Apologies for not posting sooner, but we're all fine here in Lafayette. We got lots of wind and rain. Areas around us are experiencing flooding, but rest assured that we're high and dry. We've got lots of cleaning up to do in the yard, but nothing too major.

My store didn't fare as well, experiencing some relatively severe roof leaks. I spent most of the afternoon yesterday dealing with that and will be spending a good amount of my day today doing likewise.

Oh the joys of dealing with wet books and collapsed ceiling tiles...

More later... thanks for the good thoughts...

Since Chris asked...

Yup, we're hunkered down. Our little commune of five people, six dogs and three cats are holding fast here in Lafayette. There's a new update coming in about 20 minutes, but as of now the eye of the storm should be a significant distance from us when it comes onshore. We're told to expect winds of 40-60 mph and a hell of a lot of rain. The rain has already started in spades... and the wind has steadily built up from breezes last night to something probably around 25 mph now.

Am I nervous? A little... hurricanes almost always seem to go a bit eastward at the last moment.

But, all in all... we should be fine. We have food, (scented) candles, water, etc etc.

I think the possibility of us losing power by the morning is extremely high. And I don't know if Don and his mom will be able to survive living in a house with three guys DTing for internet access...

Well.. here we go again...

It looks like Rita is most likely heading towards Galveston. But, she's big. And we're on the bad side. And hurricanes just love to take that last minute move to the right.

For now, we're assuming we're going to be okay, but we're watching it closely. At the least, we're going to be in for a lot of rain this weekend. Hopefully nothing worse...

And now we have evacuees coming to us from the west. So, we're filling our townhouse up again.

Hopefully W is praying for us...

This is where I lived the past five years... five of the happiest years of my life...

My friend Jeremy sent me the pic tonite. And I'm stunned. It doesn't look real... it can't be...

And the worst part was having to call my friend Lorna, who still lived upstairs on the left side, and tell her to check her email for the pictures... I never want to have to do anything like that again in my life.

I know I'm incredibly fortunate. I met Don at a party almost a year ago and fell so much in love that I left the city I thought I'd never leave. But... still... it ain't easy to look at that picture... what might have been.. what is...

*sigh*

I haven't written much because it turned into sort of a rough week. I went from seeing that picture of a body two blocks from my old apartment building to seeing CNN footage the next day of the block that I lived on for the last five years burning.

I'd thought I was past the worst of the shock, but that put me into a 24 hour tailspin of depression. I guess it just made it all a lot more personal. One of my biggest fears after the flooding was that the city was going to burn. Seeing the neighborhood I lived in until 5 months ago on fire made my fears a bit too real.

I'm still not completely sure if my building burned. Exact addresses are hard to come by right now. If anyone finds any exact information about the fires on Josephine Street, I'd appreciate an email.

One of my dear friends, Lorna, still lived in one of the upstairs apartments. And most everyone she owns was/is there. I've been in contact with her. She's safe in St Louis. But, I can't bring myself to call or email her about this until I know for sure what happened.

Richard and Don's sister, Roxanne, took Don's mom into Metairie to her apartment. It had evidently flooded with a few inches of water. They cleaned the major things (refrigerator) that needed to be done immediately and salvaged what they could fit into the truck. Oddly, it seemed to consist mainly of clothes, VHS tape, her furs and her 'jewels.' She was quite shaken by the whole event.

Anyways... life goes on here in our compound...

You may or may not have seen this photo in the media over the past couple of days. I'd noticed it, but in the midst of such a deluge of images and information over the past week, it didn't stand out that much to me.

And then last night, I read a short paragraph about the photo.

"In New Orleans' Garden District, a woman's body lay at the corner of Jackson Avenue and Magazine Street — a business area with antique shops on the edge of blighted housing. The body had been there since at least Wednesday. As days passed, people covered the corpse with blankets or plasticIn New Orleans' Garden District, a woman's body lay at the corner of Jackson Avenue and Magazine Street — a business area with antique shops on the edge of blighted housing. The body had been there since at least Wednesday. As days passed, people covered the corpse with blankets or plastic."

Jackson and Magazine. Jackson and Magazine. Jackson and Magazine.

Suddenly I couldn't process it... that's two block from where I lived the past five years. Two blocks. It's a corner I walked by hundreds of times. It's my neighborhood. A dead body laying on the street for days. In my neighborhood.

Last year, when Ivan was headed towards New Orleans, almost everyone I knew evacuated New Orleans. I stayed.

The night before the storm came onto land, when we still weren't certain if it was going to hit us or not, I slowly started to freak out a little bit. I dealt with it by getting a little drunk and then going a block down my street and befriending the group of older black ladies who were hanging out outside of their Section 8 apartment building. They stayed because they had no where to go, no money to travel with, no transportation of their own.

I found myself trying to remember if any of them was named Vera last night. I can't imagine how they fared at the Convention Center, which I have to imagine became their shelter. I wonder where they are now.

My neighborhood. In my neighborhood... it's made it all a little more raw again for me.

One thing I haven't written much about is the response of my employer. Barnes and Noble has completely exceeded any expectation I had of how they would respond. There are 300 booksellers affected by the hurricane and 13 stores, including the college stores and B. Daltons.

They've put together teams of people to deal with the crisis. And they're doing an amazing job. Everyone of those 300 booksellers is getting paid indefinitely. If they needed more money immediately, it was provided. They have people trying to locate housing for them. They have trucks of supplies heading here, not only for the booksellers but for other people in the affected areas.

The uppermost people in the company are in constant contact with people in the local area.

