Night Falling - 7:12 p.m. on September 12

It's cloudy and getting dark. The wind picked up significantly about an hour ago. It's still 84 degrees and very humid. We figured we might as well start cleaning out the freezer so we had a nice steak this evening and will go to work on the ice cream a bit later. Wouldn't want it to go to waste would we? I mean, it's Blue Bell, and we have a few raspberries left. Mmmmm.

Hearing the wind whooshing through the trees is a reminder that we have trees around the house. With the front end of Ike we will be getting the strongest winds from the East. No trees likely to hit the house. After the eye passes over the house, there are about half a dozen really tall pines that would slice through the house like a hot knife through buttah. The bottom end of Ike should be a bit weaker than the top end.