Charlie's Rants & Raves

Well, well, here we are in sunny and hot Houston, Texas. There's a major storm a brewin out in the gulf. You may have heard of it. Hurricane Rita. 3rd strongest hurricane ever recorded. Right now shes 350 miles away from Galveston. I'm about 80 miles from Galveston. I'm kind of safe as long as she keeps drifting towards the east.

What a hectic past couple days. Yesterday, I spent all afternoon preping for the hurricane. I took out all of the items in the backyard that could become airborne missles. Cleaned out the garage to stuff the cars into if needed.

So I get an email at work stating that they expect us at work today. Forget that the mayor and governor said that all businesses should let their employees get the next couple days off to prep or evacuate in wake of this potential disaster.

I go in to work, grumbling for the most part. I was thinking, why am I the only one going in to town, while everyone else is going out of town. What kind of idiot am I? Well, i finally make it to work. All the outbound lanes are packed and not moving. Yet my travel in was pretty easy.

I get to work and I'm not the only insane person that went in. After a while people start trickling in. The people that work in the cafeteria didn't show so we had no lunch. We were told to get outside lunch. Great, only thing is that nothing was open. Fan-frickin-tastic.

Well, they finally let us go at 1:30 PM. Traffic hasn't moved much in that time. Lots of cars are dying on the road from a lack of gas. When you are sitting idle in traffic for, I don't know, 14 hours or so, your car will probably die.

I was going to evacuate to the Austin area where my sister lives. Problem is 290 sucks, I10 sucks, it just sucks all around. If I was to evacuate, I should have done it Wednesday morning.

I spent the morning at work mapping out alternative routes for my wife to take. Since I couldn't find gas for her car, I suggested that she pack the kids and take off in my car. I would ride the storm out. I thought 1093 to 36 to 10. Yeah, I'm sure alot of other people thought that too.

So, alas, here I am. Still have some work to do. Wish me luck. I'll write more later. Hopefully we'll have power.