I personally made three suggestions to my Regional Director and every one of them was put into place within hours, one of them ten minutes after I emailed her the suggestion.

I am so grateful to have such an amazing employer and will be personally letting many of them know this at the appropriate time, once we're past the worst of the crisis.

If you know anyone who is one of these booksellers who hasn't been in contact with the company yet, have them call 1-800-799-5335 immediately.

I'm terribly sorry that i haven't updated all day, but I worked today and we've had a lot going on around here tonight. I've barely looked at the news today, so I don't really know what's going on in the city... and I don't want to know right now...

I got off work around 7 tonight and came home to a relatively saner home. I think we're all starting to slip back into something slightly closer to normal. We won't reach actual normal for months... but it's a start...

I think everyone's settling into the realization that our living situation is one that's going to exist for weeks, probably months... and I think our guests are starting to get a little more comfortable with that fact. I hope so...

Most of the gang gathered tonight for curried pasta and barbecued chicken... and liquor..

In the midst of it, a friend of Don's nephew, Ashley, and her mom arrived, fresh from their rescue from five days in Charity Hospital. Trust me.. they had some stories...

Richard that his friend, Martin was also in town, so I insisted that he bring him over for a bit as well.

We sat around drinking, with a brief phone interval for me with my friend Jonathan... currently in Houston, until we graduated to absinthe.

Geez... the screen of my laptop is soooo pretty tonight...

Where the fuck is the federal government? Are they just going to sit on their asses while the people trapped in the city slowly die off? Are they willing to let what's left of the city burn?

This is a disgrace. Our president, who I admit I've never liked, has offered us no real solutions or information. Where's the water the people in the city need? Where's food? Where are the troops? Oh yeah... they're in Iraq, securing the oil supply.

That's all we seem to hear from the feds, oil oil oii.. gas gas gas...

I'm sorry, but i don't care if the rest of America has to pay $6.00 a gallon for gas. Get my people out of my city. Save my fucking city.

DO SOMETHING.

two great moments in our life...

don's sister and her husband arrived tonight... after spending 3 days on the westbank of the post hurricane city... they're amazing heroes... they cooked everything they had and fed people less fortunate than them before they left town...

and... when don took them to our empty townhouse to set them up in their new temporary home, he finally found Sam, his cat who disappeared from the townhouse the night before we moved... we've been horribly worried about her ever since.. and now she's home...

and i have lots of info about Barnes and Noble employees that i used to work with... more on that tomorrow morning when i'm a bit more coherent...

random moments from my life...

going to Target yesterday with Richard and pulling out my checkbook to pay and having this momentary flash of panic thinking, "they're not gonna take my check, it and my license have a New Orleans address"

going to buy cigarettes earlier (because I'm up to two packs a day right now, and I was jonesing for my next one, getting into the car afterwards and putting the two packs i bought down next to the full pack that had been sitting on my car seat the whole time...

anyways... i'm off to work and won't post again until after midnight...

Hmm... I just realized how utterly accurate the title of my blog is right now...

An interesting side effect of a house full of people in crisis mode who are all armed with wireless laptops is that we communicate some of our more serious feelings to one another through our blogs and some of the minor things by Instant Messenger.

I just read Richard's blog... and even though I've said it to him verbally many times already, I hope he understands that I don't know if I would have made it through the past several days in anything resembling a sane state if he and Jonno had not come to stay with us. Not knowing where a major portion of your friends are during a crisi like this is unbearable at times, and knowing that two of them are safe in your house is a great comfort. And that we are completely prepared to take care of them for indefinitely. If they tried to pull up stakes and leave anytime even relatively soon, I'd be extremely upset.

And while I've been well aware that Richard has been going a bit insane inside his head, he and my partner Don have been the foundation of our household for the past couple of days. They're the sensible ones.

And while I've been friends with both Jonno & Richard for several years, I haven't really known Richard as well as I know Jonno. And it's been a pleasure to find out that he's every bit the amazing person I thought he was.

So, Richard... I know I can't stop you from being sorry... just know that Don and I are both extremely happy to have you both for weeks on end.

Don just called me from his business to tell us all to be extremely careful when we go out because there have been multiple armed robberies around the city of Lafayette today.

*sigh*

Ok.. one thing I wrote in haste that i have to reconsider was saying i wish they'd shoot the looters.

There are different levels to the whole looting situation. While I'm horribly angry about the people taking luxury items and brandishing (and using) guns, I understand the need to find the things you need for basic survival.

Ok.. so everyone in our house isn't completely freaked out... some are getting more sleep than others...

More good news... i sent my friend Jill a text message asking about her mother who I was pretty sure had remained in Lakeview, one of the most flooded areas, and she replied "EVAC TO WA PARISH & HEARD FROM HER YEST... FINALLY".

This is how we communicate in South Lousiana now in little snippets of text that you may get instantly or that may arrive a day later. Sometimes if you're persistent and keep redialing a number repeatedly for minutes you actually get to talk to someone. And that's only if you're lucky enough to be in an area where you can charge your cellphone.

It's a little intimidating to wake up and discover that I've been linked in the British news media. I don't feel like I've been saying anything of much substance beyond doing some cathartic rambling...

The national news channels are very hard to watch right now. I'm sensing a turn towards blame... to city officials and the people of New Orleans. Meanwhile, where are the mentions that since the start of the war in Iraq, George W has consistently slashed every bit of funding we've needed or requested for building more protections for the city or even doing studies on the impact of a storm like the one we've just had. There are mentions in the print and internet media, but they're few and far between.

I also woke up to a new text message on my phone confirming that two more of my friends are safe in Baton Rouge. That's something good...