Thursday, August 07, 2008

Eduard, we're ready

Bring it on, Eduardo
We're as ready as ready can be...but damn, I hate this part of living on the Gulf Coast, living through the summer wondering when or if a hurricane or tropical storm will be coming our way. At least so far this seems to be minimal and we are staying and riding it out. But all day has been spent in prep...shopping for canned meat, bottled water, batteries, fruit and hot dogs, food that doesn't need cooking, filling the car with gas and then using part of it in search of extra ice to put in the freezer. Groceries were already out of ice and big jugs of water early this morning. I finally ended up getting a bag of ice from Sonic which of course, needed to be accompanied by one of their iced lattes and so now I will probably be up half the night. Then it was hauling all the hanging baskets and pot plants along with the patio furniture and grill into the garage. Some pots are just too heavy to move so I figure that a 70 mile wind probably ain't gonna shove them around...hope I'm right. Then it was sweeping and working to clear the drains in the back yard. And then checking all the flashlights in case we lose power and digging out the candles...at least I remembered to buy matches. We already had a little roof leak and I fear we may have a bigger one with this storm. The joys of home ownership. But it wasn't all grind and grim...I took time out to see Swing Vote with Kevin Costner. It was fun and I'm a Costner fan in spite of some of his really bad movies. He's just so darn cute in a bad boy kind of way.
Saturday while I was out my granddaughter set up a lemonade stand at the end of our driveway and was pretty successful. She was earning money to take to camp to spend in their bookstore. And Sunday was the big day. We had a great time going with our daughter to take my 11 yr old granddaughter to Sea Camp at Texas A & M in Galveston. We drove her out to the campus on the peninsula after a great lunch at the Star Drugstore and Grill. She was so excited...she's been determined to be a marine biologist since she was 6 and went to this camp last year and loved it. This year she is studying sharks. We got her room altogether and met her cute roommate from New York and it was clear Taylor wanted to be in charge and ready for us to leave. And then last night we learned that this storm Eduardo is headed right for Galveston. Aiiiiyayaiiiii. We knew that the staff wouldn't take any chances and sure enough, my daughter got a call this morning that they were evacuating the camp to A & M's main campus in College Station. She called her mom later so excited that she is going to see the main campus...I think she sees herself as a pretend co-ed for a week. What an adventure I am sure she will never forget. Hope she takes lots of pictures. She was equipped with Aggie flip-flops and Aggie cap and a toy Reveille, their mascot.
Fortunately I have a stack of books to read if we are without electricity and I can always draw. So here we go.....I'll let you know how it all turns out.

1 comment:

Kristin Allen said...

Wow - you were way more prepared than we were. But then, you are on the coast - I imagine whatever we get, you get more of. We didn't buy water - because it was all sold out and just filled up some jugs instead - and didn't even think about all those other things. Gosh, we're pretty much clueless about hurricanes and storms. But it was completely harmless over here - not even as exciting as most of our regular storms. And since this is all new to us - we like storms, get all excited about them.