Polimom Says

Evidently, while Hurricane Ike had us distracted down my way, the downward-spiraling financial crisis began making sucking noises as it approached the drain.

Ummm….   this is pretty freakin’ scary — and it’s made worse for me because I’m probably only a peg above normal-level ignorance on economics, generally.    Furthermore, my usual font of information (Dear Husband) sounds like PollyAnna at the moment, and my other source for all things $ is also caught up in the post-Ike mess.

So far, my overall impression is that we’re not just hovering over the edge of a precipice, but that we’re now in full dangle, and merely clinging by an unacceptably debt-ridden governmental fingernail.

(Deep breath)

I’m still trying to come up to speed with all the recent news.  Hopefully it’ll keep me distracted long enough for my bank(s) to close for the weekend so I don’t rush in and ask for all my nickels and pennies.  In the meantime, though, I’ve come across a tidbit that doesn’t seem to have caught much attention.

This little paragraph from the Financial Times earlier this week is bugging the hell out of me:

The Fed also suspended rules that prohibit banks from using deposits to fund their investment banking subsidiaries.

Can somebody give that some happy spin for me?

Surely…. surely, that doesn’t mean banks can use money from my personal accounts (or yours) to shore up their investment troubles… Right?

Anybody?

Sorry for the disappearing act!  Although Hurricane Ike allowed for a stunning sunset as the storm came in, it’s been a bit of a mess on the backside.

We came through the storm very well at Polimom’s, though some of our neighbors fared less well.  There’s some roof damage, and one neighbor lost nearly all the siding from his house.  Up the road a bit, there are blocks on end of fences blown down, and of course the tree damage is extensive.

At our house, the power went off and on, and steadied up late Saturday afternoon… but we seem to be in a pocket.  Most of the folks around us do not have power, and the quiet evenings have been replaced with the hum of generators.  Phones have been coming and going, including the land line.

The biggest problem for us has been the cable / internet.  We finally got a portable television rigged so that we can hit a national network that isn’t looping the destruction in the area, but we’re still totally out of touch with things.  The company we hooked up with for dial-up before Ike hit on Friday dumped our account, so we couldn’t access anything.  (We finally called a different company and made it happen about 30 minutes ago!)

Katy ISD schools are closed, primarily because of the power problem.  At the moment, the kids are scheduled to go back on Wednesday;  we’ll see how it goes.  In the meantime, Adorable Child and her friends have had a non-stop slumber party, seems like.

We’re running ice and water over to my mother’s house.  She’s 71 years old, and chose to ride the storm alone at her house, and now has neither power nor water (though she, too, took a miss on major damage). The biggest challenge for her has been the stupid garage door, which is too danged heavy for her to lift.  We “untrapped” her yesterday afternoon, and she was like a little kid let out to play.

So — all in all, we’ve come through in good shape, and we’re just waiting for the many, many problems with the power grid and connectivity to be resolved.   Hopefully the dial-up will remain available to us, and we’ll get caught back up with the world (at a radically reduced speed…).

Since people continue to google in, wondering what to expect in and around Katy, here’s my best take on our situation:

The 1pm advisories are out, and very little has changed.  Hurricane Ike is almost certainly going to hit as a Cat 2 storm.  Ike is pushing an incredibly dangerous surge, and people from Galveston Island and east, who are along the coast, are in dire danger.  I’m scared to death for them.

Things will look much, much different here, though.

We’re not going get any sleep, because it’s gonna howl blue blazes most of the night.  Things are going to go bang, and transformers are gonna go pop (though we may not hear it over the sound of the wind).   I expect to lose power, and I’m anticipating damage to our trees.

We’ll probably start out trying to sleep in our own rooms.  Since the sustained winds in my zip code (77450) are projected to be around 80 mph at the height of the storm, and likely even lower,  I expect that the entire household (including the friend who’ll be staying over w/ AC) will end up downstairs on air mattresses before the night’s finished.

