Saturday Update

Still no internet at home, but I tried to make this as close to an ordinary day as possible. I had to do my long run on campus, which meant starting after the sun was up. This made it hard to go as long as I wanted because I ran out of time before I needed to be home getting ready for us to go have lunch. I ended up only doing fourteen miles, but I'll consider that a success for now. Memorial Park was out of the question since it still doesn't have lights, so running circles there posed no benefit over running circles at home. The bayous all stink, so anything involving bayou trails wasn't a good option, either.

We do what we can.

Our Indian restaurant was open today - yay! I had hoped to get some more destructo-pics on my first outing since the storm, but I didn't see as much damage as I expected. Everyone has been very busy cleaning up and the biggest evidence now of last week's storm is the cut trees and piles of branches in front of nearly every inner loop home, and the open windows marking who still doesn't have power.

I wonder what will happen to all that wood? I hope the cut up trees will be shipped north for people challenged by high fuel oil prices this winter. It would be a nice way to bring something good out of the disaster.

We were very lucky to get power restored when we did. As it turns out, we're on the same grid as part of the university and not where I showed the picture a few days ago of the damaged box and lines. The university was considered a priority and the area behind our back fence didn't have trees to damage the lines, so they brought it on much faster than the rest of our neighborhood, which is still dark. For those of us whose back yards abut the university, though, we're up and running.

Except for internet. I know I shouldn't complain when so many still don't even have lights but if Comcast could just give us a real estimate, that would be a big help. Instead we get canned answers about "crews working in your area." Right. Haven't seen a single one. Given that Comcast's call center is probably in India, I'm sure it's a reasonable answer to them, but Houston metro area is the size of a small country! "In your area" could mean anything.

But I have the university and for that I'm grateful. I have to be careful coming and going after dark, but I carry nothing of value with me and so far the only danger I've encountered is nearly being run down by some dorm rats playing a game that looked like a version of flag football where a stolen pylon was being used in place of a ball. I could've sworn I was safely out of bounds, but I was a dorm rat once myself and I can vouch for the fact that these late-night games have very flexible rules, all of them made up on the fly.

And speaking of being out after dark, it's after 9:00 and I need to think about wrapping things up here and going home. I have some "lessons learned" posts I'm working on and that I will copy and paste over the coming week, so be prepared for some prep lists and recommendations.