Bullet tentatively dodged

Well, it appears that Houston escaped some of the worst that Hurricane Rita had to offer. The storm made landfall to the east of the city, which means that a potentially catastrophic storm surge didn't ravage the city. Our apartment complex is at an elevation of roughly, oh, say, one. And that's one foot, not one meter for you metric types out there. So even a minimal surge could have caused big problems.

We had a bit of a scare this morning because local Houston news reported a fire at an apartment complex in the Clear Lake area (our area). Turns out the fire was not in our complex, but rather was in the Lakeshire Apartments in the 200 block of El Dorado Blvd. Yikes.

So now we have potential wind damage (broken windows), potential rail damage (due to broken windows), and street flooding (due to heavy rain) to worry about. I didn't list roof damage above because they just finished repairing our roof less than a week ago. So the roof's structural integrity is about as good as it is going to get.

We tried to move as much stuff as possible away from the windows. Most of our electronic gear is stashed in the bathroom and bathtub. We also cleared off the deck and brought all of the plants inside to lessen the danger to others of flying projectiles.

Getting back into Houston might not be easy. According to TV reports, some 2.7 million people evacuated the city. Officials are warning that the nightmare traffic-jam exit scenario could repeat itself in reverse if folks don't stagger their return times. And the availability of gas will certainly be a problem along any major highway.

Now, the question for us is if we can get Molly out to Providence for my defense on Monday. Since our Saturday flights were cancelled, the airline rescheduled her for Sunday. But that's going out of Houston Intercontinental, which may be very difficult to reach coming from Dallas. Switching to fly out of Dallas is possible, but you have to make up the difference in fare price, which is now astronomical (>$1000, no way). Using my airline frequent flyer miles is a better option to get her out here via Dallas - weather permitting. I'm sure it will be 50,000 miles, but Northwest is going belly up anyway. Besides, in my opinion, FF miles are for emergencies. If this situation doesn't qualify, I don't know what does.