Everybody around us has pulled everything indoors, so I don’t anticipate any broken windows (though they’ll probably rattle and moan alarmingly).  I’ve removed expensive electronics that are near them just in case, and we’ll close all the blinds.   We’re in a solidly built, newer home, so I don’t expect major damage to the house, though a gutter down wouldn’t surprise me.

We’ll all be very, very tired by tomorrow evening when the clean-up begins.  And we’ll be fine.

There are some situations that call for evacuations:  trailer homes, for instance, or medical conditions that require continuous electricity.  But as Eric Berger said in the Q&A I posted earlier this week, Katy’s positioned to withstand a hurricane better than almost anywhere in the wider Houston metro area.

People run TO here.

Right about now, I recommend a nap.  And maybe some cherry pie.  I’m thinking about both, and not necessarily in that order.

:>

I drove around the Mason Rd. area this morning with my camera, curious about what other neighborhoods and businesses have done to prepare for Ike.

Judging from the line outside the hardware store 20 minutes before it’s supposed to open, I’m guessing some folks are not quite ready.

There seems to be plenty of gas down my way, but the nearer one gets to I-10, the more of this there is:

Businesses along Mason Rd. tend to be completely glass-fronted, and some of the preparations looked a bit odd to me.  Like this one:

What’s the thinking with that?

Some business owners are much more concerned than others.  It’ll be interesting to revisit this building, for instance, and see if the restaurant’s gamble was worth it.

I’m pretty sure that if I had an establishment facing a six-lane road that was completely fronted by large panes of glass, I’d have boarded.

Because there really are no guarantees that your fellow entrepreneurs are going to do their part.   For instance:

In Gulf Coast parlance, these are known as “probable storm debris”.   Here’s hoping somebody will show up soon and pull them inside (there were many!).

Cuz ready or not, Ike’s coming.

I first posted this two years ago, on the 5th anniversary of 9/11.  It still says exactly what I feel, and think, about that horrible, world-changing day.  The only thing I’ve changed, for this post, is the image.

* * * * *

Five years ago, with the images of the planes hitting the twin towers looping on all available media, I was overcome with a need to touch AC. I had to see and hold that five-year-old innocent whose world, and future, had abruptly changed.

She didn’t understand why Mommy sat on the floor in the daycare hall, holding her and crying… and she doesn’t remember it today. Five years is ancient history when you’re ten, but inside, Mommy still cries.

For three days, I’ve tried to articulate my feelings about that day. I’ve drafted, revised, and deleted endlessly… but I just can’t write about it.

Days of retrospection have produced nothing but emotional, incoherent babble — inadequate, futile attempts to articulate feelings more painful than I was prepared to handle.

Because to confront September 11 in my heart, I also have to remember September 10; I don’t know which hurts more.

I won’t spend today watching those planes fly, again and again, into the WTC. I remember it clearly. I don’t need to see people falling, or jumping; the images are seared into my mind.

Today, I’ll grieve for those who died that day, and since, and I’ll also mourn the ailing soul of our country, the slowly fading memories of the America that was, and for the radically altered future of the children — all of them.

Adorable Child is off to a friend’s for an overnight, leaving Dear Husband and Polimom with nothing to do.  Our hurricane preparations are complete, and we’re at loose ends now.

I can’t actually say this will be a non-event in Katy (as Rita turned out to be), but I’m pretty confident now that it’s not going to be too big a problem out our way.   (Added:  And we’re looking ever-better.) We did not board any windows, and judging by the latest intensity forecast, the 2×4s are probably going to remain uncut as well.

I took a look at my site stats a little bit ago, and traffic is holding steady with people searching for info about Katy.  Probably 1/3 of them are still trying to figure out whether Katy should be evacuating.  For contrast, I met two families who’d evacuated to Katy while walking around the neighborhood just now.

(Sigh….)

In our own little corner of town, the folks who panicked in 2005 are much calmer this year.  As far as I know, not one family has evacuated our street (as opposed to probably half for Rita).  And hardly anyone boarded — though there’s a possible case of neighbor peer-pressure around the corner, where a tiny cluster of 3 houses is boarded completely.  Interesting psychology there…

All in all, things look pretty darned quiet — which gives me a moment to turn my thoughts to the people along the coast.  I wish them a safe evacuation, as little damage as possible, and a very soon return home.

