I’m too lazy to cut and paste it here, so here’s info from my Texas travel website about Texas State Parks waiving entrance & camping fees for Hurricane Rita evacuees.
(Yes, the parks also accepted Hurricane Katrina evacuees, in case you’re wondering.)
I was surfing CNN’s weather news when the following banner ad displayed:
First, I can’t think of what occasion one would ever be inclined to send this…
But with a Cat 5 hurricane named Rita bearing down on already hurricane-ravaged areas and the 4th largest city in the USA?! I guess someone at 1-800-Flowers.com thinks they’re being savvy marketers? Savvy wouldn’t be my choice of words, however.
I visited my parents this evening, and on the way home figured I’d fill up my gas tank to avoid any hassles later in the week due to weather, higher gas prices, etc. Seems the rest of the world had the same idea… I passed three gas stations and each one had several dozen vehicles in line. This, at 11 PM on a Wednesday. Couple that with the fact that nearly every vehicle I saw in the slow lane on Hwy 1604 was a charter bus, and I get the sense that Hurricane Rita is no longer just a false-color radar image on TV, she’s an unwelcome visitor heading straight to our doorstep.
– Image credit: CNN
Well, it looks like Hurricane Rita will be making the rest of the week blow for South and Central Texas, including cities as far inland as ours (San Antonio). She’s a Cat 4 and still has well over 48 hours to build strength before making landfall late Friday/early Saturday.
Grr… biking, flying and the San Geronimo Young Eagles rally don’t look good for this week even though we aren’t in an area that is likely to require any evacuations (I assume). It’s got to be terrifying having fled Katrina, only to discover another Cat 3+ hurricane is now bearing down on your temporary shelter in San Antonio, or worse (much closer to the coast), Houston.
We watched Kinsey last night. Not surprisingly, reviews of the movie are polarized — people either love or hate the movie, or at least either love or hate Dr. Kinsey. The movie piqued my interest on Dr. Kinsey’s life and his research methods, and I’m inclined to learn more if for no other reason than to see if some of his detractors are over-wrought or right-on-target. It didn’t help that our Netflix DVD of the movie insisted on skipping during portions of two key scenes, so I may have missed some key dialogue such as during the interview with the serial pedophile (among other labels that would fit).
On Sunday morning, Justin and I took Angela, a good friend and former co-worker, on her “first flight”. Angela’s a natural world traveller, with many hours logged in the air on vacations to Argentina, Canada, Puerto Rico, Mexico and other locales, yet she had never been in a single-engine aircraft. It was a pleasure to make one of her dreams come true on Sunday, flying her over various San Antonio area sights! I didn’t realize how much I’d missed Angela’s energy and storytelling in the past two years since I parted company with corporate America. She hails from Puerto Rico and has a delightful accent and infectiously good attitude. Seeing her again, I am reminded that our lunches and occasional breakfasts together were one of the highlights of my day!
