Who likes Ike?

I came in to Houston earlier this week to paint my parents' house, and thanks to a.) the painting process taking longer than expected - don't volunteer to paint a house; it sucks! - and b.) Hurricane Ike setting in to pound on the Texas Gulf coast and pass right over my neighborhood, I haven't been able to return to Austin as expected. This isn't cool, especially since Mogwai is playing in Austin tonight and I kind of really wanted to see that show. I guess the likely widespread and catastrophic destruction probably also isn't good, so I'm just selfish for hoping the power doesn't go out so I can still sleep in air-conditioned comfort and watch dvds until this thing blows over (literally - ha!).

Last night I went to the Astros game, and because of Hurricane Ike we were able to say "fuck you" to our upper deck free tickets we were given and shuffle down to the field level and squat in unoccupied seats down there like it seems almost everyone in the stadium did. It's funny when they do the "paid attendence" game/count in like the 8th inning and the number they show is over 31,000 (3/4 of stadium capacity) when it's pretty clear there are no more than ten or fifteen thousand people there. Thanks to those 20k that didn't show up, I turned my free ticket into a $50 seat! Add Roy Oswalt's complete game shutout 6-0 win against the Pirates, and the Brewers' and Cardinals' losses that shoved us up a notch to a mere 3 games behind the Brew Crew in the Wild Card, and we had a pretty damn good time.

Back to hurricane annoyances: lines at gas stations/stations being out of gas, line at Blockbuster, places being closed (but not Happy Lamp...go get some cheap Chinese Food!), moving lots of potted plants into the garage, boarding up a few windows, stocking up on non-perishables in crowded and sometimes food-empty grocery stores, and general bombardment from news stations (and your mom...) of the status of said storm, evacuation traffic (and related traffic in places people have evacuated to), etc.

Today is a complain-y kind of day. At least my iPod is charged and we've got plenty of booze in the house.

Ike's supposed to hit land maybe 12 or 15 hours from now and winds are expected to be anywhere from 70-100 mph in my neighborhood. Hurricane destruction pictures to follow in the next few days!