Good luck, Houston.

Years ago, my personal "Internet connection" to Houston, my aunt and godmother, passed away. My relationship with her seems light years away. Mostly because of the amount that the world has completely changed since then.

My godmother, Auntie Cookie, is honestly the reason I nearly became a meteorologist. All this talk about Hurricane Ike and how it's the worst storm to hit Houston dead on since Hurricane Alicia in 1983 brings it all back. The reason? Well, I know that Hurricane Alicia was the first time Auntie Cookie sent me the newspaper clippings of the hurricane coverage and the aftermath, with photos, stories, etc., from Houston and her place of residence, Baytown. I was about six years old, but my mom kept them for me (or I did) and I'd seen them when I got older. I probably, actually, still have these clippings somewhere, and the clippings from every storm or hurricane between then and when she died while I was living in Missouri.

It was honestly a really cool "attachment" to her letters. I used to love getting those clippings -- there was no Internet and computers weren't something that were even in my vocabulary yet. It was back when the Bell companies had the monopoly going too, I believe, so long distance calling was ridiculously priced. Of course, I'm talking about when I was younger and living at home. By the time college came around and I moved out, our relationship was different and a little more distant.

But, growing up, I used to get all excited about letters from Auntie Cookie. Handwritten letters, often with some sort of newspaper clippings or something else. Weather, disasters, sports championships, etc. I'm secretly semi-proud of the fact that, at one time, I had an official t-shirt celebrating every NBA Championship from the Bulls' first one through their sixth ("virtual 8-peat"), because the Rockets won the two in between, and Auntie Cookie came through and sent my brothers and I t-shirts. I may still have these shirts, packed away somewhere for safe-keeping. I don't know.

Auntie Cookie (and my uncle and cousins) acted as a window to something I couldn't fathom at all growing up in Chicago: a hurricane. And I was hooked. I used to track the hurricanes on a photocopied Atlantic Ocean map every year. I'd watch the news and get the latitude and longitude of the hurricanes every day and plot them. Any of you who lived through a hurricane in the mid- to late-80s and early 90s, I probably was intently focused on whatever news reports I could find. It was just a very interesting thing to me.

So interesting, in fact, that I've always said I wanted to go and ride out a hurricane, because it's always intrigued me. Yes, I sound stupid about it, but I'm probably no stupider than tornado chasers (another thing I'd like to do, by the way). They're killers, I know. But the awesome power of nature and the aftereffects are just downright amazing to me. Part of me is jealous of Stephanie Abrams on the Weather Channel, because she's on Galveston Island right now. Something about that intrigues me.

Was it Auntie Cookie who sowed that seed, or did she somehow realize that I was, honestly, a newshound. I have clippings of weather anomalies and storm coverage from my entire lifetime. I have clippings from Chicago's Blizzard of '67, and the Oak Lawn tornado of that same year. I wasn't alive then, but those things affected areas I'm very familiar with, and because of that, they captivate me.

Yet, honestly, with Hurricane Ike bearing down on Houston, with my cousins and uncle scattered about the metro area, but I think mostly out of harm's way, I feel different. I feel almost disconnected. For Hurricane Rita, I felt connected and felt the reality, because my cousins were trying desperately to get as far north (like everyone else in Houston) as possible, driving through the night (well, not really driving...more like sitting on the Interstate) to attempt to get away from what was supposed to be Katrina II. For Ike, it has been different.

Even with the Internet and cable TV, I miss my main source of relevant, "this happened right down the block from us" hurricane aftermath information. It's funny. While most people in the nation might watch and think of 100 other things about this hurricane, I sit there and think that I could know better info. With Auntie Cookie's help, I could have learned so much more about it.