Goin' Home

After five weeks of being away we can officially return home. There won't be electricity or potable water so it will not be pleasant. Our goal is to go in and get packed, get everything into storage, then have a moving company pick it up later. Hopefully we can be done in a week and be on our way west. At least we will (finally) be doing something, and not just sitting around feeling helpless.

Lovely Rita

We managed to get to the house on Monday just before they closed New Orleans again. Only minor damage, a few roof tiles off and the fence leaning over. A dent in the car trunk where a roof tile fell most likely. We didn't open the fridge, but could smell it when you stood next to it. We set out a few air fresheners. Amazing the african violets were still alive inside the house after all the time without water.

We grabbed some clothes, the laptops, and a few other things but didn't try to get everything since we thought we were going to be back the next day. Hurricane Rita changed that plan again. Even though it doesn't appear that it will hit New Orleans at the moment, officials are erring on the side of caution.

There wasn't any electricity still and it was exceedingly hot. Since the water is not safe you can't wash your face or hands either. As soon as the power is back on so we can have AC we will go back and try to pack up everything we are taking so we can get the move back on schedule. I hope it is soon.

A glimmer of hope

The Mayor of New Orleans has announced that people in selected areas of the city will probably be allowed back into the city. Luckily we are in one of those areas. If we do get in on Monday it will have been 23 days since we were last home. Even if we don't have full utilities, we will finally be able to access any damage and retrieve a few things. We have a friend across Lake Pontchatrain (who got full utilities back now) we can stay with if needed.

We have been staying with friends and family in Mobile, Daphne and Ft. Walton. We move every few days so we don't wear out our welcome at any one place. They have all been more than kind to shelter us. There really is no place like home though. And if we had any lingering thoughts about moving to Oregon they were washed away. We want to move more than ever now.

UPDATE: The latest info now shows that Uptown will not be allowed back in until Wednesday or Friday of next week. *sigh* Looks like it will be almost a full month that we will have been away from home.

Behind enemy lines

Click here to read a firsthand account from someone who is still in New Orleans, and updating their blog as often as they can. I do not envy them.

From a distance

We managed to find an aerial photo of our house. It looks like we didn't flood. Up 2 blocks we can see water in the streets though. The storage unit also appears to be dry, with water about 6 blocks from it. Now if the water doesn't rise again, we don't get looted or set on fire, maybe we will be okay. Now it's just the wait to get back to it.

News from the frontlines

My friend Keith has started a blog about his experiences during this disaster known as Hurricane Katrina. He is a reporter for the Times Picayune, the newspaper in New Orleans. As he is still on the job, he is a witness to the events in the area we used to call our home. You can view his blog here.

Alive and kicking

Well, we are still alive. However, our sanity is being compromised more with each passing day. Now they are saying it will be 30 or MORE days before residents will be let back into New Orleans. So now the anxiety can be prolonged. We looked at a map of where it flooded and it appears our house should be dry. It could have suffered some other damage still. Now of course, the concern is that looters will break in. It really is a sad commentary on people in these worst of times when you see the news about the rampant looting in the city. As soon as they do allow people to go back we will go and salvage anything left and move it out of the city. We will never live there again. I just hope we can sell the house still so we can relocate to Portland. Here we were about to start a new chapter in our lives and instead we are living the most traumatic times of our lives.

Uncomfortably numb

We had gone to Mobile before they announced that hurricane Katrina was headed to New Orleans so we just stayed there. Unfortunately since we did not know there was a hurricane coming we were not able to prepare the house, nor did we bring anything with us but 2 changes of clothes. From the looks of things in New Orleans it is quite possible we have lost everything we own including the house. And in only a month we were moving too. Even if the house is relatively ok, most of our things were in a storage unit at ground level next to the river. It will be probably another week before we can get over there to see how bad things are. It would actually be better to lose everything and just collect the insurance than to have to deal with repairs or reconstruction, which could take months or longer. We are somewhat in a state of shock and feeling numb now. *Sigh* It is very disheartening, but at least we are alive.

Go West, Part 2

Well, we're back from Portland. After living all my life in the Central Time zone, it looks like I'm moving to Pacific Time. In short, we loved the area and are looking forward to moving now. We rented an apartment in the Lake Oswego area, just SW of the city. We are on a hill so will have a nice view from our apartment window. We still plan to buy, but want to get to know the different neighborhoods first. And, properties are expensive out there, so it might take a while to find something affordable.

We decided on an apartment on the second day so we got to spend the next 5 days just being tourists. I will post some pics when I get a chance.

After the great weather in Portland, the next six weeks in New Orleans is going to go really slowly, especially since it is as hot as hell here.

Go West, Part 1

Off to Portland tomorrow to find an apartment. Since we don't want to feel rushed in buying we are going to rent first and get to know the area. We have been packing up the house so everything can go into storage until we find a permanent house--we don't want to ever have to unpack again! Of course now that almost everything is packed, I keep thinking of things I need, but too late. I will just have to live without them for 6 months or so.

