Julie Pippert: Using My Words

Soon, I will have a story with words. But for now...a few photos and links to what we knew a of yesterday when we went back to our neighborhod to check on the house. The area is getting hit with more rain and has flash flood warnings now, and news is of course making it sound really dire but I'm hoping it's just a case of newsodrama. In short, it's a good news/bad news situation. Bottom line: we fared okay and have not suffered any major losses personally. I'll leave it at that because you're probably going to get to hear plenty of whining from me about the financial hit this is going to be. Here are the photos: Trying to get back to our town: Hmm, boats in the hotel parking lot... This used to be a really nice park across from our neighborhood. Park and large parking lot covered. Water up to the roofs of the pavilions. Water receded off the road, thankfully: In our neighborhood---and YES this is the very neighborhood the CNN reporter drove through and filmed and th...

Hi friends So many of you have contacted me to send me offers of assistance, good wishes, thoughts, and so forth. Thank you. We have evacuated to an area just west and south of Houston, where we will get hit by Hurricane Ike but are safe from the storm surge. They have said to anticipate power outages of about 18 days, so I thought I'd put in this update while I can. Our town had a mandatory evacuation on noon Thursday. We left at noon on the dot, which is good because the police literally began a neighborhood check. Our dedicated little police force. It took about twice as long as usual to get here, which frankly we were extremely grateful about. When we evacuated for Rita, we never made it past Columbus, slept in our car for three days, got no assistance from locals or local authorities, and saw horrors that made us think next time drowning in a storm surge was preferable. However, this time, the authorities swore they had learned their lesson. We put our faith in that and I'...

On Wednesday night we could have been characters in Titanic . What? Hit an iceberg? Band, play on! What? A tropical storm deadheading for us? Party on! Wednesday morning we woke to a horrible storm dumping barrels of rain, with wind driving it sideways. What's this , we wondered. Oh well , we mentally shrugged, it's Houston, storms happen . My husband drove on to work, and we didn't even trade cars. When I drove across the bridge over the bay to the grocery store, I looked through the rain out to sea and thought, hmm, that doesn't look too good, bad color to the sky . When I got home, I carried on my day as usual. After I picked up the kids, we ran a few quick errands and then went to a good friend's birthday party. Meanwhile, my husband, growing concerned about the amount of rain dumped over the course of the day called to ask me if any roads were flooded. "No, I think the storm must have passed by," I told him, "It's only been drizzling off and ...

As of this morning, Dean had strengthened to a Category 5 hurricane, with some unusual properties such as hail in the leading edge. Unusual properties + hurricane heading for Gulf of Mexico = Very Bad Thing So far they have it heading straight at us. WOO HOO! This story is slightly out of date for Dean (you know how dynamic hurricanes are), but: " Gulf States Mop Up After Erin, Ramp Up for Hurricane Dean " National Weather Service meteorologist Matt Mooreland said Erin dumped the most rain on south and southeast Houston, where nearly nine inches were recorded at Hunting Bayou and Lockwood. Hey! We got the most rain! An award! An award! Texas Governor Rick Perry Friday declared Hurricane Dean an imminent threat to Texas, initiating full-scale state hurricane preparedness efforts. I'm just surprised and impressed that Perry knows how to say the word 'imminent' much less what it means! If politics was a frat party, Perry is Bush's slightly less intelligent, sligh...

Just because we all got complacent those NOAA guys had to fix our wagons and sic a Tropical Storm (Erin as she goes by) on us. Hey NOAA, I get it. You're Chicken Little and we all blew you off about the sky is falling. Okay you woke us up, now call back your storm. Tell it to sit, wait, lie, and play dead. I think the Rita-strength hurricane threat was a little over the top; I noticed even the news media didn't take you seriously. I mean, probably half of the area is all, "Erin? Erin who? And NOAA? Who's that? Her husband?" That storm? With its paltry 40 mph winds, rapidly approaching land just south of my town? It's leaving the Happy Hurricane Zone of the Gulf. That means the power and force it needed to pick up? TOO LATE BABY! So HA! I laugh in the face of your storm. HA HA HA HA It wasn't going to happen anyway because I employed my super secret anti-hurricane magic, also known as Preparing for the Worst. My flood insurance is paid up, the tree at risk ...