Sleep Deprived...

The Valca clan remains well.

Grateful thanks to all who have wished us well.

I made it home last Thursday for a few hours before heading into work. The home is fine; structure good with no leaks or damage. A few window screens have disappeared along with most of the fences in the neighborhood. No tree damage. I did have to re-stake the hibiscus bushes. Our area of town out on the East side of Harris County was thrashed badly by Ike.

Like the rest of the third-world, we remain without power and may not have any until after this next Thursday.

Lavie joined me at home on Friday and then Alvis returned Saturday. We are warm but comfortable. We keep reminding ourselves that Houston was settled and its citizens thrived long before air-conditioning and refrigeration were area staples along with long-neck beers and bar-b-que. (Well, maybe not that long ago...)

Our neighbor has graciously tossed us a power-cord from her generator and we now have electric fans at night. I'm going to be sending her flowers when the lights come back on. Or maybe one of those girly "bath accoutrement" baskets in gratidue; you know the ones with the bath beads, powders, soaps and all that stuff. Then again, she's a real Texan girl so a few 6-packs of some Texas micro-brewery goodness might just do the trick. Certainly less complicated to pick out than those girly gift baskets.

I'm currently working 12-14 hour days now assisting with logistics planning and IT team deployments. We have a lot of our offices that were damaged or knocked off line. As each facility is readied for opening we have to dispatch a team to assess the technical equipment, get all the workstations up along with the network and phone systems. Long days and nights for everyone.

For the offices that cannot be opened and the staff displaced, we are scrambling to get temporary systems established at other locations. We are getting very creative. It it weren't for the lack of sleep it might actually be fun.

Fortunately we have great leadership from higher-up, and our technical team and staff is the best in the Lone Star state. So success is not a matter of "if" but only of "when."

It's mostly the lack of power, rather than time that is keeping the posts from being very frequent at the moment.

I've got some more "Chrome" bits and pieces, I bursting at the seams to share with you of an awesome pre-hurricane gift I received from Hawaii, and then there is the usual colletion of Linkfest goodies.

Hang in there GSD fans and faithful. Recovery is a process but in words of old, full of wisdom, "This too shall pass."

Cheers!

--Claus