YAY!!!

We're so relieved that it looks like Ike is going to visit somewhere else this week.  There are still parts of Louisiana that don't have power, and there's LOTS of debris still piled up along the streets. Another storm right now would be more than we could handle.

Since we're not in Hurricane Prep Mode, I'll fly out tomorrow on my previously scheduled trip to San Francisco. It's a work trip, but my definition of a vacation, this trip counts. Vacation means two things: first of all, I can drop a towel on the floor in the morning and when I come back in the afternoon, it's gone. Second, there's no Pat Shingleton on the TV. I like Pat Shingleton, it's just that if I'm close enough to Baton Rouge to watch Pat, then I could theoretically get home and scrub toilets, do my accounting, or call clients. No Pat means no way I can get home to do those things, so I might as well enjoy myself.

So today is full of washing, packing, printing out the information for the shuttle from the airport to the hotel, refilling prescriptions, and getting the house organized before I leave. Normally I'd do this over two or three days, but I didn't decide to go until last night.

We're OK

We survived. The post below this one is meaningless, except that it tells me exactly what I was doing when the light went out. We lost power at about 1:00 Monday and were out until 6:45 tonight. For those of you keeping track, that's 5 days, 5 hours, and 45 minutes.

Our house survived. Our friend Lenora got a tree through her carport (and on top of her car) so she's living here with us for awhile until her house is livable again. I'll post pics of her house soon and I'll put a link up.

We're on our third load of laundry, we've bleached out the fridge and the freezer, changed all the sheets on all the beds, vacuumed the carpets and swept the floors.

I think I've got a crying spell coming, but I'm not sure when it'll hit. But I plan to enjoy every single second of it.

By the way...

...it looks like landfall was a little west of Grand Isle, and within the last

11:23 and all is well.

Windy and rainy, but well. Still have power and internet, as you can tell by the fact that you're reading this post. If you're not reading it, that confirms that we lost power sometime between 11:23 and whenever I hit the "Publish Post" button.

E's still watching I Love Lucy, but they're repeating episodes now. What's with that? It's only been about 3 hours.

Is it weird to hope that the power will go out sooner rather than later? I'd really prefer it not go out at all, but living with it minute to minute knowing it's going out is a little crazy-making. I'm bookmarking every webpage I view, just in case I lose it when the power goes out. I'm turning off lights in the bedrooms just in case the power goes out (so if it gets restored during the middle of the night it won't wake us up). I'm rushing Elizabeth through her cookie making just in case the power goes out.

Weather Underground has revised our projected winds to peak around 50, rather than the 60 it was a couple of hours ago.

Monday 9:36 AM ...

... and much to our surprise, we still have power and internet.

Jeaux made it in to work with no problems, and Elizabeth came and piled up in the bed with me. He said it was breezy, but not too bad. I hope he'll be able to make it home tonight, but if not, we're prepared. It's not as scary for me when the storm comes through in daylight, and by tonight things will be slowing down. We've got about a million flashlights and battery lanterns in the house and we have reading materials coming out the wazoo. And my friend Lenora bought us four new board games.

After dark last night he convinced me to let him board up a couple more windows, so my computer room is VERY dark right now. Elizabeth is playing Hostess, baking cookies so we'll have something to serve our guests tomorrow when the lights are out and several friends have planned to come over here to play games. Our Children's Director at church threw down a gauntlet yesterday by making it known that no one will play Trivial Pursuit with her anymore because she always wins. It's going to be a fun (although probably hot) day.

All four local channels, CNN, CNN Headline News, MSNBC, and Fox are all doing 24/7 hurricane coverage, so E and I finally put it on TVLand and she's fallen in love with I Love Lucy reruns. After all, we have 24/7 hurricane coverage out every single window of the house.