Yup.    I’ve got them too.

But the 10:00am update is out, and the upshot is that the intensity predictions at landfall have not gone up.

The forecast isn’t all good news, of course.    Although Hurricane Ike hasn’t strengthened from a Cat 2, the pressure is low — usually an indicator of a more intense storm.  The Hurricane Center is leaving plenty of room for error in their intensity forecast, and it’s going to be interesting to see whether those winds manage to catch up to the pressure.  Furthermore… on the current track, we’re just to the NE of the eye projection, putting us on the most immediate “dirty side”.

It’s starting to seem less likely, though, that Ike will hit at anything stronger than a Cat 3.   Here’s what the SciGuy has to say about that:

Although there is not much difference between a strong Category 2 and a weak Category 3 hurricane, there is an immense difference in the amount of damage that such a storm would cause in comparison to a Category 4 hurricane. The official prediction is 120 mph, a strong Category 3 hurricane.

Nothing to sneeze at, obviously, but far from worst case scenario.

I’m probably going to jump in the car shortly and drive around a bit to see what people are up to in my immediate area.

—–
Update:  Jeff Masters at Weather Underground has a pretty good description of what’s going on with Ike, relative to the pressure vs. wind speed.  And he has some rather alarming data for coastal residents about the storm surge.  Go read his whole post, but here’s a small excerpt:

Ike is now larger than Katrina was, both in its radius of tropical storm force winds–275 miles–and in it radius of hurricane force winds–115 miles. For comparison, Katrina’s tropical storm and hurricane force winds extended out 230 and 105 miles, respectively. Ike’s huge wind field has put an extraordinarily large volume of ocean water in motion. When this swirling column of water hits the shallow waters of the Continental Shelf, it will be be forced up into a large storm surge which will probably rival the massive storm surge of Hurricane Carla of 1961.

This, right here, is why people who are not in danger from the surge need to let the coastal residents get out.

The track of Ike has shifted a tad north yet again, and it’s downright amazing how much this reminds me of Rita now.  Reading through old blog posts makes it that much more surreal, and if I lived up around Beaumont, I’d be pretty skittish.

Unfortunately, the current track is downright ugly for the coast down below Houston, and I’m truly stunned that the mayor of Galveston is only calling a mandatory evacuation for part of the island.   Harris County, otoh, has initiated mandatory evacuation procedures for Zones A and B, effective today at noon.

Wherever Ike decides to go, though, there is one crucial difference from Rita:  intensity.   Ike’s not gearing up nearly as much as people feared, and is highly unlikely to reach the mind-boggling levels of Rita.

Still… Ike is an enormous storm, size-wise, and we’ll probably start getting the early TS-level winds tomorrow around lunchtime.  I fully expect Katy ISD to close tomorrow;  the announcement should be out within the hour. ADDED: The announcement is out. Katy ISD has gone to “Readiness Level 2, and schools are closed tomorrow (Friday).

So today is Preparation Day.

Everything is coming in from outside:  patio furniture, potted plants, garden decorations, hoses….  anything that could be picked up in a big wind and hurled against a window or person.  We’re upping the chlorine level in the pool today (to avoid contamination from debris) and we’ll be turning off the pumps tomorrow.

Since we maintain the gas levels in the vehicles (for the most part) during hurricane season, we’re okay there.

We expanded our on-hand water supplies, bread, and comfort food late last night, and today we’ll assemble all the storm candles, batteries, and flashlights so we can place them strategically around the house and fill in any supply gaps.  I’ll thoroughly clean at least one bathtub today, but I won’t fill it with water until tomorrow afternoon.

We’re not likely to board w/ a Cat 3 coming in 70 miles away.  We are, however, considering some 2 by 4s to add stability to the garage door.

