rain, rain, rain...

WOW! That was a TON of rain from Ike! I am so thankful we do not live in Houston or Galveston. There have been even more evacuees that came into town after the storm was over because they did not have electricity. Mom and dad came over on Saturday to join in on our movie watching because they lost electricity. I rented about 5 movies on Saturday and we ended up with some pretty wierd ones. I think I have lost the renting knack or something. I guess i just need to stick with ones that I have heard of. Two of them just ended at crazy parts and after that we didn't watch anymore of the ones that I rented and Dad and Ray went to get dinner and another movie. Next time I will be walking through the interior movie aisles instead of the new/ recent releases. We have seen those newer ones that we need to see, i suppose... I digress...

Anyways, we had a good lazy day on the couch in the rain- Frannie would not go out for anything- she HATES the rain... It is pretty funny... We had tons we could do around the house, but I (easily) talked Ray into just relaxing on Saturday and saving the work for another day. It was really nice, really nice not to be at the bad end of the storm. We are thankful for that and that we didn't lose any trees as there are a lot down in the neighborhood.

the hurricane crazies...

Hurricane's a comin... Wow, I thought that Dallas was crazy a few years ago when Rita was supposed to make it all the way up there. Not near as crazy as it has been down here. There are shelters set up for all the evacuees from Houston and wherever else they are coming from. We went to the grocery store during lunch yesterday because we had nothing for dinner and I knew it would be crazy after work. It was definitely already nuts! Our office is right across the street from Kroger and it has been pretty funny watching all the people stalking up on water- They have water sitting outside of the store luring them in... Schools were cancelled today, even though it is not supposed to hit Galveston until tonight (although i did see they are getting a good water surge right now on the sea wall). So, it should be interesting to see what happens. All I know is that I heard that after the storm, next week we should have some nice cooler weather, so I am looking forward to that!

skydive... check!

So, yesterday I had the opportunity to do something that I have always wanted to do... jump out of an airplane! One of my co-workers, Morgan and her husband, Dave skydive all the time and I asked her if her husband would take me tandem and so we finally did... WOW! What an amazing experience... I didn't get a videotape or anything because Morgan also jumped with us and as you can see from the pictures, there wasn't anymore room for the guy to take the video. One fun thing about skydiving is that you get to have two experiences for one... riding in a tiny plane and jumping, of course. (For some reason, I could not get the first pic to slide down under this text...) SO, the above pic) is us getting into the tiny plane, first me, then Dave, then Morgan. Notice how big we are compared to the plane, yeah... very small...

ok, all closed up, ready for takeoff.
The white door was opened once we were at 10,000 feet and then Morgan opened the door and crawled out under the wing on the "step". Then, I had to scoot forward and sit on the edge of the plane in the doorway and put my feet on the step. Then I got really scared and wondered "What the heckles and I doing up here?!?" Morgan said that my face looked really funny right about then as I was looking down at Coulter Airfield. Then Dave spun us around as we jumped and had a free-fall of about 5,000 ft before he pulled the parachute. WOW!!! I pretty much screamed the ENTIRE freefall. Ray followed the plane on the entier 25 minute ascent and was able to see us right when we jumped outwith his binoculars- he said you could hear the plane slow down. He said he kept thinking that we were getting really close and then would look without the binos and we were still small dots. It was exhilerating and amazing! I can definitely see why people spend a lot of time and money doing this.

doing turns
Once the chute was open we glided a bit and then Dave asked how I was doing and then we did some turns, first slow ones, then fast ones. Very fun!

Then we landed and it was over, it seemed like a long time, but it also went REALLY fast! Now, I feel like I have done all of the parachute type of activities that I want to do. Parasailing in Destin, Florida, Paragliding in Interlaken, Switzerland, and finally skydiving in Bryan, Texas!