Or at least the electricity. Fighting sore muscles from packing and carrying too many boxes of books yesterday (yes, I have a lot of books!) I pretty much took the day off, sleeping in late, then going to the movies where they have air conditioning (it was a hot, humid day). I came home from the movies to find out that I HAVE ELECTRICITY!

Haven't seen any of the neighbors to find out if everyone is back on. They're probably all inside enjoying their electricity.

I think I'd rather have the electricity, but I'm not ungrateful for having my phone service back! It means that I can talk to friends and family without needing to use my cell phone. The only glitch is that I don't have long distance service on the phone, so they have to call me. So, if you know me well enough to have my home phone number, feel free to call!

Really just another day like pretty much every day the last week. Got some packing done, still no electricity. Yadda yadda.

Let's hope for more exciting (in a GOOD way) news tomorrow!

I actually took a picture this morning of the mounting pile of garbage on the curb. Some of it was mine, of course, but the majority of it was my neighbor's. They live on a corner lot and have a lot more trees, so they had a lot more yard clean-up to do. And I also worked on cleaning out my garage this morning, so had another 3-4 bags of my own to add to the pile. So it was getting pretty scary. Does anyone remember the trash heap from Fraggle Rock?

Anyway, today, the garbage truck came! They only took part of the garbage, appearing to be looking for household trash and not yard waste. Ours wasn't really separated too well -- it started out separate (like the news reports asked), but over the last week, they kind of merged. Anyway, the pile is down and hopefully they got most of the stinky stuff, but there's still a huge pile of garbage bags on the curb.

By the way, I want to send out public thanks to two places:

JustLawns.com -- this is my yard service. I did not expect them to be showing up at my house any time soon, but when I came back from Lubbock on Wednesday, my yard was clean of all debris and the yard was mowed and trimmed as usual! They will be getting a very nice thank you card, and maybe some homemade chocolate chip cookies. If the electricity comes back on.

Panera Bread -- They're open, they have yummy bagels, they have AC, they have free WiFi and they have put extension cords on all the outlets so people can come in and charge up themselves and their electronics. If you have a Panera Bread near you, go have a bagel and tell them how much the Willowbrook Panera in Houston ROCKS!

Still hanging in there. No word on when we'll get electricity, and school, which was supposed to open on Monday, will now be closed on Monday. Will it open on Tuesday? Who knows...

I'll get another podcast out as soon as I can.

...but still without electricity. I bought some battery powered lights and fans and a bunch of batteries and brought them back with me. I got some hassle at the airport for so many batteries in my carry-on luggage, which almost made me miss my plane, but come on, people! I'm going to HOUSTON! You know, the place with 1.37 MILLION people are still without power?

But never mind, I still made my plane, I am home, it's a beautiful day so I can air out the house, and all-in-all things are good even if there isn't any electricity yet.