Talking to Customer Service

Knoxville, TN

...I'm supposed to fly on Tuesday and I'd like to change my outgoing destination from New Orleans to Knoxville.

There should be no problem for you to fly out of New Orleans on Tuesday.

Um. There's a big hurricane. The airport's not going to be open until Wednesday or Thursday at the earliest.

Our records show that no flights have been cancelled for Tuesday.

Really? Because the airport's been taken over by the military.

Ah, oh my god... Please hold while I talk to my supervisor.

Safe Haven

Knoxville, Tennessee

We've ended up in Knoxville at a pet friendly hotel. We've got CNN; the dog has grass to walk on; there's a Cracker Barrel restaurant nearby for dinner. We're in a good place.

Most of what we've done since we arrived is doze in front of the TV.

Once the winds, rain, and storm surge hit New Orleans, we may lose cell service. Texting continued to work in Katrina and may work again. We have laptops and can check email.

Mom says if we are going to eat, we need to go now so we can be back in time for Anderson Cooper's broadcast from New Orleans at 8:00pm. Time to eat!

Watching TV

New Orleans, Louisiana

We think we'll be heading out the door by noon. We've cleared out the fridge and freezer and given all the food to Neighbor Jim who is staying behind. He says he has a place on high ground to ride out the storm if need be.

It's weird preparing to go because it's very uncertain what there will be to come back to. We live in a part of New Orleans that has very minimal levee protection. If a storm surge is more than 7 feet, it will top the levees that protect this area. Right now the storm surge is projected to be 9-18 feet. We picked things up off the floor, put some plastic over the bookcases. That will work if the house gets 1-2 feet of water.

We imagine three scenarios. 1) no water in the house because the storm goes far enough west. 2) a couple of feet of water in the house because the storm goes west but the storm surge is still pretty high 3) the house is flooded up to the attic cause the storm comes where is is predicted to come.

We ate ice cream for breakfast. What else can you do? It's just stuff.

Time to get out of Dodge

New Orleans, Louisiana

It's been almost a month since the last post. There's so much to say, I don't even know where to start.

The main thing is that I'm in New Orleans and my parents and I are all packed up to evacuate. It looks like we are leaving sometime tomorrow (Saturday). I've set up Twitter on the sidebar of the the blog to be able to post updates from my phone.

First Days in Ireland

Brooklyn, NY

WORK IN PROGRESS. I want you to see that I am working on this. Really. More pictures and commentary will be added later. If the loading time for the pictures is too slow, let me know and I will fiddle with the resolutions.