Whew (cont.)!

Around this time last year, I posted a blog entitled Whew! Here is its continuation. In the last 10 working days, I have attended 6 recruitment fairs for the Informatics graduate programs. Two of those were in one day, which made for a very long day! Although I only travel in state, it is still exhausting to do that by myself. I've been to Indiana State University, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, Depauw University, University of Southern Indiana, Hanover College, and Purdue University. These trips have taken me all across the state, but luckily I have been able to rent a car instead of putting the miles on my little Rio. I am done travelling until November when I head to Ball State University, and although, I am glad to be done for awhile, I do enjoy the time away from my office.

It is also the time of year for marching band season. Last year my niece was in the marching band in eighth grade. This year she is a Freshman. In fact, my sister's whole family is involved this year. My sister is helping with feeding the band; my other niece is a "gopher"; my brother-in-law is with the pit crew. This coming weekend is the District band competition, and I hope they do well. In their competitions up to this point, they have placed well and won several awards.

Of course, if they make it to the state competition, they will not be playing in the RCA Dome. It's roof officially came down last week, and the building will be gone within months. My other sister who lives in Indianapolis sent us pictures. My hubby put up other pictures on his blog at http://magic.rox.com. Time-lapsed video can also be found on You Tube. What a sad day! But on to bigger and better things, I suppose.

I'll update you on the band season as it progresses. Stay tuned!

Ike Strikes Again

Hurricane Ike has been watched for some time, and it was predicted to be a strong one. Not only did Hurricane Ike strike the heart of Galveston, TX, but its rath continued up the Midwest. Surprisingly Indiana got hit very hard from Ike in both rain and wind.

Yesterday Bloomington, in particular, experienced quite high winds and was under a High Wind Warning for 4 hours. The "eye" of Ike passed between us and Terre Haute. About 2:00 p.m., the winds started to die down a bit, so I headed for a shopping trip. When I got home at 3:00 p.m., our power had just gone out. I did not realize then how bad it really was.

Around 8:00 p.m. Lee and I got anxious and went to Starbuck's to get access to some Wi-Fi. The effects of Ike were far more reaching than we could have thought. Thousands of people were without power, and it could be days before we got our power back. I grew up in rural Indiana, and I never had power issues like this before. Ike, what did you do?

Lee and I prepared. We bought ice and packed our frozen food and certain refrigerated foods into our coolers. We gathered necessary belongings for the night and headed to Lee's grandma's house. What followed was one of the longest nights......neither of us fell asleep until 4:00 a.m., and our alarm went off at 7:30 a.m. Needless to say, we didn't go to work today.

We headed back home and headed to sleep in our own beds. Thankfully, at 12:15 p.m. our power came on - over 21 hours after it went off. We're one of the lucky ones. There are still thousands of people without power, and some may not get electricity back on until Saturday - nearly 6 days after it went off. (In fact, most of our neighbors still don't have power.) That is just in Indiana. Houston and Galveston folks may not see power for weeks.

Ike, I will not miss you. But, as I try to always say, it could have always been worse.