Colors of the Rainbows

- At Bering Memorial United Methodist Church, one of the oldest churches in the area, the structure came through fairly sound (from an exterior viewpoint). But they completely lost one tree in the front courtyard which fell towards the street and away from any building, while a second tree on the back of the campus split and the top fell onto the roof of the portion of the building housing the dental center which takes care of people with HIV/AIDS.

- In front of a newly built townhouse, there were a couple of very tall, slender pines. One of them was bent over and tucked under a small balcony. It looked like the storm had frightened it and it tried to hide there to protect itself.

- Every block I walked by had at least one tree down or severely damaged.

- Being an older neighborhood, there are a lot of trees along every street. But there was so much debris of twigs and leaves blown about that I felt like I was walking in the forest back in the foothills of the Adirondack Mountains in Upstate New York again.

- One house had four cedars(?). The key word being "had". All of them were either split or knocked over. One of them even knocked a garage off its concrete slab foundation and caused damage to a neighboring house.

- A few of the streets around here are residential boulevards in the old sense with a greensward running down the middle. One tree knocked over on a greensward (which was about two lanes wide) was so large that its branches stretched over not only the greensward, but also completely blocked all lanes in both directions on either side of it.

- The first business I saw which was open was a bar. The second business I saw open was a bar. The third business I saw which was open was a drug store. I guess the first two were for emotional recovery from the storm, while the third was to recover from the hangover which was bound to come along.

- And speaking of those bars, they were gay bars. One of them, long known for it's window paintings which changes at least monthly, had inscribed the following: "Like Tina Turner, Ike won't keep us down."

- Granted, I live in the oldest gay neighborhood in Houston, but aside from Pride weekend, I don't think I've ever seen as many gay and lesbian couples out and about holding hands in full public view. It was almost enough to make me want to have more major storms come through. To see gay and straight couples out and about with no sense of fear, hatred or disgust but united in care and concern for their homes, neighborhood, and that everyone was alright was a bit of the utopia many GLBT have been fighting for. And here it was happening naturally.

- The street I live on is three lanes wide with the center lane a "reverse traffic" lane. So during morning rush hour traffic two lanes are inbound and one outbound, while evening traffic is two lanes out bound and one inbound, and the late morning, afternoon and overnight hours it is one lane each direction with the center lane a turning only lane. All of this starts right in front of my apartment complex. There is a large arm which stretches across the road announcing the beginning/ending of the reverse lane. That arm is now turned almost ninety degrees and one of the signs flipped to face down so that it tells the street (rather than drivers) that the reverse lane begins at some point overhead into the sky.

- While there were several types of trees that suffered some type of damage, I didn't see one single banana tree/plant which survived the hurricane. Every single one I saw was destroyed.

- On the block where I work, one end of the block had a tree fallen over across the road while the other end a palm tree had fallen over completely blocking access.

- Within hours, I saw two intersections with functioning or semi-functioning traffic lights.

- Despite city and county officials warnings and recommendations for people to not be driving out on the roads, traffic seemed to almost be back to normal Saturday levels on the area main roads.

- Our local Starbucks seemed to weather the storm well, except for one large pane of window glass - the one on which the company logo was affixed.

- Jack-In-The-Box's large overhead sign was completely blown out.

- Wendy's only lost a driveway exit sign.

- McDonald's and Burger King looked to have come through with no problems at all.

- A 40-year-old local landmark restaurant, Brennan's, was destroyed, not by the hurricane, but by fire during the height of the storm.

- The Chase Bank building in downtown had about 15 floors of windows on the north side blown out. There was paperwork, computers and all manner of office stuff on the street. Many other buildings had some windows blown out, but none suffered as much as Chase.

- 2.1 out of 2.2 million customers lost power. That converts to about 4.2 out of 4.4 million people. Withing 24 hours, that number was already down to under 2 million customers without power. (Today, over two weeks after Ike passed, 377,000 customers are still without power despite 12,000 workers from across the nation and Canada) out in the field working to restore power.

- Reliant Stadium, lost five of the fabric panels from the roof but otherwise is structurally sound.