OK, I just took a telephone call from Mr. Tran, in California, whose family was incredibly worried about me, after seeing all the Hurricane Rita coverage and visualizing San Antonio as some sort of suburb of Houston, and spent a couple of hours trying to call me on their cellphone (and not getting any results, which frightened them quite badly)…

I am OK, I am fine, the skies here are hot and blue and cloudless— and we were actually sort of wishing that we would get some fall-out rain at least from Rita— and it is about 400 miles from Houston. San Antonio is stuffed full of evacuees, and the worst that has happened to me was that I had to go to three gas stations yesterday on the way to the radio station to find one that had any gas or anything but the top-grade. Hurricane news has filled the local paper to the exclusion of practically anything else for the last two days.

I have heard from a coworker that Sequin (the town just to the south of us, where the highway contraflow along I-10 ended) was all but a parking lot, with evacuees camping along the side of the highway, and in every available place in town, too tired, exhausted and pissed-off to drive any farther.
At the radio station, they had the room and phone banks we have for pledge drives being used by a community disaster preparedness group soliciting and registering volunteers who wanted to help, routing them to the organization that could use them to best advantage. We were running announcements all day today about the schedule for returnees.

So, I am OK, San Antonio is OK, nothing else of importance to report from here. It’s hot, it’s a Sunday, it’s my day where I don’t have to go anywhere. I’m OK. Wish it would rain, but we can’t have everything.