For two weeks now, Houston’s been hotter than … well, a mild fever. Which is hot, as air goes. And despite the lack of rain, it’s still a wet, heavy heat. At least the drought is keeping the mosquitoes at bay. Biking to work has become a somewhat icky endeavor; I’ve learned to bring an extra shirt to change into when I get there.

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I saw a car today with three bumper stickers: a Mac apple, a Houston Astros sticker, and a sticker that looked like those oval country/vacation spot stickers with initials in them but actually stood for “Jesus Freak.” I don’t know why the combination struck me as odd, but I kind of want to meet this person.

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Six days after Ike, Houston is still pretty torn up. It’s strange to go about my normal business, more or less, and be surrounded by wreckage.

Tonight I came home after curfew (is that still on?) and man, it was dark out there. It’s like being out in the country, except you’re passing strip centers instead of cow pastures, and the tall buildings block out the stars.

I thought the curfew was just to cut down on looting, but it can be tough driving after dark. With many of the streetlights and traffic lights still out, trying to get through an unfamiliar area is dicey. The traffic-lights-turned-stop-signs aren’t flashing red*, they’re dark. On an unlit street. Sometimes they’re lying on the sidewalk.

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[Written Monday Sept. 15, 12:45 PM. Posted who knows when.]

As expected, we lost power early Saturday morning. My building was one of the lucky ones—we got it back midday Sunday. Even now, on Monday afternoon, much of Houston is still blacked out. Downtown is closed, a few major roads and freeways are underwater, and most businesses have yet to reopen. I drove around for half an hour this morning before I found an open Einstein’s Bagels*. I’m still on the hunt for that elusive combination of an open business that also has wireless internet access. My home internet is still down; the post I wrote early Saturday was the last bit of internet I’ve seen.

Ice is the hottest commodity in the city right now. Very few of the grocery stores that reopened yesterday afternoon had any, and the ones that got an overnight shipment are quickly running out. I went and stood in line at Kroger partly for kicks, and partly because I was out of cookies. They were on generator power, so they let about fifty people into the store at a time and lined everyone else up outside. When I got there the line was about a hundred people long, but it moved quickly, so that I only had to wait twenty minutes to get inside.

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Many non-essential businesses have closed, including our favorite tapioca tea place, which had shut down three hours before we got there last night. Argh. I mean, I knew the storm would be rough, but I didn’t think I’d have to get through it without those tasty tapioca balls.

Gas stations, too, are closing as they run out of gas, much as they did before Rita. I’d have thought, with more people staying put this time around, that the majority of the stations might still be open right up until the storm hit, but maybe they all operate so just-in-time-ly that *any* run on gas is enough to crash the system. I’m drawing my conclusions from an admittedly small sample size of the three gas stations I’ve observed, but surely that’s representative enough.

The weather here is still lovely—sun, blue skies, 82 degrees. If it weren’t for those scary satellite photos, we’d all be planning picnics this weekend.

I really hope the eye comes right over us. That’s not the best thing to wish for, I guess, but come on, how neat would that be? I’ve never been in the eye of a hurricane before. Supposedly it’s pretty amazing, right up until the eye wall smashes your roof in.

There’s not much left to do around here except sit and wait, so that’s what we’re doing. We’ll probably take a good walk later in the morning. Maybe I’ll go to the grocery store and take pictures of the empty shelves again—for some reason that fascinates me.

I woke up this morning to a radio broadcast of a press conference by Mayor White and Judge Emmett about Ike’s progress and the city’s plans. The gist was that yes, it looks like it’s coming straight for us, but everyone without special needs who does not live in one of the few zip codes under mandatory evacuation should shelter in place, dear God, SHELTER IN PLACE. By the way, we’ve been telling you for months to get your hurricane supplies ready, so it’s not our fault if you get to the store and there’s no bottled water left.

All indications are that this will be the worst direct hit on Houston since 1983’s Alicia, though it’s likely to cause less damage than piddly little Tropical Storm Allison, which stalled and dumped rain until people started drowning in elevators and parking garages, and keeping your hospital’s generators in the basement suddenly didn’t seem like a good idea any more.

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