Claysand sighting

[ridon127]

O.K. now we are all accounted for.. Clayton is alive and well.. I drove by his house today and he was outside so I stopped and met him. He like me, is without power... He didn't leave. He said they decided to stay at the last minute. He went and got his mother so he said he has two 90 year old women he is taking care of...

He said to tell everyone hi and as soon he can return to work, he will post.. When I told him Chuck called me, he said just shows you what kind of community we have..

Now the clean up begins.. We can post a sign up sheet if any one is interested... Clay needs the pool cleaned. I need trees cut up and general housekeeping...As soon as I can get the sign up sheet done, I will put it up ..O.K.?????

[momoffduty]

Sure Donna, I will help, just send me a first class ticket!

[Rockdoc]

I'll be visiting family at Christmas. Be happy to help... but you may have some it of done by then...

[ridon127]

Sure Donna, I will help, just send me a first class ticket!

Cheryl,
The ticket is in the mail..

I'll be visiting family at Christmas. Be happy to help... but you may have some it of done by then...

If they don't get power by then, it will still be waiting.

I had to go to the laundry mat yesterday. The power went out the other night as I was finishing up the wash so I had a load of wet clothes that needed to be rewashed. I figured out real quick, I am washeteria challenged.. I didn't have a clue that this one machine was $4. I thought each quarter I put in gave me that many minutes...I finally asked the clerk what was the problem with the machine...Like so many things, it was operator error...

[Chuck Engels]

one machine was $4.

[Maxine370]

glad to hear you guys are ok - despite power outages and yards in a state. good wishes your way

[Cinde]

Glad to hear all our friends are accounted for.

Donna, let me see if I have this right? You want us to remove the fallen trees from your yard? What about the roots? That will leave a big open hole. Oh, now I get it. You want us to also clean Clay's pool, then move it to the hole in YOUR yard. And fill the hole in Clay's yard with the trees we remove from your yard.
Is that close?

[ridon127]

Glad to hear all our friends are accounted for.

Donna, let me see if I have this right? You want us to remove the fallen trees from your yard? What about the roots? That will leave a big open hole. Oh, now I get it. You want us to also clean Clay's pool, then move it to the hole in YOUR yard. And fill the hole in Clay's yard with the trees we remove from your yard.
Is that close?

sounds like a plan to me I think Clayton will be so happy we have a plan worked out for him. He really won't have to do a thing..

We only have one part of a tree down. I can cut it when we get power, but since I have an electric chain saw, I have an excuse not to do it..

The weather has been absolutely wonderful. It makes the efforts so much better since the people who are doing recovery, they will not be fighting the heat and high humidity. One of news people were here in Deer Park handing out relief supplies and he said of all the sights he had been to, this was the best organized and most effeciently run he had seen yet. We are a small town of alot of chemical workers and everyone pulls together. We are blessed. The body count on Bolivar is rising. They said yesterday they weren't releasing a count but one station did report they had found 20 at this point. Please continue to keep these families in your thoughts and prayers..

[moviemaker]

glad that everyone is ok here in houston area, we managed to get some milk yesterday, and some gas and we only had to wait in the gas line for about 30 mins, only 4 cars ahead of us, but everyone has to pay first then pump, so it took a while, but i must commend the stores employees for going to work and helping things stay organized, we went to walmart for gas and food and they were already beginning to restock frozen foods, so i might to go back tomorrow. didn't even have to wait in line at walmart for the food. even though things are still crazy everywhere in some place it almost seems normal again, we even got chick fil a yesterday for lunch. my kids are just happy to play the wii again. galveston and bolivar are in ruins, i pray that everyone will be ok, it going to be such a long road to recovery.

[ridon127]

Glad to hear you are doing good. I sat in line yesterday for about 30 mins to get gas. 2 cars before me, they lost power.. I was panicked because the last I heard was I was to report to work today.. Thank God, the director changed her mind.

Most of the town is up and running and food supply is back to normal for the most part. We are still at the hotel as we still don't have power. We are usually the last to get it as a rule. Life is good. The girls think this is so much fun.. They are going to eat some of their MREs for lunch. We got a case because we didn't know when we would have food sources available. I will be glad to go home.. 2 or 3 days is about all I can stand not being in my surroundings.

