It is NOT supposed to be 100 degrees here. I thought I left this behind in Houston. But I guess if this were Houston it would be 100 degrees for the next few days. At least here the temperature will drop twenty degrees tomorrow and another ten degrees on Tuesday.

To sum up the month of April:

• I went to Seattle to visit Harry and Kathleen and my nephew, Charlie. My mom also visited them the same weekend. Good times.
• At work, I got a bonus, a good performance review and a raise.
• Saw Muse at the Great Western Forum with Kent, Tara, and her sister, Brooke. Excellent show. Read on »

Went running this morning at Upper Newport Bay Nature Preserve. It was pretty nice. The area reminded me a little bit of central Texas. I’m glad it’s only a few miles away, and it’s a much better place for a jog or a bike ride than Hermann or Memorial parks. Memorial looks pretty nice in the picture on the Houston Parks Department Web site, but what they don’t tell you is that half of Houston uses that jogging trail.

I apologize in advance for how boring this post is despite the fact that the events it describes were not. I’m just not feeling very creative at the moment. With that said…

Rita was nothin’. I told you.

It took me four hours to drive 30 miles to work on Thursday. I spent the next three nights at Dan’s parents’ house, which is maybe four or five miles from my office. Driving time: 30 minutes. We spent most of the weekend playing boardgames and cards … and watching the relentless news coverage on television. Byron, our fellow refugee, schooled us in Scrabble. I also played Risk for the first time in years. As often happens with superior players, I found myself victim of an alliance to destroy my yellow armies. After several hours, they Byron and Dan successfully knocked me out of the game.

The weekend was a nice mini vacation. And I ate very well. On Thursday night, it was looking more and more like Houston would see none of the hurricane. By Friday night, we had a little wind, but nothing exciting. At some point during the night, we lost power. It remained off most of Saturday. The breeze early in the day felt pretty good, but as the cloud cover left in the afternoon, it started getting hot. That and the threat of boredom was probably the worst of the sufferings Rita caused us.

On Sunday morning, I left to make a quick visit to my apartment (everything looked okay and it didn’t even look like I’d lost power) then I went to church. I helped Shae out on guitar, so I was there for both services. We were expecting far fewer people than actually showed up. It was neat because last week’s sermon was about the importance of community. And this week, people shared stories of how they worked together in their communities because of Hurricane Rita. They talked to neighbors they’d never met before, shared meals with them, played games, boarded up houses. It was cool to hear. I hope it doesn’t end now that the threat of danger has passed.

Anyway, that’s all for now.

Driving home from work, I noticed the Chevron I spoke of in my last post has seen fit to raise prices again. So for all of you keeping track, let’s recap what we know so far:

Tuesday evening: $2.59. Wednesday morning: $2.69. Wednesday evening: $2.85.

I didn’t notice if there’d been any changes at the Exxon or Racetrack stations. What will the price of regular unleaded be at the Chevron Thursday morning? I’m going to go with $2.97. What’s your bid? Closest without going over wins. And no $1 guesses. This is for real, people; it’s not The Price Is Right.