Thursday September 18th Hurricane Ike.

Day One:
Ike hit at 9:00 after my first entry. The winds were fierce and howled like a banshee. I lost power at 9:30 at was awoken by debris hitting the side of the house at various points in the night. I slept cradling a Chinese assault weapon hoping that no one would be stupid enough to attempt to enter the house. My mom and scuzzball brother were asleep downstairs and I remained upstairs sweating like James Brown at the Apollo.

Day Two:
I awoke at 7:30am and looked out my window thankful that a piece of flying debris hadn't broken it. My street had turned into a river and water came halfway up my driveway, fortunately I live on a hill top. I had the good sense to park on the side of the house where the water couldn't reach my car. I have canned goods and non perishables enough to last me and only want the rain to stop and water to recede. I've lost my phone service, but mother's line is unaffected. I'm now not feeling so bad that mom moved in three months ago. I call Trinidad who's proofreading my novel and she says how she's halfway done and has taken care of many of my mistakes. She wonders which characters are real people and how I was able to write a problematic teen aged girl "so accurately" and if the crooked cop in the story has a basis in reality. My mother and brother are downstairs arguing. I tune them out and try to finish Shaw's Pygmalion and start on Major Barbara hearing the "Posh" British accents of Colonel Pickering and Henry Higgins in my mind as I do. Night descends on us and I sweat through a good t-shirt.

Day Three:
Mom is frantic that she'll lose all the meat in her freezer. Not eating much meat I remember last time I prepped for a hurricane and remember why deep freezers are a bad idea. Scum and I get into moms car looking for an open store to procure supplies. The only one we find is a small ghetto supermarket in hard hit Sunny Side. It transcends being merely crowded and makes the fall of Saigon look like a company picnic. We scrounge for charcoal, coffee and some other essentials before standing in line for an hour to make our purchases. My brother is trying to buy beer but when we make it to the front of the line a buxom, bespectacled, pouty-liped, pot bellied Vietnamese teen whose family owns the establishment informs us that blue laws prevent her from selling it to him. Thank god. My brother is an Ass when he's drinking.
We look for ice and only find uprooted trees, homes missing rooves, gas station canopies and hanging traffic lights. We finally hear from a white haired gent with a thick South Carolina who seemed as out of place in Sunny Side as I would seem in Stockholm that Whole Foods on West Alabama still has both power and precious ice. Scum and I make a bee line to it and wait in line for another hour before buying two 20 lb bags of ice each as it was their set limit. In line waiting we met people from all over the economic strata. Rich and poor all buying ice. A girl in line behind me was only buying water. She lived in an apartment complex in the Montrose and hadn't lost power. I envy her. She's complaining about how there is nothing on TV but hurricane coverage. We make it home and against my better judgement we let my brother cook. It's obvious that I got the culinary skills. We listened for reports on the radio and went to bed in the dark house. I saw a light in my neighbor's house and called HPD. I didn't know that my neighbor (who had evacuated) had returned. I'm glad I called the cops rather than doing a Joe Horn and opening fire. That night a cool front came in and the humidity was gone.

Day four:
I couldn't hop on my treadmill and run three miles like a good little brainwashed jarhead, so I put on a canteen and walked four miles to survey the damage. Trees were strewn about the neighborhood. Signs were blown about and all was dark. The police ever vigilant were everywhere. I passed the redneck bar owned by my friend Xuan. She calls herself "Sandy" and is like every middle aged, busty Asian woman I know. A complete egomaniac and business genius. She worked two jobs to save the money to buy her own bar and made a success of it. Her truck is out front. No doubt she'd rode out the storm in there.
I walk home passing under impotent power lines and listen to my walkman as deejays tell me that FEMA is giving away water, food and ICE. I hear president dumbass and mayor White (Who looks curiously like Charlie Brown) tell me that FEMA is on the job. I make it home and a neighbor and I head to a FEMA site. We are respectively the 30th and 31st cars in line at 11:00 but despite the fact that the center was supposed open at 10:00 we beat the supplies there by two hours. We turn off our engines and sit as we hear that FEMA refuses to unload trucks without a forklift. I remember all the times in the two years in which I unloaded trucks that I'd never used a forklift. When the line finally does start moving, cutting is rampant. There are fist fights and the whole thing is one gigantic cluster #uck. I tell them I'm picking up for three people and I'm given 6 MRE's and a case of water. It was 2:30 in the afternoon. I go home and learn that my mother and brother won't eat MREs as neither likes them. I counter with the fact that noone likes them but people eat them anyway. Scum gets a ride into south park and mom and I clean the debris and haul it to the street. I finish reading Major Barbara and start the Book of the Five Rings and sit in awe of Musashi until it becomes difficult to read by lamp. My phone rings to my surprise as I hadn't even a dial tone earlier. It was Shuko calling from Japan. She was worried about me when she heard the storm hit. She had been trying to reach me since Saturday and couldn't . I love both her accent and the cadence with which she speaks. She brightens my mood before I blow out my candles and go to bed.

Day Five:
I wake up and walk to Pleasantville on the other side of 610. I see that some stores are running on emergency generators. Gas stations are starting to open up but there are lines that stretch for blocks. There are people hoarding gas in five gallon gas cans. Cops are at the front of every gas line to prevent "incidents" Scum returns and brings a guest with him My oldest nephew shows up with the pretty Hispanic girl he's living with. she and I talk about how head strong my nephew is and how he refused to listen to anyone about his newly discovered epilepsy and refuses to take any medication. Scum and his friend spend the night and I barbecue some turkey wings which get rave reviews from all. I go to bed listening to the two men discussing religion.

