Hurricane Ike

As Ike moves ever closer to Houston TX, we are preparing for our first hurricane. As we live nearly 100 miles off of the coast we won't (or shouldn't) have the full damaging force of Ike. We have no idea what to expect and I'm kind of worried but at the same time it's kind of exciting.
I completely forgot that yesterday was Sept. 11 because of all the preparations for the storm going on. I went and filled up my car with gas and all of the gas stations were busy. There were long lined at the station that I went to and people were even trying to form one line going two ways. Luckily people were able to keep things running rather smoothly. I really wish that I had had my camera with me. I don't think that I've seen anything like it before. Some people were driving around crazy and I was almost hit a few times while sitting in line. There was even a news helicopter flying around over the gas station.
Next we went to get some shopping done. I had wanted to go in the evening when Mike would be home and watch the kids but I'm really glad that I went in the early afternoon instead. The shelves were so depleted, especially of some of the more "staple" items such as chips, crackers, hotdogs, bread, alcohol... It was kind of funny to see all the people who had mostly alcohol of some sort filling their shopping carts instead of something else like bread or other nonperishable food. I guess everyone has their own ideas of what is necessary to have when facing an emergency. I listened to some of the conversations taking place in the store. One woman said to her husband "I don't want to survive on just ramen noodles!" To which he replied "It's food and it will get us through the next 3 or 4 days." It seems to be a general concensus that we will be stuck inside for 3-4 days. So far we are not in an evacuation zone so we plan to stay where we are but that could easily change especially if we lose power. Even if we just lose water we are set to survive here. We'll be filling up one of our bathtubs with water and we are filling other containers as well.
The next few days should be interesting and we are praying for those that will and have been more effected by the storm. When Ike is gone and over I'll post our experiences of our first hurricane.