We don't like Ike

This past weekend my stepsister got married! This is fabulous. Normally I would have all kinds of things to say about the ceremony, the flowers, the dresses, the cake. (Especially the cake.) But in addition to all that, there is something else to talk about. Something large and menacing and altogether disruptive. That's right. I'm talking about Ike.

This is Ike. He's a category 2 storm, which doesn't seem particularly bad, but he comes with a ridiculously large storm surge of 14 feet (much better than the projected 30 feet). Worst of all, he came ashore in the town I grew up in, where both of my parents still live with their spouses. In addition to that, it then followed highway 288 up to where my brother and his wife live, then decided to take interstate 45 to Conroe, where my stepsister's wedding was scheduled to be occurring. After all that, he decided to continue on to hit my grandparent's house and then straight to Rockwall as a tropical storm to dump rain on our house.
All in all, this storm really had it out for my family.
We managed to pull of the wedding. It was a beautiful ceremony that we managed to get all fixed up in eight hours, after deciding to push things forward a day to avoid being crushed by falling tree branches in the outdoor setting. We danced, we ate, we had general revelry. My stepsister looked fantastic and I could tell that she and her new husband were really happy. I'm glad we got to do it - even if we had to hurry it up a bit.

As soon as the ceremony was over, we all headed for a night of sleep before a morning of evacuating to my grandparents, where we hunkered down for the rest of the weekend. We rode out the remaining parts of the storm there. For those who are worried, everyone is okay. Nobody lost anything that can't be replaced. My dad lost a tree. My mom lost a fence. My brother, well, he lost a gate latch. Everyone made it out okay. Now if we could just get power and water restored to the Houston area, everything could start going back to normal for them.

The weirdest part of all this? E and I go back to work tomorrow like nothing even happened. The Big-D is a-ok from this mess. So while my family down in H-town goes through cleanup, we've got to head back to work.

I might take the cleanup.