Here at the PBC&R we have been celebrating the Q having power, although we can’t say we were particularly surprised when Jake – who is known as somewhat crusty, sort-of French and full of zee crazy ideas, walked in about midnight and said he’d parachuted out of a Lear jet.

It seems he recruited the Extension Cord Gang, and using 4by4 vehicles and a 16by16 semi (don’t ask), they strung an extension cord lifeline all the way to Quentin’s. The Gang is driving the vehicles back, but Jake was in a hurry and hitched a ride in a private jet that was going overhead.

Jake has a flair about him, don’tcha know –  A bit of “je ne sais quoi”.

The shift monitoring the Houston Chronicle power reports noted that someone had power on Quentin’s street. We are keeping our fingers crossed.

We have been cleaning and mowing and washing and steam cleaning and  . . .gasp . . . gasp . . . cooking because we simply cannot keep monitoring the internet for signs of electricity at Quentin’s and any good news in general. So we are keeping busy . . . so we don’t lose our collective peanut butter mind! Well, back to the rugs and steam cleaner.

Aha, I have found that CenterPoint Energy in Houston is showing maps of the outage areas with restored sections in green. So, I have a Quentin vigil. But is there someone at the desk live updating areas or are they only going to issue one or two updates a day.

Ack, I went to their actual site and see the next update is planned for noon. I think they should be on the phone with me all the time, telling me exactly what they are doing to get Q back online. That’s how I am . . .Are you there yet? There yet? There yet?

Oh. I didn’t publish this when I thought I did. Okay. Well, anyway, I checked the CenterPoint site and 2pm EDT, the company updated the report. Quentin has no power and it looked as if more power had actually gone off in his area.

Yes, I want to rant, but I am not going to do so here. I am going to set a good example for Summer – but she won’t know it because not ranting is not noticeable. This is really hard for me. I don’t know which wants to move more – my fingers or my mouth. It is a good thing I don’t have smiting power.

I just heard from the Q and he has no power and was up most of the night. He sounded tired. I thought I would write more . . . but I just want things to be all right.

Your grandmother is thinking of you.

Last night I watched a show on the Animal Planet about venom and the creatures that have it – the deadliest ones, based on potency, habitat, aggression level, amout of venom delivered per bite and something else I have forgotten.

It crossed my mind I would have bad dreams. (I actually pulled an afghan over my head when the cobra came on.) I did have dreams, but they had nothing to do with snakes. I dreamed my hair was filthy and we had to be on a bus to an amusement park and I was riding a bike to downtown Chicago to have my hair cut and wound up barefoot in the mall. Back at home, I could find no nice clothes to wear and my hair got dirtier and dirtier, straggly and stringy and packed with grease.

Fortunately, I did not dream of the “You Asked For It” episode we saw –  decades ago  – in which an Indian woman kissed a cobra on the head three times. Her sisters had died attempting it. That was back in the days when home videos (movies) were not featured on TV. We saw it on one program and then it was over and I don’t think we saw it again. But we remembered it, oh yeah.

Now I think it is on YouTube * (narrated in what sounds like Russian), but that is old hat – there is a video of a man who kissed a cobra 51 times.

*This could be one similar to the one we saw.