Bringing the Drama

i bought a lot of fruit when i stopped at walmart on wednesday. i’ve been eating grapes at almost every opportunity. i’m still waiting for the nectarines to get ripe, and i have strawberries to cut. last night i watched the premiere of 90210 [I KNOW! I KNOW!] (thanks Kari for piquing my interest) and had a tomato and cheese omelet. then i ate grapes. i got up this morning and turned on the news, while eating grapes. you get the idea. i’m almost finished the 2 lbs of grapes i bought on wednesday.

i have read about how great farmers markets are, and i have been to a local one around here and handful of times so far. however, the only things i found that i wanted to purchase were peaches and tomatoes…..there was a lot of squash and cucumbers which i don’t really like. a word to the wise, i thought the white flesh peaches were gross. definitely stick with the traditional orange peaches. i should also tell you i’m probably still considered a novice peach eater, but my opinion still counts!

(the 90210 premiere was exactly what i expected….awful and trashy. however, i’ll probably watch it again during the season since some of the original cast members are on it, along with a couple of people from other series. plus i need to fill the void in the trashy/horribly acted section of my tv viewing time since Jericho got cancelled.)

so the trip home wednesday was fortunately uneventful. there was a bit more traffic than normal, but i was able to stay on I-59 and not have to exit and take my alternate state highway route. there were tons of La. residents on the road obviously, and a few who thought it’d be okay to drive 65 in the left lane. i exclaimed “we’re never going to get home at this rate!” a few times. with the additional cars on the road, the slow drivers in the left lane caused a long line of cars to form in the left lane. also, there were several power and tree trucks caravaning in the right lane, which made the slow left lane drivers even more bothersome. no matter, because there were no accidents or screeching halts.

i stopped at the Picayune walmart to get groceries since i knew the walmart near my house was not open yet. several hundred other people had the same idea i did, so the grocery stop took a little longer than expected.

it’s been nice being home. i’ve done some cleaning in preparation to possibly hosting a Saints party on Sunday. my neighborhood is still under a boil notice (boil water before drinking or cooking with it) which i am hoping gets lifted today. something about the water treatment system got messed up, so i keep checking the parish website for updates. the water thing is the only thing not back to normal. i heard that my neighborhood only lost power for 3 hours on Monday, so that’s awesome. i didn’t lose any food in my fridge, which is a far cry from Katrina.

the only damage to anyone’s house that i know of are my friends zach and faith. they had a tree fall on their house. they were renting the house though, so they just have to move their stuff out and the owner is going to get the house repaired. i say all of that like it’s no big deal, but i know personally that it’s a big deal. fortunately they won’t have to be the ones getting the repairs done.

i went running yesterday and it was insanely humid. it had rained earlier in the afternoon, so i thought it would be nice and cool. it was cool enough, but the humidity made it pretty miserable. i only had to dodge one tree and one power line along my usual 5k route. the weather is supposed to clear up somewhat this weekend, so i have high hopes.

i’m going to finally go home tomorrow. my sister called and said i had electricity back. the water has not been deemed safe to drink yet, but i can deal with that okay. problem is, EVERY other parish except for Orleans is allowed to go back tomorrow. I-59 is only two lanes wide. i have mapped out an alternate route to get back without using the interstate. we’ll see how it goes. i may be calling people to “go into the map” to direct me back because i don’t have a GPS. i’m hoping to be able to clean out my fridge and go to the store to restock. hopefully walmart will be open tomorrow or thursday. i don’t really have much food at the house, so i definitely need to get to a grocery store.

today i was able to get some free chick-fil-a (we got coupons at the game) and the CFA milkshake i had been craving all weekend. birmingham is not such a bad place, so it has now entered into the options for moving.

i’ll post more when i can. hopefully i’ll have internet back too.

my sister called me this morning to say she was able to go by my house, and it is fine. the power’s still not back on, and i heard there are state troopers at the LA/MS border keeping people from entering the parish (ie county). the local governments asked if people could stay out till at least tomorrow for them to assess damage and fix things like trees in the road or downed power lines. my plan was to maybe try to go back today, but if i drive 4 hours just to be stopped at the border, i would not be very happy. besides, with no power, i can’t do much plus i had to go to the store, so there’s not much food. if i can get back tomorrow i’ll be able to clean out my fridge and go from there.

i made it back to birmingham Sunday afternoon and got back in time to go to church with cj. the church meets in a fantastic old building. it was pretty awesome.

today involved lunch with a group of people i didn’t know, hanging out with someone i hadn’t seen in 6 years, and a birthday party that involved guitar hero. oh, and keeping up on Gustav. i talked with my sister who had stayed, she’s okay. her apartment is okay but without power. she has since moved to my aunt and uncle’s house which is nearby because it has power. something like 85% of the parish (or county) has no power. i’m not sure if i’ll go back tomorrow or not. i asked my sister if she can go by my house (which is REALLY close to her apartment, why didn’t she go by today?!?) tomorrow morning and let me know what’s up. i was able to check my utility company’s website and find out my house doesn’t have power. i’m not THAT worried like i was after katrina, but i guess in this case no news is not necessarily good news.

my parents are having a great time in Tuscaloosa. they had evacuated initially to get up to birmingham, but after drama with traffic (6 hours just to go about 80 miles to start off!), they called me when they got to the tuscaloosa area. i told them to get off the interstate and take a break, and after that, just go to hotels and try to find a room. my mom was trying to reserve one, but i had heard on the radio last week that just going to hotels sometimes helped. they found a room about 15 minutes after we talked, so were all excited to finally have a place to go. my dad called me this afternoon to tell me they found a Five Guys and had a delicious burger. i had told them how fantastic Five Guys was after i had eaten at one in Florida on the youth retreat. they are probably going to go back on Wednesday.

as far as i know, no one i know has had damage to their house. the storm definitely was not nearly as bad, and all reports were of less than expected rain and winds. miraculously, the storm had weakened before it made landfall. i was watching a local news feed over the internet, and saw how the storm was coming in this morning. it was cool to see flood wall additions to their jobs. at lunch, they had a tv on CNN which when i was watching showed a reporter in the middle of a rain squall holding an anemometer upside down. i couldn’t hear what he was saying but it might have been “OMG! you won’t believe how strong these winds are!” i think they wanted levees to break or something. the headline on their website earlier today was a lot different from local websites. oh well, Gustav certainly did not disappoint me!