TheBanyanTree: Ike's Moon 2008/09/17

[Dale M. Parish]

20080917T2029

They were supposed to have the landline fixed today, so after breakfast
I picked it up to verify that it was still dead, and it had dialtone!
Miracle of miracles.  

I had just formatted the old Winderz laptop and reinstalled WindowsXP on
it, but had to reconfigure it for the internet.  The MacBookPros don't
have dialup modems in them-- only wireless, so had to load new software
and do some tweaking, but I've got connectivity at 28kbs, which is
better than we've had for nearly a week.  Uploaded the files I've been
writing-- yeah, I know I botched the name/dates.  Sorry.  Been hard to
tell what day it is around here.

I go back to work tomorrow.  Not sure what I'll be doing, since my boss
says that no one is allowed into the building downtown where we've been
housed since February.  Especially since my son works two floors above
me for the Maritime Administration and I know that he's been to his
office several times since Ike hit.  

But she said that the chemicals plant that sits downstream both on the
Neches River, where the storm surge came up, and in the refining scheme
of thing, as they take a lot of the byproducts of the refinery, got two
meters of water in it.  A recovery manager has been named, and she said
that they will be crushing many of the portable building as they are--
computers, furniture, wiring and all-- to get them out of the way for
reconstruction.  So I'm sure there is something for me to do-- just not
how long it's going to take.  At first, she mentioned part-time, then
she didn't know, so I'll find out tomorrow what the schedule is when I
get there.  I'm just glad she's in Dallas and won't be in the way. 

We pumped the last of the first drum of fuel into the generator this
morning, and I loaded it into the truck.  Sheared the schnauzer and
picked up limbs until after lunch, when her son and daughter-in-law
brought the granddaughter over for a visit.  After they left, we made a
dash into town to pick up some window screens for the upstairs bedroom,
some hooks for the tarpaulin that I will stretch over the generator
soon, because this is southeast Texas' wettest county, and it will rain
before they restore power to us.  

We stopped to visit with a teacher who lives in Orange and teaches with
her-- then decided to rush through Kajun Kitchen's buffet.  It's usually
too pricey for me, but curfew has most businesses closing early, and
their sign said it closed at 1830, so we went in and were pleasantly
surprised at the $8.99 price-- about half what it was last time, but we
overheard the manager explaining to one of the other customers that
because of the curfew, this was the lunch buffet only-- they didn't have
time to prepare the barbecued crabs, boiled shrimp, crawfish, etc. and
then clean up before the curfew, so they just held over the lunch menu.
So we filled up on fried shrimp, fried fish, barbecued ribs, and I
should have stopped eating one plate earlier.

Managed to pick up some more gas for the generator-- there was a $125
limit per fillup, so I was only able to get 33 gallons, but it's enough
for now. 

Hugs,
Dale
--
Dale M. Parish
628 Parish Rd
Orange TX 77632
(409) 745-3899