not the end of summer

hurricane rita took an unexpected turn to the east and mostly passed houston by. they thought it would make landfall on top of galveston, so they evacuated galveston and parts of houston as well.

mom and dad boarded up the south side of their house, moved a bunch of their stuff upstairs, and outfitted the pantry under the stairs as their fortress. i was trying to convince them on tuesday to just come up to dallas and stay with us for a few days until it was over.

luckily they decided to stay. people were heading north out of houston in such incredible numbers that it was taking 12 hours to go 50 miles. people turned their cars off and simply pushed them along the roads. thousands ran out of gas in the tangle and they had to bring in tankers to refuel cars.

eventually they reversed all the highways and opened up the southbound sides for about 100 miles of northbound traffic.

i don’t even think that houston got much rain, if any. it was just windy.

yesterday it blew through dallas. it was actually really windy here (maybe 25-30 mph?) and about 4:30 p.m. the power went out while we were at the movies. it was during a crucial scene in “corpse bride.” amazingly enough, no one panicked even though the theatre was pitch black for about 10 minutes before the power came back on.

we got no rain whatsoever. the forecasts had all predicted it would rain saturday through tuesday, and be maybe 78-85 those days. instead, today the thermometer on my shaded porch registered 104.8 degrees F at 2:15 p.m.

indeed, this is not the end of summer. it is, as they say, “unseasonably warm.” it’s motherfucking hot and i’m sick of it.

the city of houston is asking residents to return home in quadrants, and not all at once please. i can’t imagine how horrible the southbound traffic must be now. i’m glad mom didn’t listen to me.