Living in Limbo...

Well school started back this week and I am shocked...absolutely shocked at how many students returned. We had alot of Burnet kiddos...they are being bused from all over some as far as Texas City and La Marque (which is across the causeway on the mainland). Our host school(s) Parker and Oppe are seeing less students return because their children feed out of the west end which received much more damage than the middle of the island which is where Burnet students are. Yesterday was tearful...but anytime one of their little faces saw me, or Mrs. Bacon, or another Burnet teacher that they knew, they just lit up and smiled and waved and hugged. It made us all feel better to see one another. Today I saw a rough count of our attendance (Burnet only, we are doing separate attendance for now so we will know how many from each campus are here) and it was hovering around 300 for us. When we left for Hurricane Ike our ADA was about 530. So, roughly 60% of our kiddos are back! Yay!

In other news...read the article entitled, "UTMB avoids massive round of layoffs" here: http://galvestondailynews.com/story.lasso?ewcd=4c2d61ba4eec5c48 . This worries me. It sounds very ambiguous about if the med school will return?! We could end up in Austin. Time will tell I guess...it sounds like the director is supportive of keeping the school here, but unless they find a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and some patients to start rounding on...who knows? Warren is still hearing that they will more than likely start back in January after December break, which is what we had been thinking all along.

There is a rumor that can neither be confirmed nor denied by Warren's UTMB director-man of a 30 ft. alligator running around in UTMB. Eek!

Our landlords are making progress on housing renovations, they got out the flooring and are getting new sub-flooring in already as well as making other little changes too. We'll see. Apparently plumbing is too much to add the W/D inside the house, but building a walkway and carport to have a covered walking area isn't. She is also looking at enclosing the deck, putting in darker wood (or some type of wood-like, pet friendly flooring), putting french doors in the dining room and closing off the kitchen door and putting the fridge there w/ more cabinetry, and an island. Cool! I hope all that pans out :-) Maybe we can move back in over Thanksgiving. Anyone wanna bring down their turkey fryer and some blow-up matresses?! We can have a moving in party for Thanksgiving! lol

Refugee Update:

I hardly know where to begin. First of all, go here for pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sassyartz/sets/72157607602254393/ . Mom is faster than I and has put hers up on flickr...I will probably dump mine there too when I pull them from the camera.

1. We arrived Wed. at Mark's apt. Thank goodness he had just moved to League City. I don't know what I would have done without him. Thank you Mark for opening up your home to us so we would have a place to live while we cleaned out our house! Unfortunately he did not have an internet connection (He'd JUST moved in!) so no blog updates while we were there.

2. It took us 5 days to clean out the house. Wed. thru Sun. all day everyday.

3. Anything salvagable was moved to a storage 1 mile from Mark's apt. Thank you Natalie for finding the storage!! & a free month's rent on it too! Yay! Thanks!

4. Salvagable items are things that are wooden (like kitchen table, bed frame, etc.) and things that were higher than knee deep (like pictures on the walls, some books, hanging clothes, dishes, etc.).

5. I threw away ALL bedding on the beds including matresses. (Still kinda pissed about that, had just bought a nice, new queen matress in our bedroom in July).

6. We duct taped the fridge and thank God a truckload of Mexicans drove by on that first day when we were so overwhelmed and I hired them out for $150 to move out all the large ruined items, like fridge, matresses, entertainment center, couch, chair, washer, dryer, etc. and other things too that we loaded to storage like TV's (dunno about those, they were above water line, but the cords were submerged) bookcases, bedframes, etc. Those guys were a blessing and a HUGE help!

7. Mosquitoes were the largest I've seen since Alaska. Hummingbird size! Lol

8. FEMA lady came and did a walkthrough and the paper work for us to get assistance. Asking what did we lose in each room, etc. She said we would get monetary assistance but she just did the ground work and submitted the paperwork; she was not in charge of approving money. We should get a deposit within 7 to 10 days from Friday (I think that's when she came, it is all a blur now).

9. Warren was able to come down on Thursday to help clean. His butt is draggin from working 13+ hour days on the stupid surgery rotation that A&M has it's student do.

