Dad called me last night to find out about the Astros schedule for the post-season. He had just gotten out of a cold shower and was sweating already because they still didn’t have power being close to Beaumont. He was setting up the generator to run a window unit during the night. He told me that he had heard that the power should be on sometime during the week.
About 10 minutes after I hung up with him, Mom called me to tell me that they had been sitting in the living room talking, when she noticed the TV Guardian light come on. They had unplugged everything they could think of, so that there wouldn’t be a strain on the power, once it came on. They forgot, however to unplug the television and all connected devices. Just as she was beginning to convince Dad that it wasn’t a reflection from outside, they both saw the TiVo come on and the record light came on shortly after.
Talk about a moment of joy! It was very exciting to hear that they had power, and all seemed to be working. Hopefully Beaumont and Port Arthur will be able to open up soon. I know quite a few people who have been displaced, such as my brother, who are very interested in getting back to their normal routines.

We arrived home yesterday around 4pm after leaving Brownsboro around 9am. We had no electricity and it was pretty hot inside the house.
Everything was just as we had heard from a few people who stopped by earlier to check it out for us; the fence was down, there were branches and leaves all over the place, there were no broken windows, my storage building was still standing just the way we left it, and there were no signs of vandalism or theft.
We packed up some stuff to stay the night at the church, being as there was electricity there, and got some McDonalds food to satisfy our hunger pains. We went over to a great friend’s house to do some laundry and do a little swimming to cool off. We found out that we had electricity and went home after picking our stuff up from the church around 11:30pm.
It took a few hours for the house to cool off so we could get a few hours sleep before going to work this morning. It felt SO good to be cold this morning.
My parents still don’t have power (they’re close to Beaumont), but they only lost a few trees. They didn’t have one broken window, and only got about 5 inches of rain.
To my knowledge, everyone I know is doing just fine.

I heard this evening that someone from our church went by the house to check on our stuff. The fence between us and the neighbor fell into her yard, but it didn’t look like anything else was damaged. Not even my building! That made my day much better.
My parents don’t know yet whether there was any damage to their house or their other house that they’re selling in Port Arthur. Their house is about 50 miles east of ours, so it’s possible that they might have had some damage.
I hope there’s not the same kind of traffic going home that there was leaving…

We got up at 2:30am yesterday morning to leave at 3, but didn’t end up leaving until around 3:30am. We started heading up 225 and I was thinking, “This is GREAT! We’ll be in Athens in, at most, 6 hours.” As soon as Beltway 8 was in sight, I saw nothing but lights… standing almost perfectly still. At 9:30am, we were still only 39.5 miles from where we started.
We worked our way around and through traffic for about 15 to 20 minutes, and around 1:00pmwe decided to get off of 59, and try to take some back roads. We started off with full tanks of gas,and at this time, I was down to half of that.
I was so excited to actually drive for the next 20 miles over 50 mph! My A/C was running and blowing the cold air in my face. I saw some signs that were showing the temperature at 112 degrees! We got to highway 75 and started going north. It was all good for about 2 miles, and then we were stuck in traffic again.
Every gas station we passed either had bags over the spouts, or lines that were 2 hour waits, and nothing but Supreme. The prices were still only like $2.89/gallon for Supreme, though. We got on 19, and headed east, and then north. I got down to the empty line, and called my father-in-law to let him know. Denny said if we ran out of gas, that he’d head down with a few gas containers for us, but we found a gas station that was pumping away, and only had a 20 minute wait shortly after my phone call. We only had to drive about 8 miles to find it.
We filled up with gas, still around the same price, and headed north. We had more traffic almost half the time, and got to Athens around 10:10pm. About 20 minutes later, we had reached our destination in Brownsboro. Waking up this morning, I realize that this is some of the most beautiful land in Texas. Rolling hills, big beautiful trees, and much cleaner air than Houston.
My parents left their house yesterday afternoon in Hamshire, and got to Livingston at 3:30am this morning. They left there to head for Tyler this morning after getting a little sleep.
I hope everyone’s doing ok, and staying safe.
GOOD NEWS! Rita’s down to a CAT3!