You might have thought I’d forgotten about piano or given up on it since I haven’t posted in a while since I first bought my keyboard, but I’ve been enjoying playing over the last seven months quite a bit. When I first got the piano and some classical music books I have to admit that it looked a little intimidating! Over time though, taking things one step at a time, it wasn’t that hard.

It is really fun to learn a piece and then get to enjoy it and then really learn it. When I play I don’t read the music. Well, I do the first time until I learn the song, but once I learn the notes I just play. I guess you could call that memorization, but that sounds a little too rote for something like playing the piano, especially a piece by Beethoven.

Once I’ve got the notes down it’s so much more fun to play and to focus on how the piece is supposed to sound — the tempo and dynamics of the piece — and just let everything fall into place. In fact, I find that when I am trying to concentrate on what part comes next, what I am about to play, etc., I mess up. When I just relax and play without thinking everything just seems to fall into place — and I can just sit back and listen!

So, I hope that you enjoy listening as much as I have enjoyed learning and playing this piece…

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Update: One more Ron Paul video - interview on CNN with Wolf Blitzer. It’s a shame that the media and party Republicans squashed his campaign - he is completely on target!

I’ve been following the economic issues of the past couple of weeks and it’s interesting to say the least. I read a lot online about what’s going on with the Fed, Wall Street, etc. I don’t know if anyone knows how all of this is going to play out, but there have been some that have been talking about this for years. I found a speech from July 2002 that Ron Paul gave on the floor of the House that completely predicts exactly what has happened with the housing market.

As I was searching around I found another speech by Paul from March of this year regarding the economy and government’s role. I don’t normally post a lot of political things here, but this was so on target I thought that I would share. His one quote below, from the speech, completely sums up why government spending is completely out of control.

One of the contentions I’ve had about the budget is that we look at it as an accounting problem rather than a philosophy problem because the spending occurs because of what we accept as the proper role of government. And right now, it’s assumed by the country as well as the Congress that the proper role of government is to run our lives, run the economy, run the welfare state, and police the world. And all of a sudden, it puts a lot of pressure on the budget.

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Well, it looks like our little “Hurrication” to Chappell Hill is going to come to an end sooner rather than later. Rumors are that we got power back tonight! We are in the front of the Woodlands and there are still a lot of areas without power, so we are pretty lucky to be one of the first.

Still, we’ll probably hang out up here for a few more days as Houston gets a little more back to normal — it’s pretty comfortable up here and the evacuation manager has yet to kick us out!

Monday we chilled out most of the day — getting a little work in alongside a healthy dose of Ike updates through the local news and interwebs. Then we headed out to the Brenham airport to a cool little cafe they have there. We ate outside and it was gorgeous — the weather was amazing!

As Mamoo would say, “It’s five o’clock somewhere!” — and it was about 2pm, so some Amber Bock seemed appropriate! The burgers and onion rings were great!

My dad just bought a new Lincoln town car and it is the super long edition. Like the Town Cars that you ride to the airport in. It is pretty sweet, but as a joke on the way from the restaurant, Carrie and I both jumped in the back and made him chauffeur us around town!!! LOL

We did complain about the lack of Kleenex in the back armrest. No complimentary water either!

Note the “Front Pass Seat” button that allows you to move the front passenger seat up…

…nice legroom!

We’ve enjoyed the time up here and this is probably the easiest evacuation anyone has ever done!

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We made it through the storm ok - at least as far as safety and house issues are concerned. Brendan didn’t fare quite so well!

Ike didn’t really hit the Woodlands until about 3:30am on Friday night. We didn’t lose power until about an hour later. The next day we drove around a bit to check things out — Carrie took a few photos — and no one had any power. HEB was open with a few lights on, but they were out of ice by the time we got there, which is really the only reason we stopped. There were people coming out of the store with ice, but we had gotten there just a little too late!

No worries — we mostly had what we needed at home. We also didn’t have any internet access on our phones, so I was getting very little information about what was going on. A little after midnight on Saturday I turned on my phone (I had been turning it completely off to conserve the battery) and started reading a few stories about the storm and aftermath. Over 4.5 million in the Houston area without power and officials were saying it could be up to four weeks before it was completely restored!

I also texted with my sister, Natalie, who was in Vegas for the weekend (smart evacuation plan!) — she told me that my parents house in Chappell Hill (a little over an hour from us) had power. The next morning when I woke up (about 7:30am — very early for me!) and still didn’t have power I said, “Get up Carrie — we’re going to Chappell Hill!”

We were on the road by about 9am and the roads were pretty clear. We took 45 south to the Beltway around to 290 — sometimes we go 1488, but there was no way I was taking back roads! There were two gas stations open that entire route that we saw. One off 45 just south of the Woodlands that had a HUGE gas line — about 80 cars deep — that extended to the feeder road. Another one was open off 290 and Barker Cypress and had lines stretching across the 290 overpass with cars waiting to fill up!

The first one apparently also had a line just for those filling up portable gas containers, which was shown on Chron.com below:

We didn’t get any damage to our house — save for a bit of water being forced under our balcony door, which soaked the carpet a bit and did cause a few wet spots on the downstairs ceiling. Hopefully that will just dry up and it should be ok.

Friday night we kept hearing this banging / popping noise and could not figure out what it was as almost everything had been taken off the streets in preparation for Ike. We found out the next day when we looked across the street to the Pavilion — it had been completely ripped apart — and the covering being snapped in the winds were what that noise had been all night!

This is how it used to look…

…and after Ike…

The main issue for us is no power. Up in the Woodlands we are on Entergy, as opposed to CenterPoint which most of Houston uses. The bad news is that Entergy was badly affected by the storm with 150 major transmission lines damaged. By noon today Centerpoint had restored power to about half a million customers, with 1.6 million still remaining without power. Entergy, on the other hand, shows under 9,000 restored out of 392,000 — or just about 2%!

All reports that I have read about Entergy and power being restored to the Woodlands and nearby areas have used weeks as the measurement. Some, including the Conroe Mayor, say two weeks and others have said up to four weeks. So, it looks like we are going to get used to some Chappell Hill living for a while!

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When I get a call from my grandmother (”Mamoo”) about Ike I know things aren’t looking so good, right? I mean, don’t “grandparents” make up 90%+ of the Weather Channel demographic?

The BTHO Melanoma fundraiser has been postponed until November 9th. I was looking forward to that, but I’m sure it will be a great success in a couple of months!

Lots of other events are being cancelled / postponed and I expect that a lot of businesses today will start sending their employees home. Not sure what we are doing yet, but will be keeping an eye on things for sure!

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