10. I've done laundry for the past two days from 10 am to like 3pm. So far I've done about 48 loads. Yesterday I did about 30ish but it was alot of re-washing things, like first cycle in ammonia, next in detergent+borax, then I inspected each piece and if it needed to go again I'd make a new pile/load and if it didn't then I'd go ahead and dry it. So far, I've only thrown away a little less than a large trashcan full of clothes. I've taken a little bit to the cleaners too. So far I've gone through about $65 in quarters! I have a little bit more to wash tomorrow and that should wrap it up. Then I need to hose out the car! Stinky!

11. I'm sure our hotel housekeeper is wondering what the hell we are doing in here! Lol, each day has added new things this week. First a fish, then a plant and large black trashbags (full of washed clothes), then our entire wine fridge collection is sitting in a chair, now two more plants, and many many more trashbags full of washed clothes. HA!

I'll stop for now, but I do have more stories to tell about our week there...like the looting Mexicans, so stay tuned!

GISD Info

I received the following email today,

"Dear GISD Employees,

We want you to know that we are working diligently to restore our schools for your return. Each and every day we are meeting to receive the latest updates from Arnold Proctor and Fred Niccum about the conditions of our facilities. Additionally, we are attending all of the meetings with city and county officials, as well as, many other key people that are working around the clock to restore the infrastructure and city services to our Galveston community.


Report on the Conditions of Our Facilities/Campuses
The five campuses most adversely affected by Hurricane Ike were Ball High, Central, Scott, Burnet and San Jacinto, mostly due to flood and water damage. We continue to inspect our facilities daily and the reports seem to change as quickly as I can report/update the conditions. At the present time, the District has retained outside contractors that have access to heavy equipment and generators to come in and begin work on our most severely damaged buildings first. The majority of our campuses will be repaired and cleaned within the next 3 days; however, Ball, Central, Scott, San Jacinto, and Burnet will need some additional repair time. As soon as we are able, the HVAC systems will be checked for viability of operation. The number one goal of the entire clean up/restoration process is to dehumidify all of our buildings and keep them dry. GISD wants our facilities/campuses to be ready to go when the power and water come on line, whenever that might be. The GISD Transportation Center experienced high water levels on the west end of the island and plans are underway to evaluate the entire fleet. Seven of our school buses are continuing to assist the city of Galveston. Additionally, the Sheriff’s Department/Fire Emergency Response Services and the Department of Public Safety are using the Crenshaw campus on the Bolivar Peninsula as an Emergency Command Post. The Galveston Independent School District continues to partner with the city and county to lend a hand whenever we are asked to assist during this disaster aftermath recovery phase.

The following conditions need to be up and running before the District will be able to consider opening our schools:

· Safety -- Our facilities must have fully functioning (electricity, water supply, sewer, natural gas)

· Transportation

· Food Supplies

· Support Services (technology)

· Return of our Staff Members – - We are attempting to poll our staff members to see how many will be able to return to work between September 29th and October 3rd.

Please e-mail dyann_polzin@gisd.org to report your individual status!

Please state:
Your name
Assigned Campus
Grade Level/subject you teach
Job Assignment (non-teaching staff)

Presently, we will continue to work on the restoration and dehumidifying of our facilities. We are meeting daily to come up with the best plan possible for our children to return to GISD. We must consider safety first and we are continuing to partner with the City of Galveston as they work to bring our island back. We would like to aim for the target date of October 6th as our starting date to reopen the District; however, let me be very clear this is a TARGET DATE ONLY. Certainly this date is contingent on the city of Galveston being able to have the entire infrastructure functioning and working properly.

Communications Update
Currently, we have large generators set up at the District Support Center and our data systems and servers are functioning and we now have our GISD e-mail https://12.228.125.109/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.gisd.org/remote or https://12.228.125.109/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.gisd.org/mail system in place.

Additionally, the district Website is fully functional. Please go to https://12.228.125.109/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.gisd.org to read the most current updates available, as we proceed with our plans to reopen our schools.

Also, the phone system at the District Support Center (409) 766-5100 is working and we plan to update the recorded message on a regular basis (English and Spanish). Please feel free to call in for the most up-to-date information. We want to keep you informed and we will share as much information as we possibly can…

If you have not been able to return to the Island since Hurricane Ike and you plan to come back to the Island on Wednesday, September, 24th we plan to have staff members present at the re-entry point to distribute a GISD informational flyer along with other information that will be distributed by the City of Galveston.

I hope to see all of our GISD family soon!"

DO NOT go to Houston or Beaumont!!!!

