I’m so excited! I almost forgot the other important thing about my birthday – A Breath of Snow and Ashes by Diana Gabaldon is out! I finished The Fiery Cross last spring, and having to wait all summer for the next book was hard. Maybe I should wait to read the new book so I don’t have to wait forever for the next one to come out!
It has been a fairly quiet day today – we finished unpacking the things we brought in last night; Mike did some of the yard work and brought the patio items back out from the garage; he made me pancakes for breakfast since I didn’t have class today and he didn’t have to go to work. (Jason spent the night at my parent’s house last night.) I have worked on some of my homework, we caught up on some shows on the Tivo. Tonight we will be having dinner with my parents for my birthday. Just a quiet, simple day.
I’m feeling a bit melancholy. I’m not sure why. It has nothing to do with getting older – it probably has a lot more to do with the people I haven’t heard from today – and the people I have heard from. Special occassions seem to make me notice things like that even more than I normally would. Funny how that works. There are some people I really need to stay in better contact with. I guess it is time for birthday resolutions?
Thank you to everyone for your well wishes – I truly appreciate you thinking of me on my birthday!
We pulled into our driveway this afternoon at about 4:45 pm. The last 18 minutes of our drive were over the first 10 miles of the route we took to leave town. It took us FIVE hours to go those 10 miles last Thursday night. The fact that it only took us 18 minutes today still astounds me.
I’m glad we went to Austin, it was a fabulous visit with Tara and I’m glad Mike & Jason got to meet her too. We didn’t get to all the touristy goodies I might have liked in Austin – it took us awhile to recover from that drive – but it was such a great trip I don’t regret a single moment.
It is nice to be home – our neighbors told us everything was ok, but I wasn’t able to let my guard down until I saw it in person. A lot of pine needles, some small twigs and branches, and a small tree limb on our garage roof. Our roof have 40 year shingles but the quality is good. I also checked the garage door to make sure there was no damage. If there had been any issues with the garage door, I would have called a business garage door repair specialist to take care of it.
We tried to order pizza tonight because we were tired after unloading from our trip. It was a bit of a challenge though, since no one had any pizza dough! In the end, we decided it might be easier and more fun to follow a homemade pizza recipe and make our own fresh pizza together. 🍕
I lucked out – Jason & I don’t have school tomorrow, and Mike is still sort of off work (he will be working from home though), so we get to celebrate my birthday together all day! I wonder if I can talk Mike into making pancakes for breakfast?
They are now announcing on the news that they will be allowing people back into Houston in stages. I totally nailed it. Now I wonder if they will go with my alphabet plan or my number plan.
We are still in Austin, and we have no plans to return to Houston for a few days. I refuse to get stuck in the gridlock that we got stuck in coming to Austin. There isn’t any traffic in Houston yet, but there is the beginning of traffic jams in Austin already – oh, and there isn’t any gas at the gas stations along the way. Mayor Bill White is on the news asking us not to come back to Houston yet, so they can keep the roads clear and get emergency vehicles through to help the places in need. So we are staying put until we get the all clear. The Hacker House for Houston Homeless is a very good place to be.
The Chronicle is starting to scare me with all of their blogs – they already have a Road Home Blog.
My parents lost power around 3:30 am and as of 11:00 am it still wasn’t back on. I talked to my neighbors and we have a tree limb down on our garage, so there might be some damage to that roof, but we never lost power so everything in the fridge should be ok.
Governor Rick Perry announced that they are going to figure out a way to get people back in an orderly fashion – I voiced my plan outloud, “If your last name begins with P-Z, you can return on Monday.” Maybe they will use the last digit of the drivers license – all the even numbers can come back on Sunday, all the odd numbers on Monday. Mine ends with a 0 though, so I guess I just have to stay in Austin!
My plan for today? Hill Country Weavers. Any other yarn shops in Austin that you want to suggest that I should visit? Maybe we’ll take Jason into downtown to see the capitol and stuff like that.