Hopefully we will find a nice place. At this time we plan on moving out there at the beginning of October. Bear has been checking places on the internet so we have a good idea of where to look already.

Willy Wonka, WIlly Wonka

Bob and I went to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory today. The melding of Roald Dahl and Tim Burton seems to work very well. It is much darker than the prior film version, and much closer to the feel of the book. Johnny Depp gives another over-the-top performance. The music by Danny Elfman fits, especially the instrumentals. I am still undecided about the Oompa-Loompa songs. All in all however, I would say I enjoyed it.

Bangkok Street Dogs

This blog should interest Chuck, as he might have seen some of these dogs when he was in Bangkok. Bangkok Street Dogs

Amazing Honda Ad

Sometimes advertising is art. Whoever did this ad was both very talented and very patient. Amazing Honda Ad

A Safari shortcoming

Something I just discovered is that Safari does not play well with the Blogger editor. You can create a blog, but the only formatting options that show up are spell check and insert picture. I never knew about this on my old iBook since I didn't start my blog until after it had died, so all my blogging up to this point had been done on the PC. I will use Firefox to post, but Safari really is my browser of choice these days. Hopefully this will be remedied at some point in the future.

The Apple of my I

I am now happily typing this on my new Mac. I got a 12" Powerbook to replace the 12" iBook that died. I like the smaller size and weight, plus the 15" Powerbook I would have wanted was $500 more, so....

Everything about it is better than the old iBook except for one thing: wireless reception range is terrible. With the old iBook I could be anywhere in the house and still get a signal to web surf. With the Powerbook I have to be in the same room as the base station. Apparently the aluminum casing of the Powerbook shields it from receiving the wifi signal very well, unlike the plastic case of the iBook. Maybe I will research if a booster antennae for the Airport base station would help. Otherwise it certainly is much faster (G4 1.5 GHz versus G3 600 MHz) and I get almost 4 hours off a battery charge. All in all, I am very happy with it. :-)

Deep in the heart of Texas

We evacuated for hurricane Dennis last week, but luckily it turned out to not be any threat to New Orleans. Since it looked like to was going east, we went west to Texas and visited some friends. We spent the first night in Houston with the ex-in-laws. Very nice folks. Then we went on to Brenham and home of Bluebell Ice Cream. We drove to Austin one day and went to the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum. Everything and more than you could ever want to know about Texas history. It was 102° in Austin, but at least the humidity was lower.

Although it was nice seeing friends we were glad to get back home. Let's hope the rest of the hurricane season is less active.

Go Martians!

I saw the new version of War of the Worlds. Disappointing. I feel about it the same way I felt about A.I. There just aren't any sympathetic characters. Tom Cruise's character is a jerk, and in my mind he never redeems himself. The son is annoying and selfish and the daughter screams way too much. Dakota Fanning is a fine actress (the next Jodie Foster perhaps) but her character goes from acting very mature for her age to screaming hysterically in fear. Humans are portrayed as a bad lot (as they are in reality actually) and as usual, I was rooting for the Martians to wipe out humanity. I also have problems with some of the logistics and science, which I won't go into for those who haven't seen the film yet. Bear says I just "think too much" and over analyze. Guilty as charged. The special effects were fine, but I never got involved with the movie. I give it a grade C.

Free Katie From the Clutches of Tom Cruise

Self explanatory. What IS she thinking???

FreeKatie.com - Free Katie From the Clutches of Tom Cruise

Cindy sucked, Dennis might too!

Tropical storm Cindy, a minor storm, rendered us without electricity for nearly 18 hours. Luckily we didn't have any damage to the house. But New Orleans in the summertime without AC is not pleasant. And now hurricane Dennis might hit us this weekend. Yet another reason for us to move from the Gulf Coast. Someday a devestating hurricane will hit the Crescent City, and we hope NOT to be here when it does.

Arkansas, the Natural State

Having gone on two separate visits recently and done months of web research, we've decided that Arkansas is probably not our future home. Being in the Ozarks wasn't any cooler than summertime is in New Orleans. We looked at houses and most are dismal in our price range, or devoid of character and lots with any view cost too much to leave enough to build a house we would want. Plus, I think we both decided we want a more urban environment. So while we could probably live in The Heights in Little Rock, Russellville (and Hot Springs too) has too little to offer us in amenities we want, like shopping and restaurants.

When you aren't constrained by work and can pick anywhere to live (finances permitting) it becomes more difficult to decide. Our next round of exploration lies in the west, probably in the Portland, Oregon region. The climate is better, it's gay-friendly (and a "blue state" even!) and it has a large enough metropolitan area to have diversity. If we go out there and don't like it either it's back to square one. We'll see.