LOLcanes

In the spirit of LOLcats, Dwight Silverman over at the Chronicle came up with LOLcanes a couple of weeks ago. In honor of Hurricane Gustav, Lakrids & I offer this one:

 

Eddie the Wimp

Here you see Lakrids the Intrepid Storm Chaser, decidedly bored by the whole Edouard thing. It rained all day, but the predicted tropical storm-force winds never materialized. The storm also didn't seem to include any thunder/lightning, at least not in our neck of the woods. We had a scarier, more fierce storm last weekend in a normal quick Texas thundershower.

My impression from radar is that we've seen the worst of what we're going to get. So it was just a quiet, rainy day for us. Others lost power -- some 13,000 people supposedly are dealing with that annoyance right now. We've avoided that problem, unless they do as they did after Rita, and subject us to rolling blackouts for the next few days while they try to get the power grid back online. We'll see....

The good news: The backyard is very green & not a lake. All the work on the drainage did exactly what it was supposed to do -- yay!

Edouard comes to visit

There's a tropical storm in the neighborhood, and apparently he is due to drop in with high winds & heavy rain sometime this afternoon. 

The last hurricane to threaten the area was Rita, whom I wrote about back in 2005. This Edouard was headed directly for Houston but veered off in a somewhat Rita-like direction. He's heading a little more obliquely north, however, which should put tropical storm force winds right over The Woodlands sometime this afternoon.

For now, it's just raining with a few gusts. No thunder/lightning, even. Just a pleasant, cool, rainy Houston day. I brought in most of my outdoor furniture because of the threat of high winds. My neighbor behind, however, has left his screened-in tent out there. Could be interesting....  

I'll update whenever it seems like there is something to say, assuming I still have Internet + power. When power is gone, I will still be able to Twitter from the iPhone. Thus far, I can still hear birds singing while they enjoy the much-needed shower. The birdback out back is almost full, and the fountain is not yet overflowing, so we haven't gotten more than a sprinkle here yet.