Day Five - Let There Be Light!

Technically, I got power back at 10pm on Tuesday night, Day Four. After leaving Jim and Susan's after chopping down banana trees, I went back over to Mike and Pam's where I had spent a fair portion of the day hanging out with her and doing my laundry. They got power back on Monday night. So after yard work I went to finish hanging out with them and retrieve my laundry which Pam had very graciously folded for me. I felt spoiled :-) So I leave M&Ps and turn the last corner onto my street and see it all lit up. My first reaction surprised me...I was actually sad! It meant that things were going to be going back to normal now. It had been a nice change of pace and of shaking things up and now it was all going to go back to normal...my normal, boring life. I wasn't ready for the novelty of it all to be gone, though I have a feeling I would have been ready in one or two more days. Nonetheless, it was a little sad. I spoke to one of my neighbors and asked when the lights had come on and she said in the last 45 minutes and that you'd have thought we'd won the Super Bowl with the way everyone cheered. I was sorry I'd missed that! But it was fun to hear it had happened.

Oh! One thing I remembered today that I hadn't blogged about during the hurricane was the green lightning! It was the strangest thing - sections of the sky would light up an almost kelly green and then disappear. There were no bolts or thunder, just sections of lit sky. Wierd, huh? And Pam said she also saw pink flashes. Hurricanes are wierd things.





So while I technically had power and could surf the internet from home, the weather was still just too amazing so I went trolling for coffee and found Starbucks open with plenty of patio seating! It was glorious. And apparently the Houston Police SWAT Team thought so as well. They parked across the street and as we all watched them walk over one of them gestured to us a "stay in your seats - palms out" gesture and announced "We're just getting coffee, folks. Everything's alright", to which I replied, "Thanks for sharing." I don't think they heard me :-) Pam came and joined me for a while and then we ran into one of the Starbucks regulars (Laura) from my usual smaller Starbucks that lay in shambles across the street. It felt like a nice bookend. Michelle and I saw Laura and her boyfriend on Thursday night before Ike and now I saw her again on Wednesday after. Symmetry is good.

This is the view from Jim and Susan's rooftop deck. They thought with all the free time this week that they would stain their deck, but first needed to powerwash it.

So here's an extremely artistic and dramatic shot of Jim powerwashing the deck. MY GOSH I LOVED POWER WASHING THE DECK!!! We each took turns doing several boards. It was one of the most satisfying and immediately gratifying tasks I've about ever done! The change was instant and NOTICEABLE!!! In a job where I'm lucky to ever really see change and progress is measured in weeks and months and not seconds, this was pure bliss!

Look at that conrast! God bless machinery!!

The most tiring aspect of the power washing was keeping the lever pressed down. Jim had the brilliant idea of using this clamp to do the holding for us.

And then to thank me for all the help with the deck, we went to one of the few restaurants that were open for margaritas. We got there and it was quite crowded and had to valet park. We left the car with the valet, walked inside, stated we wanted to sit outside and were promptly seated at a wonderful little table on the front patio - inches from my valeted car.