Trees were a' blowin

So... congratulate me, guys! I've officially survived Hurricane Ike. The storm blew through Saturday, with wind gusts around 60 mph according to the weather channel. Amazingly enough, I didn't loose power in my dorm the entire time, praise be. There was just a ton of wind. Rain really wasn't the issue at all!

Anyway, let's go back to Thursday. Thursday we're starting to get all sorts of warnings about Ike. Of course, those of us who were even halfway cognisant of our surroundings knew that there was a hurricane in the Gulf and it was headed towards the Texas coast. Now, given Gustav's projected path, we kinda suspect that Ike can hit us. Ding ding ding! We have a winner! The projected path of Ike began calling for it to kinda graze by East Texas and then continue up into the midwest. As the day progresses, though, the little hook that Ike was making gets steeper and steeper, until Nacogdo is totally in the red zone. Red isn't a good color in weather- green means rain, yellow means heavy rain, red means you'd best be building an ark because that's the only way you're getting out of it. Now, devil's advocate that I occasionally am, I was downright giddy as we watched Ike's path creep towards us on Thursday evening.

They cancelled classes beginning at noon on Friday due to Ike's lumbering (haha- lumbering) path towards Nacogdoches, and even the weather channel, between being gusted away in Galveston were able to mention Lufkin (the next city over, also the location of the nearest Target to Nac) as 'in danger'. Kinda creepy. So, yeah, I went to class on Friday morning, 8am, and only about half the class showed. I was just like 'really people? Seriously? Classes don't stop til noon, tards." After what can only be called an abbreviated class (remember- only half the class showed up, though whether it was because of the storm or the quiz on tri-tones/major sevenths/minor sevenths could be debated), I headed over to the cafeteria to grab some food. Normally breakfast, while arguably the best meal the caf serves, has a pretty low attendance due to the times which it is offered- nobody can really stand to get out of bed early to go eat, so they just skip and go to class. If I didn't have a really awkward break between classes, I wouldn't eat breakfast half so much as I do. Anyway- back to my story. We get to the cafeteria only to find it as busy as it is at lunchtime! What the heck?! The omlette line was jam packed with these confused looking Indian (no, not native american, people from India) guys who were speaking in their native tongue, and there's just a whole slew of people nobody had ever seen before. I'm going about getting various breakfast foods when I finally figure out who these people are. I had gotten emails that we (SFA) would be hosting evacuees from Lamar College (presumably in Lamar), who were evacuated because of Ike and being kept in the HPE. Ah, I think, these must be our visitors. Sure enough, one of their shirts says 'Lamar'. Interesting indeed.

After breakfast I go back to my room and watch online episodes and start trying to figure out what I need to do about my job and getting my degree plan all situated as it's supposed to be. That honors english class I took is such a freakin pain in the rear, because nobody knows anything about it! My degree plan only has it counting for 3 hours of lower level english credit, when it ought to count for 6, but of course I can find no proof of that, so I was relegated to spending over an hour on Thursday traipsing all about the Liberal Arts buildings asking for this fabled letter which would explain the course, asking the honors college people... oh, it was a mess. Anyway, Friday I dropped off my appeal to the people in the COE (College of Education), and went to go sign a new contract for my job. Thee people running concert manager this year don't seem to be totally on top of things, considering that I almost didn't have a job because of their boo-boo. Anyway- that's a story for another time. I have a job now, signed my contract, got my raise, and work a grand total of once in the month of September. Good times indeed.

Back to Friday- at lunch one of my friends invites me to a girl's night at her house that night, arguably to celebrate Ike and whatnot. Hmm- gale force winds and you want me to drive? Doesn't sound like the safest thing in the world, but thanks anyway. I'll check the weather and decide later, I say, and I can tell my friend is put out. Oh well. A few hours later, I go to see a couple movies with Shannon and Meghan- Burn After Reading and Tyler Perry's The Family That Preys. In short, Burn After Reading was plain ridiculous, and the Tyler Perry movie was very well done.

