Hurricane Ike and a good shoulder report

These are pictures of Colin, Morgan and Kegan boarding up their house in Kingwood, north of Houston. Apparently when Rita missed Houston, Kingwood had lots of flying limbs, etc., so they decided to board up the expanse of windows at the back of the house (a south exposure, I think, though I'm not good at those things!) I love the painting on it, and Lisa says it's the first time they saw Morgan write her own name (lower right hand corner). Jamie suggested they should leave the boards up at least for Halloween, sort of like people who leave their Christmas lights up until March. Colin retorted that he was mad he had to take down the Christmas lights to put up the boards. The closet is one they've emptied for an emergency shelter and stocked with necessary (?) supplies. I'm sure Lisa won't leve the Blue Bell Ice Cream there all night and she says she has no idea why the piggy bank is there. I am of course worried about them and will be sorry when they lose power, cell phones, etc. I asked them to keep in touch as they could. Colin says they're fine except that he's worried about the tall old pines around their house. I asked if they didn't want to come up here, but Colin countered that I should come down there because they'd promised Morgan a hurricane!

Aside from worrying about them I'm feeling the residual caution that creeps up here--I found myself impulse buying in the store--extra tuna, though I have more than I'll eat, more bottled water (again I'm well suppllied). I got out flashlights, tested them, and stashed the extra batteries I bought today. Also got out candles and matches, but I really hope we won't lose power. I don't like being alone in a dark house. But my biggest worry is Scooby--if we have the peripheral tropical storm rains, he will refuse to go out and yet I know he'll need to relieve himself. If my neighbor Jay is home, I may have to call him for help. I hope to get to Central Market in the morning before the heavy rains hit--some things are essential, and I'm almost out of chocolate. Then it's a weekend of hunkering down.

I have plenty of work to do. I spent the better part of two hours today separating three-fold greenbar sheets into three piles--the unspearated stack was probably 10 inches high. Now I have to go through each of the three stacks and sort them for various purposes. I maybe need to do some of the sorting myself, but an adminstrative assistant sure could have done the sorting. I wonder how TCU is going to find the next director who will do such, but then again I can't let the royalties get shoved back into oblivion as happens to too many things in my office.

But there is good news today. The orthopedic surgeon (who specializes in shoulders) said surgery is not the right option for my shoulder. I have torn two of the four muscles in the rotator cuff, one of them the major top one, so one result is there is no cushion between two bones, which is why I feel a crunching. He gave me a steroid shot that had a bit of anaesthetic in it, so for an hour or two I could fight bear with that shoulder. Its now back to its normal state of twinging if I do various ambitious things but in general not bothering me. The steroid should kick in a couple of days from now. Meantime I am mightily relieved. Maybe euphoric is the word.

Writing a mystery? What writing? I'm not getting to it today. I tell myself I will over the long weekend, but there are those darn greenbar sheets to deal with, a novel I'm reading, and a lot of being lazy to do.