This is Day Three and all is going well. I feel very good today and I am sure I will make my goal of six fewer pounds by Sept. 16. On Monday, Sept. 15, I am scheduled for the EGD.
I had the five Optifast shakes yesterday and a real meal.
Solid Food
Felt good to chew something. Sylvia fixed four ounces of steak, fresh green beans with a cucumber and tomato salad. A juicy peach served as dessert. I awoke this morning feeling refreshed and energized.Hurricane Awareness
Our prayers today are for those in the path of Hurricane Ike. My sister and my mother live just south of Houston. Mom, who is 94, lives in League City, Texas, while my sister and her husband live a bit further south in La Marque. They will be evacuating although I don't know yet where they will go.
Similar Storms
Ike is very similar to Hurricane Carla, which hit South Texas on Sept. 11, 1961. Both Dan Rather of CBS-TV fame and I got our big breaks during that storm. Rather was assigned to the Galveston weather bureau by his TV station in Houston and made dramatic, live reports as the water rose around him. He was in the weather bureau because he could show radar images of the storm -- a novelty then -- and because the bureau had back-up electrical power. I was on the night desk in the AP bureau in Houston and got the first eye-witness views of the flooding 
and devastation by renting a plane and flying over the area at first light. The plane had to be towed from the hangar into take-off position because the wind was strong enough to turn it over if the pilot tried to taxi. We took off into the wind in what seemed like about 100 feet. That little plane was tossed around like a leaf. Fortunately we had put a waste basket aboard because even the pilot got air sick. After landing and filing my story I drove as far into the damage as I could get for more first-hand reporting.We both got promotions. So I guess we are responsible for the silly way TV reporters stand outside in hurricanes now.
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