Day Six:
I have an MRE for breakfast and remember why I hated them so much as a young Marine. I walk to Pleasant Ville to discover another open gas station. On the way I spot an HL&P crew who are checking our powerlines. They SAY that we might have power back that day or the following but I know he's lying to get rid of me. My mom tells me we need more Ice so I head back to the FEMA center with her in tow. Scum and his friend stay and fire up and load up the barbeque pit. We're worried because Scum's idea of barbeque is burned meat. The line is a mile long and while sitting in the car we listen to the Robyn CD I borrowed from the library. Mom complains about how LONG the line is and how slow it moved. I remind her that I sat in the same line two days earlier and that it didn't move at all, but she continues to complain. The two blonde women in the SUV in front of us with the Utah are smoking a joint to pass the time and the AC in mom's car is out of freon. Mom eventually listens to the music and ask me about who we're listening to. She finds it odd that a small blonde woman from Sweden is doing what sounds like "black music." We make it to the front of the line. The two women who had been smoking a joint were a blonde in her 30s...and her 60 something MOTHER. FEMA volunteers are considerably more efficient than they were just two days before. We are given two boxes of MREs and two cases of water. On the way from the center I spot a Crystal. A pretty 21 year old who had a crush on me as a student that I told her she would get over as soon as she graduated. She walked down a busy street the embodiment of the hippy, buxom, blue eyed brunettes that occupy my every other fantasy. I had nearly forgotten the fact that I had to constantly stop telling her just a few years ago NOT to call my by my first name, or that I had to chew her out for running up on me and giving me a hard (but playful) slap on the butt.
We pick up propane and batteries for the radio. When we return home we learn that Scum and his guest (who the hell invites a guest over during a hurricane...TO SOMEONE ELSE'S HOUSE?) have eaten EVERYTHING they had put on the grill which would have been enough to feed all four of us. Not only that but they'd consumed all the turkey I'd barbequed the night before. They leave unceremoniously. I barbequed some deer ribs that were in the freezer and wrap some fish in aluminum foil and toss them on the pit as well. Mom's boyfriend comes over and brings us ice. I hop on my bike and find that Kroger is running on emergency power. I enter and am escorted by a teen with a flashlight to buy bananas and a bottle of flavored water. I ride around the neighborhood to see if there are any HL&P crews attempting to restore power. There aren't. I check my messages and learn that more of my friends in Southwest Houston have power back and that someone I know who lives in a mansion in Sugar Land not only never lost hers, but threw a massive party to which I wasn't invited. I sit on my balcony sipping a cup of green tea I made on a barbeque pit which has become my stove and read more of Musashi's take on martial arts and life in general. I can't help but think of the contrast between the Victorian England of Shaw with the feudal Japan of the great and legendary swordsman. My candles are starting to dwindle, and I'm beginning to hate the kid with HL&P who told me that I would have lights within two days. I listen to a Deejay whose just moved here from LA and is quite impressed with how well the city is coming together amist this crisis. She praises Mayor White (despite is incompetence and buck passing) and gives the web site to FEMA and their radio station that those without power can know when they can have it restored.
It never dawns on her that if we don't have power we CAN'T go to the damned web site. Slacker Dave (who never lost power) goes to the site for me and tells me that worst case scenario my part of town (which was the hardest hit by the storm) might not be restored until Monday of next week...or later. Lovely. The Galleria has had their power back since Monday but I'm stil in the dark. Looters have attempted to break into the homes of my neighbors and at night I can hear gunshots and sirens. The drug plagued apartment complexes down the freeway from us have their power back, but my little subdivision has not. It's nice to know that the criminals who are coming into my neighborhood to terrorize us have lights, air conditioning and cable TV while I sit in the dark sleeping with a sniper rifle. I called FEMA before turning in for the night and put in paperwork to file for "disaster unemployment" because HISD has been closed since last Friday and has said that classes were cancelled for this week. I hate asking anyone for anything, but in this case I have to be practical.

Day Seven:
I wake up and take the mother of all cold showers. I go to Kroger and buy a bottle of flavored water and the second I open it my bus shows up. Metro has resumed service to everyone who sits in the dark. The bus driver looks enough like Danny Glover to be his twin. I enter the library and enter this into history's record sitting next to a man who apparently has bathed in a Calvin Klein cologne that despite it's high price makes me nauseous each time I'm near someone wearing it. Will I have power when I get home? Probably not. Will I either have to fire up a grill or dine on the god-awful food that assaulted my palate as a 19 year old Marine? Possibly? Will either of these things bother me? Not by much. A good portion of the world lives the way I've lived for the past week EVERY DAY! Their biggest concern isn't when their electricity will be restored because they don't have any. They worry about men with automatic weapons destroying their homes and villages. They worry about diseases and predatory animals. despite all that's happened to me and the city in which I live over the past week, I still live in a great industrialized nation where a week from now, my biggest concern will probably be rather or not the batter on my MP3 works, or if I can get a Barrack Obama tee-shirt. I won't have to worry about where my next meal is coming from. I might worry about getting the outline for my next novel finished but in the grand scheme of things I have no real worries.
By this time next week I'll be in a room full of teenagers who will act as if this storm was the worst experience of their lives despite the fact that none of them would have lost a family member, all of them will still have homes with running water and soft beds to sleep in. It will be the worst week of their lives because they had to live without hair dryers, tv, air conditioners, computers and MP3s. No wonder the rest of the world thinks we Americans are so fat, lazy and spoiled.