And finally…  since I’m a photographer, I’ll be double-checking my batteries and re-cleaning lenses and filters.  Just at the moment, the eye is projected nearly over the top of us, and that’s a rare photo opportunity.  (Of course, the track will very likely move still, and Ike’s eye is extremely small.  Pretty low odds, actually… but ya gotta look for the silver linings!)

Feel free to add any preparations you’re taking at your own home in the comments section, and get ready for a ride!

—–

Prior Ike posts:

Another hurricane? Ack! What about Katy???

Some links for Pesky Ike (What a pain in the patootie!)

I think “pain in the patootie” was my grandmother’s phrase, but wherever I heard it, that’s the polite version of my thinking.

We’ve got the usual uncertainties:  25 counties under a declared State of Emergency, several hundred miles of variation on possible landfall,  “should I stay or should I go?” speculation for hundreds of thousands of people, and entirely too many possibilities.  This really is unfortunate, because 3 days is when one might reasonably expect to start evacuating a target area (and they have, in fact, started some evacuations), but there’s still just so much room for error:

The natural question to ask is, can we have confidence in the hurricane center’s forecast near Port Lavaca?

There are several ways to answer that question. Foremost, we can look at the average error for three-day forecasts, and find that it’s about 160 miles. Galveston is only about 130 miles from Port Lavaca.

Since the intensity projections for Ike right now also still vary widely, there’s plenty of reason for people to be extremely alert.

Fear, however, is not at all helpful (I really need a hurricane season web banner that says “Remember Rita!!”).  Since fear is often (though not always) spawned by ignorance, here are a couple of helpful links I’ve come across in the last few days.

I loved this link to historical Houston area wind speeds, by zipcode (hover over your zip for data):  hidefromthewind.org   (NOTE:  this link now shows projected sustained wind speeds for Ike by zipcode)

Added:  The National Weather Service has a very cool interactive graphic tool.  Hover over the wind speed links and the projections (and wind direction) will display.     Please note that the hidefromthewind link above shows higher projections, and so I’m mentally splitting the difference for Katy.

Since the worst winds my zipcode has ever had is 94 mph, I’m absolutely confident that my home will still be standing here (with all of us in it)…  even if Ike takes the worst possible track in (which in this case would appear to be between Freeport and Port O’Connor).

Since lots of people have been googling in about how to board windows, here’s a direct link to the Lowe’s How-To page.

Finally — stormpulse.org has a very cool graphic-based interactive site.  It doesn’t present the major hurricane models I’m used to seeing, but the intensities and paths provide interesting info.

And for any of my Katy neighbors who are still worrying whether they need to jump out on the highways and run, here’s a link to my prior post specific to our area.

Here’s hoping this all becomes at least a bit clearer than mud by tonight, eh?

Yesterday, Barack Obama deployed a couple of well-used colloquialisms to hit the McCain campaign on its attempt to co-opt the “change” theme.

“That’s not change. That’s just calling something that’s the same thing something different. You can put lipstick on a pig. It’s still a pig,” Obama went on, and the crowd erupted in cheers. “You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper and call it change. It’s still going to stink, after eight years. We’ve had enough of the same old thing.”

And Palin supporters are going totally ballistic.

So — was Obama really suggesting that Sarah Palin is a pig?  Not exactly.

Actually, I think this was an elegantly turned smack.  He made his references specific — I have no doubt he was deliberately talking about Palin and McCain — but they were designed as political insults rather than personal.

Given the “old fish” reference, though, I can see how the right is interpreting things this way… but their sensitivity meter has gone over the top.   I can’t help wondering whether their heads will explode before this is all over.

Not only that, but the degree of hypocricy here is really off the charts.  Not only did John McCain apparently use this exact phrase in reference to a Hillary Clinton proposal (and I’m pretty sure she wears lipstick), much of this faux outrage is coming from people who have been attacking Barack Obama non-stop for the better part of two years.

All in all, a tempest in a teapot — but an amusing one nonetheless.

(And an aside:  Sorry about the single photo subject.  I have no old fish lying around, and precious few pigs.)