Well, it has been a week since Hurricane Ike slammed into the Texas Coast just a few miles East of Galveston. Up here where I live (almost 90 miles from the coast) we did have sustained hurricane force winds. We ended up losing power for 4 days, but some are still without and may not get it back for another couple of weeks or more. Luckily, we had no damage to our house, but many houses in our area had major damage and many of you have probably seen the completely destroyed homes along the coast. I personally know some people who lost everything. My company was back up and running on Tuesday, although most of our employees are still without power and some without running water as well.

Many families are now trying to figure out their next steps with their damaged and in some cases completely destroyed homes. I also teach at Texas A&M in Galveston and they have decided to move the classes and students to the main campus in College Station since the road and bridge to the campus on Pelican Island is impassable. It will be quite some time before Galveston is back up to speed with basic services like power, water, gas, and sewer. Some students are considering withdrawing for the semester as the move will not be possible for them.

Since everyone has seen the destruction pictures on the news (took some myself), I decided to share some Sunrise and Sunset shots of Ike's skies instead. This particular shot was taken last Saturday evening about 12 hours after Ike had moved through this very area. This was the scene for several days as gas stations had no power to their pumps. The few that got power back had people waiting in line for hours to get some gas for their cars and generators. There is a Dominos Pizza store and a Radio Shack store in this photo and a couple of days after the storm and without power, a lot of people would have loved a pizza and could have used some batteries, flashlights and radios from the Radio Shack. Unfortunately, they weren't open.