyard I can now see due to lack of fence face onto Hammerly. When I was looking at this house, being so close to Hammerly was in the "cons" list. I figured there might be enough noise from traffic to bother me at times. Suddenly, though, being close enough to Hammerly to put me on the same power grid as the traffic lights is worth two, maybe even three, "pro" column entries.
I have an extension cord running across the street to Diann's house so she can have a lamp and a fan. I am switching out gallon jugs of ice so that my freezer refreezes two while her cooler uses up two at a time. There are currently four such sets of cords on our block. I am a bit disappointed that there aren't more, but perhaps some people declined the offer.
We lost water pressure slowly on saturday, right after the storm, but we never fully lost water. They must've restored power to the pumps sunday, because after about 2.00 sunday afternoon we noticed a slow increase in water pressure. After a night for the pumps to catch up to our water use, we were back to full water pressure. We couldn't drink it for a few more days, but we could SHOWER!
No one says, "Hi. How are you?" right now. We greet each other with, "Hi. How much damage did you get?" and more recently, "Hi. Do you have power yet?"
After a weekend spent collectively cleaning up our yards and streets, sharing batteries, and having former neighbors who now live several miles away drive over to bring us ice from their freshly-energized freezers... after spending sunday afternoon and evening with all of our grills lined up in the cul-de-sac cooking and eating as much food as we could cram in our tummies... after hearing people's phones ring when someone called to say "Hey, we have power! Come on over and bring your neighbors," it was with great disappointment that I read a letter to the editor from a woman west of Houston who stated, "I did not expect to have people from other towns coming to buy my gas, ice and groceries and cutting my own suppliers short because we still have power."
Got those torches and pitchforks ready, people?

6 Days, 1 hour, 5 minutes

Power came back on at 7:12 thursday night. I made toast. It was the best toast ever...
Today I even got internet back. How's that for fancy? The satellite TV isn't working, but that's ok - it's too nice out not to be outside anyway.
The house is fine; fence blew down, but didn't land on anything important.

Ike

Yes, I am fine.
No, we don't have power.
Yes, we are very glad the weather is nice enough not to need fans or AC.
Yes, we have water.

Still Upright and Facing Forward

I bought rollerblades today. They looked like a lot of fun, and I need something fast to do while Steve Jr. is getting a tune up next week. I didn't ride Steve Jr. very much while in NM, but there are a lot of nice biking trails in Houston, so it's much easier to get out and enjoy Going Fast. Steve Jr. has ridden on the bike rack across the country twice since his last tune up, and I suspect he picked up just a little dust and dirt in the process. I will have to wash the Buffalo Bayou mud of him before he goes to the bike hospital, which will be a bit disappointing, but I am sure we can get him looking pretty (not to mention Much Cooler than those wussy road bikes) in no time!
Anyway.
I bought the rollerblades. They're very pretty. My driveway has about a 1.5-foot elevation change, all at the bottom, which seemed like a bad way to start out my first stab at rollerblading (I think I was on rollerblades once, about 7 years ago - doesn't count). So I took the skates down to the curb and put them on there. I laced them up. I tightened the clicky thing. I stood up.
That's when things got amusing - for everyone else, anyway. My first trip up and down the block was... well, disappointing. I had a great deal of trouble moving forward. Then I noticed a distressing lack of ability to keep both feet pointed in the same direction. The neighbors' chihuahua started chasing me, but soon gave up because I wasn't going fast enough for it to be a challenge for him. He did, however, stand near me and continue to bark, probably to make sure that no one inside the house missed seeing this. I made a rude comment to him, which was cut short by the abrupt realization that there was a curb about six inches in front of me. Curb made a good brake, turned out.
The second trip went much better. Not sure why. I just... got it, I suppose. It went well enough that I... went... down... the road! That's right, a public road, in broad daylight. And somewhat surprisingly, I did not hear any laughter. A young man enjoying perhaps his fourth or fifth year of life did ask me why I was on rollerskates - a valid question, and one that I frankly did not have an answer for, other than, "It seemed like a good idea at the time."
I made it back to the house with all my blood inside me. Today's status: sore as hell.

At Least They Don't Say 'California'

I did it. I finally went to the license plate store last week.
First I went to the building one block from the office with all the signs pointing to it that say "Vehicle Titles and Registration ->" and stood in line in the room covered with pictures of license plate choices, only to be told that this was not where a person goes to get a vehicle title or to register said vehicle. The Helpful Young Man had a list of places where a girl COULD get a license plate or two. I only recognized the street of one of them, and did I have my handy Map-o-Houston in the car? No. So I drove about 10 miles to an actual license plate store, which was labelled "County Tax Assessor."
I suspect that when it is time to pay my taxes, I will have to find a building with a sign reading "Zoning and Permits."
The nice lady at the actual license plate store was very helpful, and soon I was the dubious owner of a pair of Texas license plates. I brought them out and showed them to Fiona, and explained to here that she was going to have to wear them, but not till August 31st (when the NM plates expired).
On August 31st, at about 4 pm, I decided I could no longer put off the inevitable: the Texas plates went on. New Mexico is a one-plate state, and as I approached Fiona's front bumper, I realized that when I removed the front Minnesota plate, I had not put the screws back into the license plate holder. I had already made a trip two the hardware store (two, actually) for a set of metric sockets, and was unwilling to admit that I might need two visits to a store to put a damn license plate on my car. Off to dig through the thing-with-all-the-drawers-that-you-store-random-hardware- in! Within about five minutes, I had found not one, not two, but ALL FOUR of the original screws that came with the car.
Lesson learned: Grandpa was right. You should save EVERYTHING.