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so with my usual survival instincts were in overdrive. Of course, the fact that we dodge the bullet had A LOT to do with it.
Wednesday night, we were weighing our options. Should we leave, should we stay, what if the Buffalo Bayou overran its banks?
Mostly, I was worried that trees would crash through skylights and windows would break, and it would be 2am, dark and electricity would be out and suddenly I'd feel water swirling around my ankles.
So, at midnight Wed/Thurs, I sent Jim around to the big hotels on the westside, Hilton, 2 Marriott's, the Omni, the Adam's Mark and a Hyatt. The smaller hotels were full of Katrina evacuees and didn't seem that safe anyway. So, I'm thinking, what kind of conventions or conferences will the big hotels be having this weekend? How many business trips in and out were going to be cut short? There had to be cancellations.
So he went around and asked and all said "No room at the inn." So he left his business card and asked them to call if they had a cancellation.
Of course, these were night clerks and I didn't trust that, so at 9am, he retraced his steps to give his card to the day clerks, in case they hadn't seen his previous card. While he was out, YIPEE, the Westchase Hilton (5 minutes from the house)called and said they had room and how many rooms did I want. As I was getting out my credit card, Jim walked in and said he just came from there and already got in. I told the clerk and she gave me her name and said if I wanted to give the info to friends.
I passed the info to one of the Democratic club presidents and she immediately blasted it out, while I went to pack up all the photo albums and important papers. Ya know, if you're gonna die in a hurricane, at least be surrounded by great people.
Thursday afternoon we checked in, stashed our photos and papers in the closet and tried to relaxed for what seemed like the first time in days.
Oh, we also asked for and got a room on the 2nd floor, in case of power failure. Our room overlooked an small outdoor atrium garden ie, 2 story concrete wall, facing out window. The hotel had instructions for power failure, which was the generator would only work in the public areas and guests were urged to move the chairs and ottoman and bedpillows out to the wide windowless hallways. That thought was so much more comforting than thinking of our walkin closet with it's roof
sailing away. A bunch of Dems, wine cheese and chocolate.
This is a foodie group, so here's the REAL scoop.....
One of the command centers was in center here that's full of restaurants. After we checked in Thursday night, we noticed cars cluster near one of them, including lots of police cars, so we walked across the street and saw what it was and found that 4 of the restaurants were actually up and running, including Out Back Steakhouse and Wolfgang Pucks.
Yesterday, we ate at a brunch buffet at the Rio Ranch, which was only open through the hotel lobby. In the afternoon, Jim used the pool and gym and a few of the Dems made a last dash home and brought back wine, cheese and chocolate. Last night we had dinner from the very limited photocopied menu of 6 sandwiches and six entree salads.
The hotel had a group of 30 emergency medical response personnel, waiting for the storm. Much of the hotel staff and their families were there, along with several Democrats we knew and of course LOTS of people we didn't know.
Oh, and there must have been 250 animals. Lots of doggies on leashes in the halls, elevators and being walked outside. As we were checking out at noon today, we laughed when we'd hear cardboard file boxes meowing.
We've had no flooding, so far. Since last night, they've not said anything about the path of the hurricane meeting up with some kind of pressure system and turning around and heading at us as a tropical depression. That was three of six possible tracks they were talking about last night. We had a major one of those in 2001 and the flooding was pretty bad in parts of town, so we aren't sure we're out of the woods for floods yet, but I'm guessing we are.
We lost several tree limbs, as did most everyone on our street and one of the trees that we've been going to cut down this winter is going to have to be cut down SOON. My daughter called when they got home and she said her clocks were behind by 8-1/2 hours (she lives closer to your friend) but it was back on when she got home. Right now, there are 675,000 homes without electricity and it could take up to a week to get it back on. Hopefully, ours will hold, but the winds in this part of town are still about 30 mph and there are probably still many tree branches hanging on by a thread. So, it could go anywhere, anytime.
Over all, of the 5.3 million people in the Greater Houston area, they estimated about 2.5 million left. I wonder how many of the nearly 200k Katrina evacuees we have here left town. I can't tell you how magnificent our Democratic mayor and Republican county commissioner have been, despite having an uphill battle all the way with the governor. The governor has a lot of explaining to do, but he was Dubya's Lt. Gov and up for re-election, so I imagine he'll get his mistakes excused.
This is loooooooooong, but my adrenalin is fading fast. My next surge of adrenalin is focusing on the re-election campaign of Mayor Bill White, who due to Katrina and Rita, has not taken any time for a single event, mailing or done any fund raising for November's election.
Mary
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