I'd Rather Be Lucky Than Good

This has been a very good day.

We left our friends' house in San Antonio about 8:30am this morning to start our 3-hour-plus drive back to Houston area. We made a pitstop for gasoline and a McDonald's breakfast after putting an hour and a half of driving behind us. We drove toward Houston in very light traffic. We didn't see any damage at all until we got quite close to Houston. Then we started to see torn up and torn down billboards, trees leaning at funny angles, etc.

We turned off I-10 and headed south towards our new house. The damage became more severe as we drove. Soon we were seeing uprooted trees, signs completely blown down, blue tarps thrown across a few roofs. As we got nearer our house we really began to worry. The New Territory Blvd leading to our subdivision was a mass of broken limbs and downed trees. It looked like the city had planted red bud trees, or something similar, in the center divide of the road. Those trees hadn't stood up well to the storm at all. The city had done a good job of getting the downed trees cleared, however. The roads were open, stop lights working, shopping centers full, no long lines at gasoline stations.

We rounded into our subdivision and couldn't see damage on any of the houses. We pulled up in front of ours and found it open. We could see a few shingles pulled up, but all in all no damage to speak of. A couple of the small trees planted in front were pretty much stripped of leaves. I found a couple shingles laying in our back yard. A nest of fire ants had tried to get above the high tide line by building a nest up into our brick work. I couldn't detect any damage inside the house at all. The electricity was on, air conditioning working. While we were prowling around, some workers came to resurface part of our fake-granite countertops -- an item we'd noted in our earlier walk-thru. To say that we were relieved was an understatement.

We drove to our builder/agent's office. He said that his electricity was still out at his house a few blocks away, but that electricity in his office had never gone out. He said that they'd already noted the roof damage and had people on the way out to repair it as we spoke. He felt he would have all the required work done from our walk-thru, including re-painting the media room, by Friday. I was amazed.

He also shared that our lender hadn't received some paperwork from me and that my insurance company hadn't provided proof of coverage yet. I worked with Eric and got the lender one of the items that I owed her. I knew how to get her the other information, assuming my computer worked back at our apartment. So, we decided there wasn't much more we could do, and started to drive into Houston itself to check on our apartment. It was now about 3:00pm.

Pessimistic me was expecting (a) a tree through the window leading to, (b) significant water damage, (c) a refrigerator that would have to be thrown out because of the rotting food inside, and (d) looting that would've seen everything we left behind now sitting in someone else's house.

I was totally wrong.

As we got closer to downtown the damage became even more prevalent. Windows knocked out, large bill boards blown over -- bent over, actually. We could see lots and lots of windows blown out of the high rises downtown. It didn't appear that my building was too badly hit. As we turned off the expressway onto the side street leading to our apartment, there was lots of tree damage and several had fallen into people's houses. We pulled up outside our apartment complex and saw a tree leaning out toward the street. We held our breath.

We walked through the hallway to our apartment and could see signs of water having been standing there. We screwed up our courage and opened the front door. The air conditioning was running. We flipped the switch and the lights came on. A note slipped under the door told us that they'd emptied all perishible items from our frige and freezer. No broken windows. No water damage at all. The TVs worked. Even the broadband access was running happily along. All our possessions were right where we'd left them.

All your, and our, prayers were answered today. Thank you all for thinking good thoughts for us.

To celebrate we went to our favorite cajun place about 4:30. A bottle of wine, gumbo, crawfish bisque, salmon-and-shrimp garden salad, and "Mama's crab and shrimp spaghetti" cures a lot of ills.

We came back to the apartment. Wife wrote emails to her boys. I crashed out on the couch. About 9am I displaced her from the computer and got busy getting things moving again to buy the house.

It looks like we'll try to close on Monday 22 September. Original plan had been Friday 19 September. We need to get the insurance thing settled. My insurance agent's office is still without power, so I'll work Plan B on that tomorrow. I handled the one bit of outstanding info that the lender wanted from me tonight. We have to have a final walk-thru on Friday to make sure the builder has fixed all the things we want fixed. The lender is ordering a second appraisal to verify there's not been any serious storm damage. I have to get money from the credit union, assuming it is up and running normally; otherwise, I'll have to invent a Plan B for that.

I've gotten our household furniture back on the road toward us ... or at least I've written emails asking the companies involved to get the process restarted. (We heard from our movers that their warehouse in Houston had suffered no damage, so our UK household goods should be OK.) Next steps are to get telephone, TV, broadband, and security set up at the new house. I need to order a refrigerator, washer, and drier for delivery next week. The list is never ending -- but at least it's a positive list, and not the one I was expecting to be doing tonight.

It's been a very good day.