Sunday, October 30, 2005

Catching up...

I know, I know, it's been a while since my last post... I've been busy and without much time to spare formulating a post here. We evacuated for Hurricane Rita, spent a week and a half with the Missus' grandparents, came back to find a messed up house and a deadly refrigerator. After getting the place cleaned up to live in again, we've been kinda stuck with each other til I went back to work this last week. (Finally!) The hurricane tore up the store where I work pretty badly, ripped a couple of big holes in the roof and destroyed a lot of merchandise. We're only able to work in the back half of the store right now, as the construction crews are still busy making the front end look as good as new.

Some random thoughts (that I can still remember):
- It's a pity that the Astros lost the World Series, but the White Sox hadn't been to the Series since before the 'Stros started. There's always next year... so far the '06 Astros are undefeated! :P

-Always, ALWAYS carry a light with you. The LED on my mini Swiss Army Knife got a lot of use when the lights went out during the hurricane. (The screwdriver got used a lot too, by my mother-in-law, who was so impressed by it that she bought her own mini SAK, once the stores opened again.)

-When some government official tells you to prepare for something, like a disaster, and they tell you to prepare for 3 days without utilities, you'd be better off readying for two weeks or more (food, water, ways to clean yourself and your clothes and eating utensils). There are some folks around here that have been without power and water service for over a month. And however much water you're setting aside for drinking, washing, cleaning, etc., DOUBLE IT!!! You wouldn't believe how quickly we went through water. Maybe the Mormon's advice of setting aside essentials to live for a year isn't so far-fetched now.

-Bringing animals on a trip is a lot like bringing small children, except the animals don't whine about "are we there yet?" and "I hafta go potty NOW!" That last one is different to deal with, I just walked our dogs more along the side of the highway, which wasn't a problem since the traffic WASN'T GOING ANYWHERE!!! (16 hours in bumper-to-bumper traffic on a drive that normally lasts 2 1/2 hours.)

-Target is a great company to work for. After the hurricane, I found out that my store was damaged and not expected to reopen until the end of November (now postponed until December 1), and the company paid me my average regular wages while I waited for a call to come back to help repair the store. Now that I'm back at work, I'm being paid above my regular payrate for the duration of the repairs, and there will be plenty of overtime for the next month.

-I need to take a picture of my stuffed toy: Spike (Snoopy's desert-living brother), holding a toy lever-action rifle I found. I think this would be a fitting avatar for me.

That's it for now.