Yes, indeed, we got through the storm, dealt with two weeks without power or water and a tree partially through our roof, but now everything's patched up. But even though the storm was back in September, I still can't get over the scale of the devastation on Galveston Island. My family and I drive over at least once every summer, and I was used to heading down there every weekend to surf, so it was hard to believe the reports trickling in, until I actually saw the footage. There is no beach. It's GONE. The ocean is lapping at the concrete seawall, half of the stone jetties are wrecked, and what's left of most of the piers is probably drifting around the Caribbean right now.

I don't think anyone was really prepared for a storm like Ike. Sure, we had all of the available information and everything, but I never expected to see a storm surge washing over the 15-foot-high seawall before the first clouds even appeared. I was helping my grandparents board up their house and listening to a battery powered weather radio, and throughout the day the warnings got more and more disturbing: eventually, they said that anyone who refused to leave the evacuated areas "faced certain death". And even now, a lot of people are still missing and it's unlikely that they'll ever be found.

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I haven't done much in the way of non-class-related drawing-- when classes started up again the profs were all pretty much: "Oh, how nice, you're alive. Now here's four paintings, a paper on Greek amphoras, a paper on Kafka, a paper on Grass, seven German novels, and a calculus midterm, AND WOE BETIDE YOU SHOULD YOU PROCRASTINATE!"

Yeah. o.O

So, afterwards I spent the few days after Nov. 4 being alternately delighted by the Obama victory and utterly disgusted by the passing of Proposition 8 in California (and especially the post-election footage of cheering reprobates-- really, what kind of person celebrates the destruction of another's happiness?) and now it's finally winter break.

So...hope you enjoyed (or at least tolerated) my completely deadpan recounting of momentous events.