The Predators

A friend of ours lives on the edge of town where there are lots of woods and lakes. He has been trapping feral hogs and butchering some. He had been leaving some of the bones, etc. out overnight and they were disappearing. A neighbor of his had all the camera equipment to set up surveillance of the front yard.

What you see in this picture taken after sunset are two Red Wolves. I didn't know anything like that existed here, but they used to be numerous. They apparently died out a number of years ago and have not been sighted often. The man who got these pictures, a retired forestry service supervisor, said some may have inbred with coyotes, but he felt these looked like the real deal.

The one is kind of neat. Notice the opossum; it doesn't look like it's planning on giving any ground. Don't know what happened to it. They estimated these wolves are around 60-70 lbs., so about the size of a normal Labrador Retreiver.

The Airplane

One of Hutch's Christmas gifts was a wooden airplane. I couldn't resist the urge to make this high quality video to send beforehand. I know this is a bit out of date, but what the heck.

Sunrise, January 13, 2009

CONSTRUCTION PROJECT

Since Grandmommy (Janell's mother), has lived with us, we have stored her kidney dialysis supplies in the our living room. Although this room is not used frequently, the boxes took up a lot of room and were in the way if we wanted to do anything in this part of the house. So, just before Thanksgiving, I began construction of a climate controlled closet inside our garage. I completed this a week ago, and we now have a little room in which to store all the paraphernalia. If you are interested in more, you can take the attached video tour. Also, if you are interested in dialysis basics, read on.

Real Basic Dialysis
The method Grandmommy uses is called peritoneal dialysis (PD) which can be done at home. The most common type, hemodialysis, requires actual filtration of the blood three times a week at a dialysis center. PD is more convenient because it can be done automatically at night while the patient is sleeping. Basically, a dextrose (a sugar) solution is pumped into the abdominal cavity through an implanted port. The material remains for an hour or so and then is pumped out. This cycle is repeated several times during the night. The last input remains in the abdomen until the next night. The cleansing of the blood uses a process called osmosis, where the impurities in the bloodstream transfer across the peritoneal membrane due to a concentration difference between the blood and the fluid in the abdominal cavity.

While PD is more convenient to do, it does require keeping a supply of solutions on hand. The process requires about 10 liters (about 2.5 gallons) of solution every night. We keep a little more than one months supply on had, so this translates to more than 30 boxes of solution at 10 liters per box. The process also requires other supplies, such as tubing, which we must also keep. What you see in the video clip shows what we have on hand midway between deliveries.

AN UPDATE - BELIEVE IT!

Time has passed by in a hurry. It occurred to me that we haven't posted anything in a while. It's hard to believe that we could be so busy since we're retired.

After things settled down in October, we finished the Habitat for Humanity house the local affiliate had started in September. Subsequently, another one was started in early November to be completed it in January. Normally, we build three houses in the spring and two in the fall.

FEMA has featured our Habitat house that was under construction when Ike struck. It seems they were impressed by the building techniques to build a house that will withstand hurricane winds.

There have been numerous opportunities to help with rebuilding after hurricane Ike. I've been doing a bit of that in Surfside and Freeport. There's a lot of folks who don't have many resources, so relying on volunteers is the only way they will get their homes repaired. The effort has been rewarding.

This update is pretty short. I'll try to do better in the future. Of course, this is coming from folks who don't view a Netflix DVD for weeks at a time.

Visitors From The East

From September 18th to October 12th, Stacy, Hutch, and Elsa visited us. We had such a wonderful time, even with being displaced until our power was restored. Alex came to pick them up on October 9th and was here for much too short a time.

It will come as no surprise that we enjoyed the grandchildren. Hutch is a real joy and is fun to have around. Elsa is growing like a weed, and toward the end of the visit, she began making more eye contact with subsequent smiles. We are already looking forward to Christmas.

Hutch decided that our Lab, Ollie, was great entertainment. Ollie, in turn, enjoyed the goodies that dropped from the high chair during mealtimes. Hutch learned that Ollie liked to chase tennis balls, so he would toss them with great glee and watch Ollie bring them back.

The video clips below are mainly for Hutch to enjoy. If you feel lead to watch a Labrador Retriever walk around and listen to a tune from a toy fire engine, well you just go ahead.

The Recovery

We have been back for a couple of weeks now. Superficially, everything seems normal. There's just this awareness that not all is right with the world. One begins to realize there are subtle differences post storm. There is more sunlight in some places than there was a month ago. Store signs are missing letters or are dangling at some angle. News coverage is on to other things, but the effects of the cyclone are still being felt by many.

Damage locally is being repaired. However, we can go to Surfside ten miles away and see some pretty amazing sights. Streets and roads are washed out, and, regrettably, there is severe damage to some homes. All in all, they escaped the harsher fate of Galveston 50 miles to the north. However, if it's your home that's beat up, it doesn't matter.

There are lots of volunteer opportunities, and I plan to do my bit when possible. One of the big problems is that many houses, all of which are elevated on pilings, need exterior staircases. The homes survived with little or no damage, but the storm surge took out the stairs and folks can't get back in.

Here's a few pictures of Surfside that were sent to me.

View of Surfside on Saturday morning
after Ike made landfall.

Stacy, Alex, Hutch, and I drove around last Saturday. There are several homes that were subjected to lots of sand erosion. Their foundations were simply undermined and they have settled at odd angles. You can see some of that in the building directly above. It's a public pavilion. You can see the broken roof due to the part of the structure that as settled in the water. There's the bits of people's lives still scattered about: a boat sitting on dry land next to the Intercoastal Canal, golf carts washed from underneath a house are sitting in a vacant lot, refrigeration equipment from a restaurant sitting outside under a tarp.

There is a road that parallels the beach, running from Surfside to Galveston and crossing the San Luis pass where Galveston Bay connects to the Gulf of Mexico This is where the eye made landfall. It has been so damaged that it is impassable. Several lengthy stretches are simply gone. Residents of a small community at the extreme northeast end are basically cut off from us. Estimates are that it will take about $100 million to rebuild it to today's standards.

In the end, we dodged a bullet. Only a relative few are having major problems while our neighbors up the coast are facing monumental challenges. This will take years to build everything anew.

I suppose to those who live elsewhere it may seem strange that we would stay here in the first place with the knowledge that all our material possessions could be blown away in any given hurricane season. I don't relish the potential much myself. Put the heat and humidity of the Gulf Coast and the tabletop flat land in the mix, and it really seems outlandish to live here. But it's just home.