September 23, 2005

Friday September 23, 2005 • Howard Tayler

Though I'm still feeling a little celebratory, I probably ought to mention that there's a chance you'll not get your Schlock Mercenary fix this weekend. The physical servers delivering schlockmercenary.com are all in Houston. While Houston isn't in the storm-surge path as of this writing, that could change.

If we suddenly go unreachable, you can still find me at http://howardtayler.livejournal.com, and I'm sure I'll be able to find SOMEBODY to host images for a little while if it becomes necessary to post the comic there (my usual solution for posting images inline with my journal is to post them at www.tayler.com, which is ALSO served up from Houston).

I've been in the path of hurricanes before, but I've never had a Category IV or V monster bearing down on me. My family lived two hundred feet from the water, and all of seven feet above sea level in Sarasota Florida in the 80's, and only got hit directly once. That was back before they named tropical depressions -- the storm in question revved up to Category I strength (80mph sustained winds) in the middle of the night just offshore, and then plowed inland while I was at boy scout camp.

I'm pretty sure the "no-name storm," as it came to be known, did this for the explicit purpose of allowing me to say I weathered a hurricane. The rain came into our screen-enclosed cabin SIDEWAYS, the massive water droplets exploding into a loud, angry mist as it blew through the south screen, and then later and a little more weakly through the north screen.

We evacuated camp AFTER the storm hit, because although we weathered the winds just fine, they had to open the flood gates on the Manatee River Dam, and we were downstream. Our canoe dock was on the river, and we only made our evacuation after a mad dash down to the dock to haul canoes up the bluffs to the main level of camp. The water came up so fast that even with 30 scouts running as fast as we could to the task, we lost a canoe or two to the rising waters. I remember watching it float downstream. We never did get it back.

Anyway, my prayers are with all y'all in Rita's path. May the roof stay on your home, may the water stay out, and may you find peace and happiness regardless.

In completely unrelated news, Thursday's Partially Clips, "Caveman and Alien", features some original Howard Tayler artwork. Rob Balder did a great job putting dialog to it -- I had no idea what he'd do with the wacky picture I sent him. Go read it. I'm convinced that Rob's is the finest clip-art comic out there, and I'm pretty sure it's not hosted in Houston.