Life Goes On

JSC will officially reopen on Monday, so I’ve got another three days of “vacation” before going back to work. Not that I’ve had a problem staying busy the past few days.

After two trips on Tuesday, two on Wednesday and four today, I am finally moved out of my old apartment. (Jose suggested that next time, I should rent a truck! To which I responded that next time, I’m paying someone to move it all, not just the furniture.) I can’t say that I’m really moved into the new place yet since my stuff is scattered all over the floor and needs to be organized and put away, but at least I turned in the keys to the old place.

They still don’t have power over there, which made it difficult to clean — couldn’t vacuum, so the floors are a mess, and I didn’t have much light by which to scrub the bathroom. The office lady said they wouldn’t charge me for any of it, since they understand why I couldn’t do a great cleaning job. And the carpet is desperately in need of replacement anyway, so who cares if it’s been vacuumed?

I also had to have the maintenance guy break into the garage so I could get the last of my stuff. I pushed the opener button at least three times before realizing that DUH, the power was out.

Among the things I left in the dumpster was a whole rubbermaid bin’s worth of notes from all the classes I took at Georgia Tech and Stanford. It was both fun and painful to watch those sail into the dumpster (which stunk of rotten food). The trash is where they belong, since I haven’t looked at them in 6 years and don’t plan to ever again. But those notebooks represented 6 years of work! Hours and hours of class and studying and problem sets. But I’ve got the two pieces of paper that really matter — my diplomas.

Now that the move is done, I’ve got two days to put together an entire event program for the Miss Bay Area pageant. After doing the program for Miss Houston back in March, I was hired to do a smaller program for Miss Bay Area coming up next weekend. The original deadline was Wednesday, but Hurricane Ike and not having power for three of the days leading up to that deadline meant that it was completely unattainable. Now the print shop has told us they can have it done if we get it to them by Saturday afternoon. So I’ve got to get it done by then, which will take up most of my time over the next couple days.

Jose and I ventured out this evening in search of an open Target. The one in Kemah is closest, so we drove over there only to find that it must’ve closed early. As we headed back around Clear Lake to hit up the Target on Bay Area, we got our first look at the damage to Kemah and Seabrook. Even from our vantage point on 146, the amount of debris and damaged buildings and homes was sobering. It will take quite some time for this area, and for Kemah, Seabrook and Nassau Bay in particular, to recover from the hurricane. The most obvious traces of the storm are piles of debris and boats strewn around like toys.

Target on Bay Area closed at 7:30, a short 15 minutes before we arrived, so we’ll have to try again tomorrow. It sounds like most stores are resuming regular hours over the next few days if they can. We hit up HEB again and found milk and meat, which made me happy. I’m thankful that we have power so that we can store perishables! We also stopped at Best Buy — yes, Best Buy. They were open. But alas, all the area’s Starbucks (and we passed at least 5 of them) remain dark.