Fire Drill/Surprise Meresa/Ike Tarps Are Going Nowhere Fast

HURRICANES AND WEATHER
Well if you live by statistics, then you can put away the hurricane supplies. Today (October 17th) is the last known date for a tropical storm to hit the Texas Coast--it was a storm which hit Freeport in 1938.

Now, don't be too cocky. Storms have approached the Texas coast even in November, but troughs have always whisked them away at the last minute. Just a reminder that records are made to be broken...Allison made landfall on June 5, 2001--you can't forget that deluge!!! That June 5th date broke the record for the earliest Texas landfall of a tropical storm. By the way, Allison is still considered the costliest tropical storm on record (not hurricane) causing $5 billion in damage.

Well, it's not feeling tropical here at all. In fact the cloud cover is almost completely gone and it is going to get down into the 50s tonight. Highs both Saturday and Sunday in Houston will be in the upper 70s to low 80s. Saturday night will also be chilly--might even get some 40s for outlying areas. Everyone say ooohhhh---ahhhhh.

Much of the country will be cool and dry. Showers and the cold front will move off the eastern seaboard on Saturday.

SPANISH WORD OF THE DAY
My dear friend Meresa was given a surprise party this evening which Sarah and I managed to attend. So, the word for today is surprise or sorpresa, pronounced sore-PRAY-sah. The party was a big sorpresa to Meresa. Happy Birthday Meresa!!!

The Texas Foreign Language Association (TFLA) is having a conference at the Greenspoint Wyndham. I am heading up there Saturday to deliver some of our language DVDs to Dolo Publications, one of our vendors. Have I mentioned that I hired 2 bilingual educators and 1 linguist to create an award winning DVD series for children called Let's Learn Spanish with Frank & Paco? Yes! It's true. And you can order one of those fabulous DVDs for the little ones at http://www.frankandpaco.com/, http://www.venturaes.com/, http://www.dololanguages.com/,http://www.carlexonline.com/,http://www.thecuriousmindstore.com/, amazon.com, bestbuy.com, and barnesandnoble.com. Volume 1 of the Frank and Paco series is a Dr. Toy Top 10 Educational Product for 2008.

Well I sent out the evites to the Longaberger Party - Death by Chocolate for Friday, November 14th at 7 pm. If you would like an invite, email me at cecilia_sinclair@yahoo.com. Every person who attends will receive a free copy of our language DVD. Plus, we're going to eat a lot chocolate and have fun!!!

AND MORE
Well you might notice that in the photo with Meresa (the birthday girl), Sarah looks very tired. We got our flu shots today and I think it might have tuckered her out. She's crashed on the couch right now. I've never had the flu since I took one of these shots. But it does make my arm a little sore. Sometimes, I feel a little more tired a day or two afterward.

One more thing about The National Weather Association workshop. Tuesday night was our wedding anniversary. It was 10:30 pm and all of a sudden the fire alarm went off. Well, we were on the 18th floor. A voice comes over the intercom and says to stay in your room. I thought that is quite strange as I have never heard of people in a high rise being told to stay in their room if there is the possibility of a fire. Eventually, we decided to hike on down the 18 flights. We weren't alone. So did a whole bunch of people. End result--false alarm. Maybe we should have stayed in our rooms.

On the way to Meresa's party, we drove along Beltway 8. There are so many tarps on rooftops. And we just had some heavy rain in the last few days. A friend of mine whose roof is damaged is still trying to round up someone to fix his roof. It is going to be a while. And guess what? This week's rain got into his house. So, there was even more damage done. Gordy wants to know why more roofers aren't converging on the Houston area.

Two more days and the boat poll closes...in case you didn't read about it, my brother-in-law was charged $6000 for his boat to be moved from the marina to the shipyard. He'll be back from working in China in a couple days and I sure would like to tell him what you all thought about that. So, don't forget to vote yes if you think he got ripped off or no if you think that was reasonable. Look below the poll for a picture of his boat.

Have a great weekend everyone and be safe!
Cecilia Sinclair
Wonder Weather Woman