The roof is fixed

Finally, over four weeks after Hurricane Ike hit, our roof is restored to its pre-Ike condition. Here's a rather poor shot of it.


During the storm, we lost a lot of shingles and much of the metal trim that you see towards the bottom of that picture above, on the western side. There were no obvious holes in the roof, but the high winds blowing rain sideways (even UP!) allowed some water to enter our house and damage some of the roof on the 3rd floor.

We also have a grate that allows air to pass to the outside from the mechanical room on the 4th floor, and I have no doubt that a lot of blowing rain entered that mechanical room through the grate. In fact, I happened to have an empty bucket in that mechanical room, and after the storm, I noticed that it had easily two inches of water inside it. Two inches of water on a wood floor is going to go somewhere.

We found shingles all over the deck and all over the street after the storm. Many were not ours, as almost everyone in the neighborhood lost some. But now, look how neat again.


I wish I could have replaced all the shingles with some kind of high-tech, recycled, environmentally-friendly composite of somesuch, but the need to fix it was greater than the desire to spend a lot more money on something too high-tech. I do have plenty of room up there for some sizeable solar panels, however....we'll see how many tax credits Obama can get passed for solar power.

As you might imagine, finding contractors to do practically any kind of construction job in this area has been a little difficult. So many homes suffered damage of one kind or another. Most homes had fencing or roof damage. We remind ourselves how fortunate we are that we still HAVE a house. We know more than a couple of people who had homes much closer to Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico that simply no longer have a home there. They're gone. Fortunately, no one we know was killed, but the latest estimate is still around 200 people missing from areas closest to the Gulf.

There are still large piles of debris here and there on Bolivar that have not yet been thoroughly examined. I recently read one story of a human rescue/search team that was using cadaver dogs to search for bodies, and the dog slowly circled one huge pile, gingerly climbed on top of it, and gently laid down. There was definitely going to be a body in there. And I cried.

So we were lucky.


We were able to get the A/C unit replaced within a week of the storm, and now the roof is done, but it took over four weeks. Still to be replaced is our fence. We've had a gaping hole in the fence since the storm. We feel rather exposed.

Upon returning from Arkansas recently with the wife, we were southbound on Interstate 45 and began to see a lot of odd-looking vehicles and flashing lights in the northbound lanes. Turns out that hundreds of electric utility trucks were streaming north out of Houston, leaving town after restoring power to millions of Houstonians that were without power from anywhere from one hour to one month. A veritable army of utility trucks and workers had flooded into the Houston area after the storm to help our city restore power. There were so many trucks....wave after wave of them going home....I began to cry again. This time with gratitude to all the wonderful people from all over the country who helped us in one way or another recover from the storm. Things like that....give me faith that we, as Americans, can overcome our present difficulties and be stronger than ever before. We can do it.

Thank you America. Thank you all for caring and helping.

During this time, you may have noticed things going a little haywire with the economy. My wife works in the financial world, but she's what you would call one of those "honest brokers" who actually cares about helping people plan and save for their future. At times, she and her company have recommended certain financial instruments to their clients. During this insane time, many of those financial instruments have gone flat broke to zero value, and many of her clients have lost quite a lot of money. She feels somewhat responsible, recommending things to clients which turned out to flatline to zero value. Some clients savings have gone up in smoke. She has shed a few tears over it.

To top it all off, as you may know, my mother passed away recently. Yes, I've been doing a lot of crying lately.

But I think that we, like the markets, have hit bottom, and are on our way back.