Because I read too many design blogs

Before

After

TJ: "Its like clown furniture."

Galveston

Last Sunday, instead of going to church, our Elder's Quorum and one youth headed down to Galveston to help gut houses. It had been two weeks since Ike had flooded the island and there were only a few days left before houses would have to be condemned for mold.

It was a good time; its always fun to get an excused absence from church. We had a brief sacrament meeting in Galveston with about 200 other yellow-shirted volunteers from various stakes. The week previous we had gone out with the Helping Hands crew around our ward area, however, Galveston was a world apart. The devastation was so entire. Basically, every home on the island needed to have most of their possessions thrown away and their walls and floors ripped out. The mold in the homes created a terrible smell, only topped by the smell of experienced when removing refridgerators (I've determined that prior to evacuation orders, there should be a "clean out your fridge order").

We got to meet a lot of great people down there and provide some much needed service, I'd take that over Sunday School, any day.

A boat in the median of the freeway

we go to all the best places

Last night we went to a mexican restaurant. At the bottom of the menu there was a disclaimer that said:

"Beans may contain small rocks"

Tetris Anyone?

For some reason when I drive by our Houston Offices I get a strange urge to play tetris.

Anyways, we are really glad to have power now. Although we feel kinda guilty as so many other folks around us still don't. The power is only on for half of our street. We offer to have people over, but mostly, when they hear that our cable and internet is still out they lose interest. We are still on the hunt for a place to watch Heros tonight. Ironically, we could go over to our neighbor's house; he doesn't have power, but he's able to get his DirectTV going with his generator (stupid Comcast).

WE HAVE POWER!!!

When I got home from work on Friday the open refridgerator was beeping. It was the most beautiful sound I've ever heard.

Speak for Yourself

Not so bad? Its been a week without power, and according to the electricity company our zip code will have power restored "some time after next Monday". Some time AFTER next monday??? What does that even mean?

I think its time for the Campbells to take a little vacation!

Not So Bad

Today, Danielle and I headed back to work. My downtown office is pretty smashed up (floors 11-14 of the picture below), so I'll be sticking up here in the Woodlands Office. It actually feels kinda nice to return to the normalcy of working. Funny that it takes a major natural disaster to bring about that feeling.

Things have improved significantly since Saturday. We still don't have power at home, but a cold front moved in and the tempature has been in the 70s. Its been cool enough that we've had to sleep with extra blankets at night. Now that I am no longer sweating at night and have mostly gotten over missing the best BYU football game in a long time, I feel much better. (That will probably last until I have to buy gas one of these days, most lines top two hours).

Another positive byproduct of this experience is that we have gotten to know our neighbors really well, which is something we've been wanting to do for a while. We all got together on Monday and worked on clearing our street and each others yards. I've decided that chainsawing makes for the best neighborhood bonding. Also, I must say that without TV entertainment our social lives have improved a lot, we have had friends over or visited friends every night. So things are not so bad.

Now, our next project will be to try to use some of the wood from our fallen trees to make some cool piece of furniture. Any suggestions?