Full House

We have a full house. My sister came over on Saturday, and my brother-in-law, his wife, our nephew and their dog came over yesterday since none of them have power. We picked up Laura's cat and some more of her stuff (and food) at her apartment yesterday. We realized the only one of us with their own room is the cat! We're very fortunate to have power and are glad to share that luxury with others that we can, we'd planned to go to someone else's with power if we didn't have it back. Much of the city is still without power (the Chronicle says 1 in 4 customers have power), and people are waiting in line for hours for groceries, gas, and at "pod locations" (FEMA supplies). My university is closed through Tuesday, and I'm guessing it'll be closed longer since so many people are without power and its tough to get gas, etc.

My parents are now supposed to fly in on Tuesday, and they'll probably need to stay with us too. Lake Jackson is telling people not to come back yet, so we'll wait and see when my parents can go back and then assess what is going on there. Keith and Julia saw my in-laws, they are fine just have no phone service, so no one could get hold of them. They have a generator to run the fridge and a window a/c unit. We are glad to have finally heard from them, we were all getting worried.

I posted some pics of damage to our neighborhood. We were very fortunate to have just our fence and a tree to fix. The fence will have to wait til it dries out and we can add sand to make it stay straight up. our neighbor and lots of others have roof damage and a few have siding damage.
http://picasaweb.google.com/minut78/HurricaneIkeDamage#

The weather is cooler today, good for everyone still without power.

Keith and Julia were even able to get some groceries - we saw a Kroger on the news that didn't look too crowded, so they went there and got some food for all of us.