This photo of my house in Galveston, Texas, was taken on Monday, Sept. 15, two days after Hurricane Ike gave the island a good old-fashioned beatdown. There’s a high-water mark on the plywood nailed to the front door. On Tuesday, Sept. 23, my parents finally made it to the house. For most of the last week, residents have intermittently been allowed to “look and leave” between 6AM and 6PM.

My dad writes: “Although the water marks suggested a foot of water influx, the water was about three to four inches deep.”

So we lucked out. Big time. One of my personal fears, though, has been that we would lose our family photo albums.

My dad added: “The three-ring binders placed in Keith’s closet sustained water damage. That is, the bottom of about 10 albums were soaked and I had to cut off the bottom four slots of each slide page. In short, we probably lost about 2-3% of those old slides.  Fortunately, my old habit of taking many duplicate shots saved us from a total loss of records of your early days.  It’s nice to see slides of you guys sucking your thumbs and clinging to blankets! Keith, you are right to digitalize these slides.  I guess we can invest in a Nikon Coolpix scan.”

I would like to take this opportunity to THANK EVERYONE who asked about me and my family’s well-being. I am very appreciative.

carpets & couches
My dad: “It also appeared that water flowed toward the utility room and then to the garage.  Both the drier and washing machine in the utility room sustained severe ‘arrhythmia’ and were pronounced dead after we tried to turn them on.”

This rug is ruined.

The cleanup crew in Colony Park Circle.