This was the signage on the electronic highways signs (ya know, the ones they use for the amber alerts) leaving Dallas on 45 & 35 "Do Not go to Houston/Beaumont! Limited Fuel!"

I'm thinking, OMG!, I don't have a choice! I MUST go! I want my stuff! If there's any left!

We had fun keeping Olivia yesterday and enjoyed the Plano Balloon Festival. I would post pictures of it but I'm really tired and worn-out and don't really feel like messing with it. Eventually I'll put a slideshow on my MySpace, b/c I'll need to clean off my xD card to take a zillion pictures this coming week.

Here is the new plan...We are currently in Temple, TX...on I-35 between Waco and Austin staying at the Hampton Inn & Suites. We have a double bed room, all that was available. We went and bought a tiny fridge for the room, none of those rooms were open either. Warren begins/finishes out his surgery roation here which begins tomorrow, 8 a.m. & will go for 4 weeks.

Wednesday the island opens up again.

I'm rounding up Mom & Aunt Lisa & Lori to go invade on Wednesday. Mom & I will go stay with cousins Cheryl & Mark who live in Houston area. L&L will come down later...maybe Thursday after we assess the damage. We will try to take out all the stuff (good or bad). I talked to my landlord today and she is hot to trot to begin repair work on our house. She was concerned if we would be returning to Galveston! I told her that Warren would be up here for a while, but that I would be back whenever GISD decided to open the doors and would therefore need a place to stay. She is thinking she will have our house whipped back into shape in 3-4 weeks. I think that would be a mircle in itself! We'll see if that happens.

Tomorrow I have to deal with getting a brake light fixed, a minor amount of laundry (Wanda washed almost all, but I want to wash what we wore yesterday and a few things that I hadn't sorted out for her to wash) and file a claim with State Farm because my passenger side mirror on my car got smacked off my some damn politician sign that flew out of a U-Haul today driving down the road!! Just one more thing to deal with! Like I have time for that! Grrr...

I guess that's all for now, Warren is enthralled by the Cowboys game and I am getting sleepy...thank you all for your thoughts and prayers and for any items that you contributed to us for the clean up of our home!

Today's Info...

Ok, so far no definite word or confirmation that Warren has to go to Temple yet to finish surgery. We are hoping to know by the end of the day...we were thinking they wanted students placed and ready to start on Monday.

GISD has the following news article on The Galveston County Daily News: http://galvnews.com/story.lasso?ewcd=5af1a840c6959d1a

I have finally had a posting from the prinicpal via the secretary on: http://www.gisd.org/1635109142535307/Blog/browse.asp?C=54743&A=398&DomainID=&PostID=36&Month=0

She said, "I'm sending this message on behalf of Ms. Wiley. I spoke to her yesterday and she is well. Her regards to everyone and hopes everyone is fairing well through this ordeal. She asked that I share the following information with you: 1. PAYROLL- Direct Deposits will go out on time. No Checks will be mailed out! GISD will have a check distribution setup on Sept. 25th at the LaMarque Walmart from 8:00a.m.-12:00noon (this is ONLY for those who DO NOT have Direct Deposit). If you are not able to go to this location please email Elsie Schiro (Business Dept.) at elsieschiro@att.net let her know where you need your check mailed. Payroll corrections will be handled at a later date. We have not had many subs but if you see anyone that does sub please let them know about the check pickup location. 2. Several Galveston families are in shelters in Austin and San Antonio. Spread the word that they should be enrolled in that district (temporary). 3. Building status is stated on this webpage-please read. 4. Once cleared to report to school, we will go straight into work mode; making sure classrooms are ready and operable for students return. Ms. Wiley requested facilities place all teacher items in an area to be checked through before discarding. We will see what happened. 5. All CPU's should have been on tables. NO ONE should have had them on the floor since MIS came through to check they were off the floor; but if you moved them, then they are ruined. 6. TEA signed a 10 day waiver for days missed. WHEW!!! I have read everyone's comments and just feel numb. Take care everyone. I'm ready to get back. I have my boots and gloves and God will give me the strength. Syl".

News, finally...

Finally we have news on something! There are NO surgery slots available in Dallas...we think because their surgery courses run differently than UTMB's...they look like they are year long instead of blocked. Warren would have wrapped up trauma surgery this past week and moved onto plastics for the next 4 weeks but now we think he will just be placed into some kind of surgical rotation.

