Entries this day: houston_flooded houston_flooded_2

houston flooded

21:31 Friday 11 September 1998

Today started last night for me. Manda came over and we talked and chilled and she had brought some Japanese crab burritos or something like that: Crab, celery, rice, all rolled into a burrito shape with seaweed as the wrapper. Good stuff. She ate them mostly with soy sauce, I ate them mostly plain.

Then she showed me the green stuff that came with the meal. Looks kinda like play-doh. A bit squishier.. maybe like hummus.

But play-doh is salty, and hummus tastes a bit tangy. This green stuff was hot.

Oh yes! I recognized Lucian had a tube of this at Con Con! Like a toothpaste tube, but I wouldn't try brushing my teeth with it. I took a splot of it on my finger.

"This is for Lucian," and smeared it fully onto my tongue and squished it around my mouth ohmygod. I closed my eyes and zoned on the sensation.

Tears poured out my eyes. If I breathed wrong, the vapor sizzled my nose... WOW. To a dull burning the feeling chilled and then began to subside. I squished the saliva around my mouth and swallowed it all down.

Yeah.

Manda was wide eyed like, "wow."

We finished the burrito things (what are they called?) and at the end the green goop was left. I smooshed it around with the chopsticks and tasted the hot residue on the sticks. Hmm. Again?

Some twisted part of me said "yes" even though Manda was all, "'stotally up to you." I got a bigger blob than Lucian had done at Con Con. I pondered it.. It only took 10 minutes last time; this couldn't take more than 15. Smeared it on my tongue and onto the roof of my mouth.

sizzle went my tongue. ha ha went the green stuff. eeep went the burning sensation through my nose. My eyes cried and I meditated on the whole process again. mmmmm

damn that was hot. Even now as I type, 24 hours later, I can still feel my tongue is raw. Crazy stuff. Try it!

But what happened all day today? Houston flooded. That's what I originally intended to write about. See the next entry.

:-)

houston flooded 2

22:16 Friday 11 September 1998

The plan was that today at 5am Bryan would arrive at my house from Oklahoma City and I would drive him to Intercontinental Airport so he could fly off to Newark at 7am.

Fair enough except that it was raining super hard all night. Bryan called me at 5:15am. He said he thought he passed the exit to get to my house, and so I told him to turn around and try to find it again. Soon as I hung up the phone I realized my mistake. He had not passed the exit yet, and in fact was only barely close.

"Awman... and now he's going the wrong direction looking for me" My brain kinda freaked out for a second and I realized there was really nothin' I could do (since the caller ID said "UNAVAILABLE" for the number and he had been at a pay phone anyway.. Hmmm.)

So I put my CD player on repeat: Beastie Boys' "Paul Revere" from their Licensed to Ill album. Why? Because the last time I saw Bryan was last weekend in Tulsa, and we recited that song verbatim before one of our meetings. I chilled and meditated, "Bryan call me back. Bryan call me back."

It worked, or not, and he called me back and I gave him my car phone number and instead of him coming to my place, zipped up there and he headed back toward the airport and I told him to find a hotel and call me. I woulda told him to simply go to the airport, but he was nervous doing that.. It is a big airport..

So I zip off to get him and woah-- Allen Parkway is flooded. So I zip off to the next closest place to go north on I-45. Also flooded. D'oh!

So I zip off to the next closest place, which was fully a couple miles away and finally got on the freeway.

Way late and the traffic was bad but not terrible and only in a couple of places was the freeway waterlogged down to 1 lane passing through.. I sped along at about 50mph, fully 10 mph faster than traffic was flowing.

Got to the hotel where Bryan was waiting outside and zipped off to the airport, tossed him out at ticketing and I parked and ran inside and bing.. there's Bryan in line. He had missed his flight and was in line to get reseated on a different flight.

The next flight was at 8:02am, only 1 hour after the first, so we casually walked to the gate and everything was all good.

Then I had to go home.

This time I was headed toward downtown Houston, in rush hour traffic, with a tropical storm bucketing water on us. All the news reports were saying, "don't go downtown." "Go home." "All these school districts are closed." "Forget it." But especially "Don't go downtown."

But I *live* downtown!! Where are all these other people going?????

I saw a whole ton of brake lights since I-45 was apparently closed inside the 610 loop, so I took the loop to Shepherd and actually made it home pretty quickly.

9am I got home. Called in to work. No way am I coming in; I want to play!!!!

Eric called. So I took the opportunity to invite him to go play out in the rain with me. He accepted and we went.

We walked from my house to Allen Parkway, which apparently had been closed due to flooding. I figured the water would be a few or maybe in 5 feet deep in the underpasses.

Holy cow was I wrong! The water was a few feet *over* the overpass!

Now wait... before I get you all confused: Allen Parkway dips down about 25 feet to go under the "ground level" roads. "Ground level" in this case means the level of the top of the banks of Buffalo Bayou, a small river thing that usually is 20+ feet below its banks. Not today.

Today, Buffalo Bayou had escaped. The water had totally crested its banks and poured over the land and filled the underpass of Allen Parkway. Amazing. I had never seen it so deep in the 9 years that I've lived here.

Nothing for Eric and I to do but go for a walk! We stayed on the ground level roads, though I was tempted to swim in the 25 feet deep water over Allen Parkway.. My higher self suggested that I don't do that. But we walked.

Walked and waded and splashed and had a great time, marveling at air bubbles coming up through the groove between the sidewalk and street, marveling at the swarms of insects using the rail as a haven, marveling at the cars stranded with water over their hoods, but most of all, marveling at all the water!!!!

"We gotta have a camera!"

We walked a bit further and saw a sign that we *had* to photograph.

            FLOOD
            GAUGE

Then we got yelled at from a guy on the shore.

"HEY YOU TWO IN THE WATER!! YOU DUMB ASSESS! GET OUT OF THE WATER! THERE ARE GIANT PUMPS DOWN THERE THAT WILL SUCK YOU UNDER!!!

Eric said, "okay!"

I said nothing but thought thankfully to myself that I wouldn't get sucked under because it's not my time to die yet. Thank you angels.

I joked, "we coulda told him, 'oh yeah? come get us!'" "Or walked over toward him and be all, 'what?' and then pretend to trip and drown." We didn't do any of these, but we did go back to get a camera.

Actually we just got film for Eric's camera and drove back closer to the intersection.

It was deeper this time. Not by much, but the water had clearly risen a few inches in the 30-45 minutes we took to get back. Wow.

We got the pics, laughed and had a great time. They turned out beautifully. We got them developed at Walgreen's today and I will soon get some on my site so you can see!!

(9 October 1998) Here they are!.