Checking in.... I am at work for the first time since last Wed, and this is the first time I have had real internet connection or power since Friday night. My apartment in the Houston Heights area is fine, and the friend's place in Montrose area of Houston is also fine, but still without power 5 days later.

It was pretty crazy during the storm....the eye passed just to the east of us that were near downtown, so we never got a break... in the eye-wall for about 3 hours. Had about 1 hour of solid 90-100 mph winds from the north/north-west and then like someone flipped a switch the winds shifted to coming from the west. The west winds on the back side of the storm were a lot stronger and had a lot more rain the the front side. We sat in those winds for about 2 hours. Things finally eased up in the late morning and we were able to get out and survey the damage. Lots of trees down and the bayous were all flooded. We lost power when the first strong band came through around 12:30 am on Friday night/Sat morning.

Luckally a cool front came through on Saturday night/Sunday morning and it has been really plesent here since then, so even with no A/C we can have the windows open. However, the 9 pm curfew put a damper on things... if you weren't in the door somewhere to get food by 7 pm they wouldn't serve you, so that was a pain.

I got a lot of great photos just after the storm passed of the flooded bayous and some of the down trees. I should get those uploaded either tonight or this weekend at the latest, will post a link when I get them up.

All in all, I am glad that I did things the way I did... they didn't need me and all the other people in downtown Houston on the roads evacuating when the people on the coast really did have to get out of town. If the weather hadn't cooled down, I probably would have gotten out of town after the storm when we didn't have any power, but it was fine even with out AC. I don't know that I would stick around for a bigger storm headed over Houston, especially if it came ashore just south of Galveson, which would put Houston on the dirty side of the storm...but hopefully that isn't a decision i will have to make anytime soon!

Thanks for thinking about all of us down here in Texas! And my thoughts and prayers go out to those who live in Galveston and on the Bolivar Penninsula and to all the people through the mid-west who also felt the effects of Ike.

Ellen