Post Ike living

Well a lot has happened since my last post. Ike blew through the Houston area late Friday night/early Saturday AM back on 9/12/08. We lost power around midnight (00:08) when the first significant gusts started for us on the North side of town. The worst of the storm hit us between 03:00 and 06:00 Saturday AM.

All was going according to plan as I stayed up listening to my emergency radio (TV was simulcasting on a popular FM radio station) and I had my scanner on listening to the fire/EMS traffic. We had plenty of food, water, and batteries to last us a good long time, and my 2 year old was fast asleep (until about 06:00).

Our best friends, whom we were talking to via cell phone off and on throughout the storm didn't lose power until 08:30, and got it back around 19:30 that evening, so we spent the night with them. After that, my Mother-in-law got power and we stayed there until our power was restored...15 DAYS LATER! I was not prepared for 15 days without electricity. We ended up using the battery packs that I had for clean-up around the house in the folowwing 2 weeks, and i did use the solar panel to recharge them - it worked pretty well.

We are definitely going o have to look into other options in the near future if we are looking at prolonged outages like 2 weeks.

Next blog will be about personal responsibility and the victim mentality that has overtaken our "American Spirit".