HURRICANE IKE - Saturday

well, that was fun.  

gabs and i arrived at work at 7pm last night, thankful to find all the individuals pretty calm and ready for bed.  one of the other psychologists decided to stay the night at work, so the three of us made rounds, joined a supervisor for a joy ride on a golf cart, watched balls of fury, and just generally sat around doing nothing.  the servers were closed down at 4pm, so we couldn't really get any work done, other than just conversing about various behavior plans and bemoaning our difficulty in trying to get our plans carried out with any consistency.  

so, the storm blew in, folks napped a bit, and i read several articles in the winter 2007 edition of the journal of applied behavior analysis.  yes, i'm a nerd.  

it rained, it blew, and we were very happy to leave at 7am this morning and come home for some much-deserved sleep.  gabs' mom has been cooking all weekend, which today included some pasta, salad, fruit, and gumbo.  we lost power around 6am (the state school has generators for all the buildings), and then our power at home went out as we turned the corner onto our street.  it came back on about 4 hours later, and our cable finally came back on around 7pm tonight.  

since then, we've been busy looking for news about the marina where gab's mom & stepdad live on their boat.  i happened upon this blog that gave info and a picture of their marina, which calmed our fears.  

now we're headed to bed.  you know you've been watching too much weather coverage when you say things like "hey, that storm looks like a kitty cat."  yikes.

HURRICANE IKE - Friday

ahoy!  still nothing really going on here in brenham - it's overcast with only brief moments of sunshine.  the wind has definitely picked up, though it's still in the 10-15 mph range.  gab and i slept in this morning and just took a 2 hour nap, as we try to load up on sleep before pulling a 12-hour shift tonight.  buddy (her mom's cat) is holed up underneath our bed.  

down at the coast, now, things are a different story.  all the houston news stations are showing hurricane coverage 24/7, so naturally all their reporters have donned brightly-colored wind breakers and ill-fitting hats for broadcasting from the various mandatory-evacuation sites.  haven't seen any of them blow over yet, though i just heard that one lady had to move because she got hit in the head with an airborne 2x4.  niiice.

seriously though, it appears that ike has an unusually large storm surge, which basically means that the water level at the coast (and espeically in the bay) has been steadily rising since last night.  in fact, it's already close to the top of the galveston sea wall, which, is around 15 to 18 feet above sea level.  and the storm's still 150 miles away.  i'm willing to bet that most - and possibly all - of galveston island will be under water by tomorrow morning.

here's a pic for you visual learners:

HURRICANE IKE - Thursday

okay, so it looks like i'm going to have to put the god talk on hold, as we have a hurricane headed our way. some info from today:

• it's still really hot and mostly sunny, and the wind has been picking up throughout the day. it's still a pretty light breeze, but getting more steady every hour.


• richmond state school evacuated here, so we're trying to cram 900 people into a 400 person facility. plus staff, who have to bunk in our gym and training buildings. we've got folks in hallways, offices, classrooms, etc.


• since we have all these extra people, all of our staff have to work 12-hour shifts. gab & i are on 'til 7pm tonight, then will be back friday and saturday nights from 7pm to 7am.


• we went to walmart at lunchtime today...that was a hoot. mind you, walmart is on the corner of hwy 36 & hwy 290, and both of those roads are primary evacuation routes. lots and lots of 5th wheel travel trailers. people at walmart were buying all kinds of stuff...mainly lots of bread, water and booze. and candy. sugar up the kids, self-medicate the parents.


• on a related note, this was overheard at the "stop-n-bye" convenience store: "if i'm going to be stuck in the house with my wife and kids all weekend, i'm gonna need 2 cases of beer."


• gab's mom & step-dad are evacuating to our place. they live on a sailboat near kemah, tx, which isn't exactly where you want to stay and ride out a hurricane with a larger-than-usual storm surge and wind pattern.

and so that i can compare myself, here's the most recent predicted path:

here is a link to the National Weather Service webpage (aka NOAA...aka my "weather nerd webpage") for the houston area. to save you the time, here's the link to the info on ike, and for bathroom reading, the actual discussion of what's going on. no promises on those exact links being updated.

stay dry!

quick & off-topic

this has no relation to the current discussion, but i wanted to share a fun fact - my dad is now a blogger! stop by and give him warm blogger welcome! hi dad!

is there anybody out there?

while some of my friends are having a comment-aquisition war, i'm over here blogging for peanuts with nary a comment to be found. no worries...like so many before me, my greatness will likely be unappreciated until years after my death.

i wanted to follow up on my last post regarding the future of the church and its ability to remain relevant in our culture, but i'm not exactly sure where to begin. i suppose my original intent was to enter into a pseudo-intellectual discourse about goal and purpose again, but after giving it some thought, i'm not sure that's the direction i want to go.

instead, i want to be a bit more transparent and acknowledge that i'm developing a blister in my spiritual life, caused by the constant friction i feel between church doctrine and the essential nature of christ's teachings. to prune that down, i'll define the "essential nature of christ's teachings" in his own words: to love god with all your heart, and to love your neighbor as yourself. "church doctrine" is simply all the other stuff that the church holds dear, for one reason or another. if you've been around the church for much time at all, i'm sure you can likely identify several issues that fit into the latter category.

there are rules, and there is The Rule, and i'm tired of the the rules being held as prerequisites to the kingdom. membership to the church no longer hinges on a belief in christ, but rather rests on our willingness to adhere to a set of doctrinal views. the idea that "we are all brothers and sisters in christ" does not extend as well from demonination to denomination as we like to believe. we make rules to define ourselves as a group, to create a sense of belonging to those inside...and too often forget that we may also be creating a sense of exclusion to those outside.

i grew up in the church of the nazarene, attended a baptist church with my grandparents when visiting them, and spent several years in a state where nearly all of my friends were lutheran or catholic. my wife was raised presbyterian, and we're currently attending a nondenominational-ish church with baptisty leanings. it would be impossible to follow all of the doctrinal rules for the different churches - issues like alcohol, tobacco, gender roles in the church, and sexual relationships vary widely enough, and if you add in more "religious" issues such as the nature of our relationship with christ, grace, and sanctification, things get more tortuous than my stomach can handle.

i've had religious leaders tell me directly: that the church is more forgiving of someone driving drunk than they are of two unmarried people living together, that alcohol is okay but tobacco is not, that female clergy are sinners, that god could strike a child dead for acting up in public, that without the church you cannot have a relationship with god, that you don't need the church to know god, that once you're forgiven you're always forgiven, that you can never be totally forgiven, and that if you are a good enough christian, you can reach a point where you never need to be forgiven because you no longer sin.

it's no wonder more people say they believe in god than believe in the church. only one of them can be infallible, and it ain't the church.

so what's a person to do? there's three options: (1) attend a church (2) don't attend a church, or (3) start your own church. they all have respective drawbacks: (1) limitations on your involvement and risk of being socially isolated, (2) loss of opportunities for fellowship with other believers and coporate worship, (3) being labeled a cultist and risk of recreating the same problems, among others. you lose regardless of your choice, but thus far i've opted for #1, as it seems to have the least number of drawbacks...or at least its drawbacks are the most comfortably familiar. it's shameful that we are comfortable and familiar with the church having shortcomings.

i don't really have any answers, just more questions. i am, however, thoroughly convinced that striving to embody love to others each day is not only the best way to live, it's the way of life that christ modeled for us. i'm less and less concerned with doctrine and more and more concerned with love. so, take all your rules, write them down, hang them on the wall, and try your hardest to follow them. i'm going to try my hardest to follow christ.