Light is Good

My parents and in-laws got power back last night, yay! They each had generators, but like all of us were so glad to get electricity back - must remember this when I take for granted I can just flip a switch and I have lights, a/c, etc.

Keith and Julia are going to stay with my in-laws today. Kaden can play with Nana, and maybe even swim! Hopefully they'll get power back soon, its been 11 days since they've been home a long time for anyone and a lifetime for a 3-year-old. It will be a very quiet house when I get home tonight. Its been good to get to spend time with them but I hope they get to go home soon because that is a long time be gone from home, and frustrating since Julia has all this time off but can't get any of the stuff done she'd like to at the house since she doesn't have power. Patty and Smokey (the dogs) are probably going to go into mourning, they've had the most fun being together. Its also made me wonder if I really want two dogs (we'd been considering it). This week has been a good trial run for that, they definitely keep each other company, but I'd be concerned that they'd tear up the house playing all the time, and Smokey never leaves Patty alone, good thing he's fixed - he's always trying to get on top of her, trying to dominate and/or play with her, but its just embarrassing.

Yesterday was my first day back at work. I was very pleased to see that my office is just as I left it when I left early on Thursday, 9/11, to prepare for Ike. We got permission to move our reporting day to Friday since we were closed for a week, but that makes us lose a week in our already busy fall, so it'll be hectic..I think right now is the "calm before the storm", I was busy but nothing like I will be once we hit 20th day.

At lunch, I walked over to see Julia's building, and it is a mess. They are doing a LOT of work on it. Most of the windows facing the Chase tower are gone and there are large yellow tubes coming out onto the sidewalk, trash chutes or wet/dry vacuuming is my guess. The sidewalks all around it are taped off, on travis because of all of the work going on and on the other sides for safety I guess. The streets around it look like they're open. Pretty much every window on the Travis side of Chase tower for 15-20 stories up is boarded up. Since I was there, I ate at Azuma (sushi), good but expensive.

Kevin's offices were messed up, they're in a temporary office space for 30 days and after that they'll figure out what they want to do. He'll be working at home since they only have space for the office workers (he's a consultant). Hearing about all the damage to office buildings, I''m lucky we only missed a week and a day here.