So, we may be relocating to Temple, TX where he can finish up his surgery rotation. He did have the option to take an Incomplete but he doesn't want to lose time on graduation. I am torn between going with him (GISD said that payroll will still be posting to our bank accounts) and staying and subbing in school districts that I am familiar with (Sam Rayburn, Bonham, Whitewright) not to mention connections at each one.

We will look into FEMA housing/hotel in Temple tomorrow.

Nothing new to report as of yet, there is supposed to be an announcement of some sort around noonish, although we are both feeling rather disheartend with the whole project. We are past the point of really caring what they have to say and if and when they decide to keep it open and keep it open for more than a day then we will begin plans to go back down. We both are kind of feeling like we just want to be done with it so we can move on and re-locate.

Please keep Vickie and her family in your prayers, her dad passed away this past weekend and we are going to the funeral later today.

Warren has no word yet from UTMB on placement. We are hoping to hear something soon.

Just Kidding!

Ok so they said for everyone to 'come on down' but then that caused such congestion that they had to change their minds...so now they aren't letting people in and we are out $150 for a U-Haul, or well FEMA is anyways...and we are back to the waiting. Grrrr.....

Into the debris....

We got word today that we can go back. Island will be open from 6 am to 6 pm and we can get our stuff out. $2,000 fine if you stay after 6pm!! We have a u-haul and gas cans, water, bug spray, flashlights, rubber boots, camera, etc. Off we go...

List-o-rama

Even though we don't know when we will be able to go back, we've got a list started of stuff we might need to take...so is just sort of a list to start with of things that we may take back with to start clean-up, so if anyone has these type things we could borrow to use let me know and I'll put your name on the list. I'm not sure that we will take all of it to start with, because no power for one, even w/ a generator...we need to just get stuff out initially before we can start the clean up. The mayor of Galveston is saying that it is just not livable down there and won't be for a long while...I know there is a news story on bodies floating out and a man stung a thousand times by mosquitoes swarming and sewage in the streets, etc. So it may be a very long while before we can get back. I personally would like to get there just to get our stuff out and then begin clean up so repairs can start...living there is the last thing on my mind at the moment!

Also if you think of anything that isn't on the list please comment it.

Here's the list...(Thank you Aunt Lisa for the wonderful list you and Aunt Lori brainstormed!!)

U-haul (checking on it tomorrow)
Storage (checking on storage in Bonham tomorrow)
Shots (I need a tetnus shot, will go tomorrow, and am thinking will get a maleria shot as well)
Generator (Twila)
Ice chests (Aunt Lisa)
Shop-vac (Aunt Lisa and Uncle Steve)
Gas cans & gas (Lisa-1, Mom-1)
Water, for drinking and cleaning (Lisa has 2 gal. collapsible container & 5 gal. non-collapsible)
Coleman stove (Lisa)
Propane for stove (Lisa)
Fans (Lisa has two, Mom has two)
Tools, like axe, pry bar - in case door is swollen and won't open, chain saw - case of tree limbs (Lisa)
Extension cords (Lisa, Mom-2)
Buckets (Lisa, Mom-2)
Bleach
Rags (Mom)
Paper towels
Gloves (need leather & rubber)
1st Aid kit (Warren, it is in his cool F.J. Cruiser that came with a first aid kit inside!)
Rubber boots (Lynn for me, need for Warren)
Face masks (Mom)
Hand sanitizer (Mom)
Soap
Trash bags (Mom-1 box)
Trash can
Boxes or RubberMaid tubs
Packing tape (Mom has 1 duct tape, but we will need more)
We have a lot of carboard boxes that we think are high enough up in our storage that might be fine.
We also have a friend who owns a Taco Bell and he will begin saving all boxes so we will have lots.

Lori said we can probably save our mower & weed eater, just don't pull the cord on them.

NOAA Satellite Images!!!

http://ngs.woc.noaa.gov/ike/29094C7_IKE.HTM here is the general link for all the island.

My school has lots and lots of damage. :( The roof is very very bad.

Here is the link for our house:

http://ngs.woc.noaa.gov/ike/IMAGES/ike_c25885903.htm We are 4 streets from the ferry and then looking from the left of that street we are the 3rd house, the one with all the white siding laying around the yard. yay no roof damage!!