There is a stick in my backyard, and one in my front yard. Yes, a stick. A branch. Not quite as long as my forearm and about as bit around as ... a stick. A little thing. That's what Rita left me.
Two sticks. At least they did not go through the window.
We finally got some rain about 6 last night, a brief shower. Power started flickering about 9 or so.
We had a lot more rain and some wind in the evening. At some point, the dog heard the rain pelting the back windows & started barking at it. Laughing, I opened the back door to let her into the yard. She bounded out like a brave rocketship... then saw the wind & rain. Her ears pinned back against her head, her tail went down, and she looked at me like, "Uhh, I was expecting a squirrel. Can we go inside now?"
The dog & I went to bed around 2, when the TV news radar pictures seemed to show "the heavy stuff" a long way off. We did get a band of heavy stuff at some point in the night, and the dog barked a few times, thinking Rita was trying to get in through the window. But she was happy to mostly just play watchdog -- well, listen-dog really -- quietly next to me on the bed.
I slept like a stone until the phone rang: mom & dad checking up on me. Dad's weather gizmo recorded a high 42-mph wind, so you can see we didn't really get much 'hurricane.'
My neighbor, the one who evacuated, called to see if his house was still standing. I told him we didn't even lose power, and he sounded really miffed. I am sure that they drove a lot of hours in awful traffic to get away from this storm. I'm afraid the storm's little jog north to miss most of Houston will make people less likely to heed the evacuation warnings for the next one.
We'll see... Meanwhile, I would go pick up those two sticks, but it's still windy & raining, and I have a nice warm dog sitting on my feet :)
(Addendum: the photo above shows a pair of big trees that fell in the neighborhood. So, not everyone here got away with just a pair of sticks.)
