Tropical storm day

Work announced yesterday afternoon that they were going to be closed today for TS Edouard (why do I have such a hard time spelling this?). That is a perk of working for a school, with students from all over town they are pretty good about closing in bad weather - and they are always listed on the news to find out if they close overnight/early in the morning. I like their outlook on it, from the website: Edouard poses no immediate threat to the University of Houston-Downtown, itself, but high winds and flooding could put travelers in danger tomorrow.

Last night Kevin and I brought in everything from the patio and the front porch. He even trimmed the yard and cut the grass. We decided to leave the grills out but used rope to tie down the covers – unfortunately I lost all the knowledge I had of knots from my Girl Scout days, Coletta and the rest of my leaders would be disappointed! – so the best I could do was a square knot and then when I had only one end I had to just kind of rig knots as best and as tight as I could, its not pretty but I think it’ll work.

After we had the house prepared, I made a drink – a 7 and 7 (but with Sprite instead of 7-Up). I rarely drink on Monday nights, but I also rarely don’t have to work on Tuesdays. I’d bought sprite zero a while back to make it, but never made one and Kevin drank most of the sprites that I bought, who knew he liked Sprite – I’d only seen him drink diet coke and coke zero. The random things I learn. It is refreshing though, and no caffeine.

Today I slept in (until 8:30 when Smokey came to snuggle with me – it was so dark I thought it was much earlier – even on the weekends I never sleep that late!), worked out, watched the coverage of the storm, finally finished filing (one of my never-ending chores), and re-arranged the living room for the new sound system we’re getting for the tv. Kevin ordered it online and the pieces started arriving Monday, and even with the rain the rest of them came, by FedEx and UPS today!! UPS even came hours earlier than usual (early afternoon rather than 7pm), my guess because a lot of the places on his route were closed. So we were actually able to get the entire system set up! Kevin made two trips to RadioShack, we underestimated how much stereo wire we’d need. I helped him by stripping the wires and connecting each of the speakers to the receiver, I felt very DIYer! After he had it all set up and adjusted it he ran tests to optimize the sound (Smokey did not like that ~ he was confused by it and kept running over near the speaker that was making sound. We finally had to put him outside, oh and my prediction was right: Smokey wanted outside IN the rain, and when he was out there he’d DRINK FROM THE PUDDLES on the patio. Looking at him you’d think we didn’t have a nice bowl of water for him inside the house, but he loves rainwater). In the evening, we watched our first movie with the new system: The Bourne Ultimatum, and it was a great one to see with it! The speakers make for a very different viewing experience, almost like a movie theater, with speakers in the front corners, a center speaker and a sub woofer, and a speaker near me, another near Kevin for surround sound. We already watched a lot of movies at home, but I think we’ll be watching even more!

We were even able to put most of the stuff back out on the patio, but will leave the grills roped up til we need to use them.

All in all, a great Tropical storm day. The storm came on land near High Island, so we got some much-needed rain (an inch and a half total) but little wind. And there were no serious injuries or damage from the storm. The only injuries I heard about were 3 brothers who had to get rescued in Galveston because they decided to go in the water and got pushed into a rock wall, not too bright! Aside from that, it was a fun experience for a lot of the tourists in Galveston (they interviewed people who were at the hotel who stayed because it was coming)