Preparing to Weather Rita

At this point, I feel pretty confident in waiting out Hurricane Rita from the relative comfort of my Montrose townhouse. I'm basing my decision on a couple of factors:

• Forecasts of the storm have it making landfall a decent distance south of Houston (although this could change with little notice)
• The City of Houston will likely not issue even a voluntary evacuation order for the Montrose area
• My townhouse was built in 1973, shares the sidewalls with other townhouses, and seems to be built fairly well.
• I'm confident that even if power goes out, I'm in a densely populated area where CenterPoint Energy will make it a priority to restore power.

Tonight I'll brave the crowds at my local Kroger to stock up on water, canned and otherwise non-perishable food, extra propane for the grill, batteries, and plenty of beer.

In the meantime, I need to check with my landlord to see if he'll be doing anything to board windows. If not, I'll need to make a quick decision as to whether I need to board windows myself or just hope the wind doesn't blow hard enough to break any windows.