Vacation, a wedding and a hurricane

So apparently the 3rd time is a charm, at least when it comes Houston. Hurricane Ike hit during the wee hours of 9/13 while I was sleeping in a comfy bed in North East, Pa. I spent 5 hours in the airport but I able to get out of Houston before Ike hit. Some people evacuated to Dallas, I evacuated to a hole different time zone! I am so happy I got to go to the wedding, visit PABFF, EngineerBFF and TeacherFriend all in 7 days! :-)
The of wedding of CollegeMom and CollegeDad's middle daughter was beautiful though Ike made an appearance as a lot of rain and a little wind but hey rain on your wedding day is supposed to be lucky right.
They canceled my flight home but Delta was nice enough to get me out on a flight the next day though I missed my flight to Chattanooga and WonderNurse was not going without me. After a long pleading morning with USAir they changed my flight from Wednesday to Thursday so WonderNurse and I got to go visit Middle Sister. A word of advice, travel insurance sucks. I had travel insurance and tried to use it when I initially found out I would miss my flight. I talked to the very nice Travelocity people in India who told me that since the hurricane had past it didn't matter that I lived in an evacuation zone and would not make my flight, I could not use my insurance. It didn't matter that according to Travelocity travel insurance can be used if you need to cancel your plans. Though most of the time I am the first one to bash airlines for the fleecing of America I must say in this instance both Delta and USAir rose to the occasion and helped a girl out!
Chattanooga was wonderful, there is a ton of history to explore, forest and mountains to hike, plenty of nearby cities. Now I just need to convince NASA to move to Chattanooga!
So how did my apartment just 6 miles from the lake and 25 miles from Galveston hold up to Ike's beatings? Well the power was out for 5 days (just imagine what an apartment smells like after having no power for 5 days and has a freezer full of fish in it) and I had a leak in the closet (which had a science experiment growing on it by the time I got home) but other than that the worse thing that happened was the fences around the complex fell down. Thank the Lord! EngineerBoy is the best, he helped me clean that smelly fridge and didn't complain at all!
My old apartment that I lived in for the past 4 years (but moved out of only 1.5 months ago) didn't fair well at all. It is directly on the lake and well it took one heck of a beating. My building lost the roof and that was the least of the damage. A boat from the marina next door now calls the corner apartment home while the leasing office no longer exists. Thank the Lord I moved when I did! The entire area is a mess, just check out some of the pictures (they were taken while driving so ignore the car).
My almost 2 weeks off was great but now I need a vacation from my vacation. Thank God for 9/80 work weeks and to having next Friday off!
Have a great weekend everyone, EngineerBoy will be here for the weekend so I will talk to everyone on Monday!

I have my own but you can find really good post hurricane pictures here.... http://www.tpicks.com/pictures%20people%20have%20sent%20me.html
MJ