Before

The dog and I stayed with friends in an apartment complex during the storm. I felt that their complex would be a safer place to be than my free-standing apartment with its numerous windows.





The complex's lawn chairs were placed in the pool and the grills laid on their sides before Ike hit.

The storm started in the evening and continued overnight. We lost power around 1am and went to bed shortly afterwards. I woke up around 4am, when I think the worst of what we got was passing over us. The wind and rain were pretty intense, and out the window I could see green flashes in the sky as the transformers failed. It's hard, in retrospect, to remember what was actually scary about it, but I have to admit that I was a little afraid. My rational mind knew that we were safe in the building we were in, but instinct won and I curled up under the covers with the dog, as far away from the window as I could get.