Houston, Saturday, September 24. 9:00 am

NEAL: As a hurricane, this thing is a dud. The power never went out, cable TV/internet never went out. According to Sarah, the official landfall happened at 2:40 am, but apparently we all slept through it. Even Clint, who was determined that he was going to watch TV until it was over (or until the power or the cable went out) ... but he went out instead ...we found him and Charley asleep on the couch this morning.

The biggest disaster in all this: the impossibility of evacuating two million of people along highways that are jammed on normal business days. Instead of evacuating, most residents of Houston should have listened to the Harris County Emergency Coordinator, who stated last Wednesday that people who are not in the storm surge zones should remain in their own homes:
"Run from the water, hide from the wind"See Ann's comment about this.

Of course, Galveston had to evacuate. If there's one iconic image of Rita that the media will rerun forever, it's the aerial footage of Interstate 45 at 3:00 am: eight lanes of bumper-to-bumper traffic creeping north through the middle of Houston.

But Galveston's evacuation through Houston made Houston's situation all the worse. So why were other government officials insisting that everybody in Houston should evacuate? If more people had taken the emergency coordinator's advice, and stayed home, they would have avoided those monumental traffic jams. And, of course, the traffic jams would not have been so severe.

And why didn't Ann and I take that advice and simply stick with Plan A in the first place?

Overreaction to Katrina, I guess.

The situation right now: it's raining, windy, and cloudy. Temp is down to the 70s, which is actually a relief from the 90s we've had for the past few weeks. The only apparent damage was to the storage shed door, where some of the veneer blew off.

And we emptied the bathtub so I could finally take a shower!

Now, Sarah, about that chocolate cake...