On our way back to campus, I'm kinda noticing the wind picking up. Aha- here comes Ike. I get back to find that the res hall has all the glass doors and windows taped with masking tape to prevent shattering, and I go back to my room to watch more weather channel and prep for the next day. On Saturday I woke up about 7:45, look outside, and really don't see a lot aside from the trees blowin in the wind. I set up what I fondly referred to as "Camp Ike" out in the living room, plugged my computer into the internet and set about "hunkering down", to steal a phrase from the mayor of Houston. I watched the weather channel until about 11, when I couldn't take it any more and just flipped on Disney. I watched a ton of TV on Saturday. I kept getting all these email alerts from campus police about the weather conditions outside, advising us to stay indoors. Really? I thought it'd be fun to go out and frolic in a hurricane! *eye roll* Yeah. At about 12, a CA comes to the door and tells me that they don't want anybody leaving the building. Alrighty... that's fine with me. I continue my hunkering in Camp Ike and just leave it be as I watched the trees outside. Now, during all this I had begun getting txts from my friends living off campus saying that they had no power, and could I please tell them what was happening or at least alert them if sirens started going. Sure, I reply, and I do just that. Yup. About 4, the storm seems to be letting up a little, and while it's windy, the trees don't appear to be bending as violently as they had been before. Good times! Around 3:45, they send out an email saying the cafeterias are open, but use extreme caution when you decide to leave. So, about 6-ish, I make some calls, grab my poncho and rainboots, and start marching towards dinner at the caf.

The wind damage, though, was enormous. First, there were branches literally everywhere, with so many trees it looked like fall had come waay early. Some of the branches were quite huge, really, and entire limbs were torn off of trees. Power lines were down, and outside one of the halls, a part of a tree had literally fallen on top of a car. Holy cravitz. Some of these massive trees had been totally uprooted around campus, and as we walked in the wind and rain, it was really kinda scary. The cafeteria was, again, a great deal busier than I would've guessed, and had a lot of Nacogdoches residents trying to get food since the power was out. Wow.

I get back to my room and am chilling when I get a call from my roomie from last semester, Stacy. She moved off campus, and had been one of the people who told me that they were quite without power. She asked me, rather pathetically, if she couldn't please come sleep at my place tonight, since I at least had electricity: of course, I said she was more than welcome. So, she came, along with stories of the damage and how Nac was literally shutting down. Places open 24 hours like IHOP were closing, and there were police directing traffic at McDonalds. I heard later that there was something like a 2 hour wait to get food there, but people couldn't cook without electricity. Campus and the immediate areas around it were about the only parts of town to maintain power the entire storm.

Sunday Stacy and I went in search of food. Our first stop was IHOP, which had a line coming out the door and snaking around the building, which was pretty much the case at any open food place. "Let's go to WalMart," Stacy suggests. "As nasty as it sounds, maybe we can get McDonalds from there." I turned Milly towards Wally and off we went, surveying the damage all the while. We turned into WalMart and start towards a parking spot when we see a line coming out of Wal-Mart. Yes, on a day nowhere near Christmas, there was a line to get into WalMart, and people at the door who would only let in someone when someone else came out. It was insane. I shared a look with Stacy and we decided that it may be best just to try cafeteria food, and head back to campus.

Parts of Nac, including Stacy's place, did get power back by about 2 on Sunday, which was nice, although a very selfish part of me (and I believe many people) hoped it would stay out long enough to provide reason to cancel classes for Monday. Apparently, it did- we had no classes yesterday so that the campus could at least start the clean up efforts. In my opinion, there's too much debris to be cleaned up within a week, since there's some big trees that will have to be removed now. When you walk around campus now, you just see workers gathering up branches or cutting off precariously hanging limbs from the trees. Yeah- crazy.

Classes resumed today, which on the one hand was kinda sad, but on the other hand a good sign. I was impressed by the professors today, a lot of whom didn't have power at their homes but still showed up for work. Good for them- they get kudos for that one. Personally, I would've been a little less than eager to get up and go to work when I had to shower in the dark and leave kids home without even a television to entertain them, since the local school districts have been closed mostly for the rest of the week while power companies work to restore electricity.

So yeah- that was my weekend. My thoughts are with those in the hardest hit areas in Galveston and Houston.

Oh, and another little side-note: Don't get a Dell laptop. Like, just don't do it. Now, to add to the laundry list of problems I've been having with it, keys keep popping off or breaking, or both. My 'e' key is totally broken off, and my 'g' and 'd' keep popping off. *sigh* Stupid technology.

~r