TheBanyanTree: Gustav blog

[Dale M. Parish]

Gustav has missed us, and apparently weakened to the point that very
little of the anticipated damage was realized.  It's been an
'interesting' Labor Day weekend.  Yesterday, Russell & Johana, Cindy's
son and daughter-in-law were unable to find lodging anywhere, and so we
invited them to come out and stay with us.  They live in Beaumont, and
Beaumont (Jefferson County) and Orange County here were both under
manditory evacuation orders.  They apparently had planned to stay, but
the power in their end of Beaumont went out yesterday afternoon, so
they were concerned for not having power as Gustav came ashore.  I told
them to bring their perishables and we'd find room in the freezer for
them here.

I had gone down to the shop and loaded up the tractor with the front-end
loader and bushhog and brought it here to the house to have in case we
had any trees down, and then gone back and brought the generator and
mower back to cut the grass.  Cindy likes the new mower, so she mowed
while I did some other cleanup, thinning the yaupon behind the mailbox,
picking up hoses and other stuff in front of the mower.  Russell and
Johana showed up as I was leaving to take the mower back to the shop.

I was glad to have Russell's help to push the generator into the
pumphouse-- it's easy enough to move on concrete, but a bit too much for
one man to move uphill in sand.  We got it situated just in the door to
the pumphouse and shut down for the night.  Johana made us a fine
spaghetti and meatsauce supper.  They tied up their Labradors outside
and brought their small, backup dog, Caesar, in the house to molest
Shotzi, our Schnauzer with an attitude.  Some semblance of tolerance
finally manifest itself between the two of them, but the two Labradors
seemed not to like the trees under which they had been tied, and voiced
their opinions steadily.

This morning, Cindy and I got up before Johana and Russell and drove
down to the shop to retrieve two more kennel boxen for the Labradors.
We expected rain to set in, and I don't want to leave those critters
outside in a storm, especially in a strange place to them.  Our house is
generally Schnauzer proofed, but it's not Labrador proofed.

After we got back, I logged into the company network to check mail and
was bombarded with hurricane warning updates.  The last one showed
Gustav heading across southern Louisiana and up Toledo Bend Resevoir,
the lake that borders Texas and Louisiana along the middle of that
common border.  My youngest brother had taken his brood up there to get
away from the projected landfall closer to home, and now he was in the
target area.  They were all camping out on some land they own up there,
and I finally got hold of him and told him that he needed to pack up and
head back.  The Sheriff's Office said that they would be allowed back
into the county only till dark-- dusk to dawn, there's a curfew in
Orange and Jefferson counties tonight.  They packed up and were home in
only a few hours.   He called to report that all his bunch were
horizontal and the mutiny was quelled.

I spent the day finishing installing shelving in the pumphouse while
Cindy worked on her book project.  She teaches geology at the University
and physics at high school, and she and a friend had landed a contract
to insert web-based curriculum supplemental content for an environmental
science textbook through Google Earth, providing Google Earth sites and
asking review type questions about the sites around the planet that
typlify the environmental problems covered by 25 different chapters.
It's been fun for me, but she's the one with the deadline.

This evening, Russell broke out some of his venison and cooked us up a
fine supper of broccoli, sweet corn-on-the-cob, and fried venison
steaks.  It was worth doing the dishes for.

The winds are supposed to peak here after midnight.  Tomorrow may be
rainy, but because of the manditory evacuation order, Cindy's school is
out tomorrow and I don't have to report to work until Wednesday, so we
should be able to get more of our chores finished.

Hugs,
Dale
--
Dale M. Parish
628 Parish Rd
Orange TX 77632
parishdm at att.net		http://parishdm.home.att.net