I can't complain, I have a place where nearly everyone in the Galveston-Bolivar area have nothing.. they are talking about imposing Marshall law to make the rest of the people leave. I feel so bad for them.
Check out this article. How would you like to know this guy is roaming the island...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080917/ap_ ... G2Q2QazJV4

[moviemaker]

i hear there is a tiger still on the loose somewhere as well, we almost evac as well, if we didn't have power by tuesday we were going to find a hotel somewhere. i know what you mean about wanting to get back home, it is such a relief when you walk though your front door. hopefully you guys will get power back in few days, we have police station and walgreens near us so i think power was a priority in our area. the weather has been great now, i wish sat night would have been like this. lots of people had to go to work today, but i know the schools in our area may reopen next week. good luck

[Clayton]

Hello extended family! As noted by Donna, I did survive. I did decide to ride it out at the last minute. I went to get my Mother who lives 75 miles north of me on Thursday afternoon. I could not find a generator anywhere but talked to a cousin who had one and drove 150 miles to pick it up. Without the generator I would not have stayed althought I don't know exactly where I would have gone, probably to the cousins house. Anyway we "hunkered down" and watched the incredible storm surge at Galveston and costal communities that came in early morning before the storm hit nearly 20 hours later. They were telling people to get out of those communities or write thier social security number on thier arms for later identification. Still many would not leave. I wasn't worried about the storm surge, but flooding from rain that had no where to go. Power went out about 10:30 pm on Friday and storm came ashore about 1:00 am. It was (i believe) 110 mph (1 mph below a category 3 storm). The weatherman said the storm surge was like a category 4 storm. Kept listening to the wind and peeking out my garage watching my carport flex u and down. Just before the eye came across, the carport rolled up like a sardine can onto my roof. The noise was terrible and I wasn't sure what was happening. When the eye came across all my neighbors came outside to look. This is the third time I have been in the eye of a hurricane and it is so strange. You would not know anything was wrong, it is so calm, no wind, rain or anything. This lasted about 1 1/2 hours. Luckily one of my neighbors suggested I move my cars acroos the street to where people were gone. As soon as the eye passed and the winds came from the opposite direction, my carport unrolled and slammed down on my driveway. Cars saved. My damage was limited to the carport, some loose siding, damaged fence, and a cat in shock (she was inside). Didn't lose a single shingle. I cut down my big trees 3 years ago so trees were not a problem. Got power back Friday night after 7 days, but generator was a life saver (i didn't lose any food). We had water supply all the time so that was a blessing, plus the cool front for several days kept temps in the low to mid eighties. Spent Saturday taking the generator home and Sunday working on the pool and just getting the house back to normal. Mother (95) and MIL (91) fared very well. Have not set computer up yet (by the way first thing I did was to get the new computer up to high ground before the storm). I have returned to work today so first time I have been on a computer in over a week. Thanks for all the prayers and concerns expressed here in the community for Me, Donna, and moviemaker. Now to catch up on all the threads.

[Bobby]

Wow! Thanks for the update Clayton and glad all went well. But it apparently will be a long time before everything rebuilt. Take some videos and post please if you can.

PS I changed some default settings on our MB and get much better memory bandwidth. When you are settled and ready, give me a PM and we can discuss.

[Rockdoc]

Hi Clayton,
I am really glad to hear you are all right, and had such little damage (what a smart idea to move the cars!). I'm going to stick my nose in and tell you what happened to us a few years ago. When Hurricane Ivan (Category 4) hit our house in Pensacola a few years ago (we were not living there at the time) it seemed to only blow about 5 shingles off the roof. We thought we were in really good shape, considering that half the houses in the neighborhood had blue tarps to keep the rain out of their houses.

To be safe, we had someone take a look at the shingles to see what needed to be done (thinking that if anything did, it would be minimal).

We ended up replacing the roof. More than 80% of the shingles were in place, but so cracked that that the roof was not viable. Due to all the damage in the area, we were luckily able to wait about 4 months to replace it (before spring rains started getting bad). The other houses definitely needed work before ours did.

I don't want this to sound like a downer, but I would feel bad about not mentioning the possibility if your roof started leaking all over the place and caused more damage. I am really, truly glad that you and your family are safe, and I hope that your roof fared much better than ours did!

Stay safe!

Jennifer

[Clayton]

Hi Jennifer, I do plan to have the roof inspected as the carport was upon it for awhile. The roof is a very good roof and only 4 years old, but you can't be too careful.