Metroblogging New Orleans

"French Quarter Update

Earlier this afternoon I called CDs Saloon, prompted by a post on NOLA.com's Vieux Carre forum that indicated that people were there. It was confirmed that all the news sources that said yesterday that the quarter had 6 to 8 feet of flooding were purely false.

Yesterday I saw a CNN video report online that indicated that the reporter was standing in the quarter - on common street - while the water was rising. Usually it's the tourists that ask where the quarter is while they're standing in it. So much for responsible journalism. It's like telling me that my house just collapsed...and then saying "Oh, sorry. Wrong neighborhood." Jerk.

The only street that is flooded is Conti because of some kind of water valve breakage coming for the Wax Museum.
I didn't hear abot the degree of flooding."

Plus ca change

Amazon.com: Books: RISING TIDE: THE GREAT MISSISSIPPI FLOOD OF 1927 AND HOW IT CHANGED AMERICA: "In the spring of 1927, America witnessed perhaps its greatest natural disaster: a flood that profoundly changed race relations, government, and society in the Mississippi River valley region. Barry (The Transformed Cell, LJ 9/1/92) presents here a fascinating social history of the effects of the massive flood. More than 30 feet of water stood over land inhabited by nearly one million people. Almost 300,000 African Americans were forced to live in refugee camps for months. Many people, both black and white, left the land and never returned. Using an impressive array of primary and secondary sources, Barry clearly traces and analyzes how the changes produced by the flood in the lower South came into conflict and ultimately destroyed the old planter aristocracy, accelerated black migration to the North, and foreshadowed federal government intervention in the region's social and economic life during the New Deal." (thanks, C. JoDi)

Apology

badgerbag: messy, surly, full of books I'm sorry, I hadn't looked at everybody and here badger has been blogging righteously all along. I'm just out of my mind. GraceD, too. And probably others. And the ones that aren't don't know, I know, I'm just out of my mind.....

i need to stop reading

i need to stop reading other people's blogs right now. it's so clear that they have no clue what's going on here by the inapropriate cleverness of their writings, haha. It is just offensive. So I'm checking out except for posting updates for awhile. Thanks. all.

martial law declared in New Orleans

from WWL. (correction: that was from WDSU) The situation is getting worse in New Orleans, water is rising because they think a levee has been breached.

NOLA tv is back on streaming

Streaming New Orleans stations:
WDSU
WWLTV

inadvertant inappropriateness

the commercials already programmed to run on the streaming video stations all turn out to be fatally inapropriate at the moment. how long before somebody thinks to unprogram them?

Streaming Video

the best we've found is from Mobile. Go to TBO.com and click on the Live Stream: WKRG-Mobile link.

Do you know what it means to lose New Orleans?

"This is really scary," he said. "This is not a test, as your governor said earlier today. This is the real thing."

The map projecting storm surge is here.


WWOZ signed off the air at midnight. The bloggers seem to have taken heed and moved out.

"The bottom line is this is a worst-case scenario and everybody needs to recognize it," he said. "You can always rebuild your house, but you can never regain a life. And there's no point risking your life and the lives of your children."

playing with picasa, turning the contents of an entire folder of pics into a "collage"--looks like the wall above my drawing board back in the depicted day, somewhere around 1980.

storm comin'

asthma day. i left about an hour early last night coughing my head off, got home by 5 to see on the news that Tropical Depression 12 is on its way. As of now it's maybe going to come from the east, cross over about Ft. Myers. But I am drowning nonetheless. Heretofore, I would have suffered through it, but since I've been encouraged to use my leave i feel no compunction whenever I feel ill to stay home as long as I feel that way. So we'll see if it passes with the morning, as it usually does, or stays the same and I'll have to be out the whole day. Gurgle.

i an contemplating refinancing the 2nd home equity (responsibly, not with one of those shyster ones, through my same credit union) because my property assessment went up (here in Tampa, not the port charlotte lot already reported) and I should probably keep the draw at par with it. That might ease some fears, I don't know. We shall see. I will have to clean this place up quite a bit to do it as it will have to be appraised again, although that will be free as a credit union perq. Perhaps I can do that Labor day weekend. We'll see. Sigh.

Into The Ubergrowth

WEEKEND!!!!!

10 sentence day

1. Woke up; hadda go in.
2. Spent 2 hours training my replacement.
3. Discovered that I have Deb's phone number wrong and can't get her, although I'm supposed to pick her up to go to Knitting Night tonight. Called the LYS to see if they could contact her and fix this.
4. Had lunch with Bea, finally assuaging my shrimp craving.
5. Got Deb.
6. Went to office meeting, where I was stripped of my remaining duties except for the most laborious one and the filing, in a futile attempt to humiliate me or at least make me less delighted with life than I am at present, dammit.
7. Drove back to Tampa at 5, stopping by the house to discover that my Cafepress sample order had arrived, with which I was most pleased.
8. Picked up Deb and drove to LYS.
9. Drove Deb home from LYS when it closed; spent time once I got home trying to pick up a stitch I had dropped.
10. Powered up Semele to read the mail and rearrange the Cafepress offerings.

I lead an exciting life.

IE idiocy

I have found that my knitting blog, Defarge, is not easily read on IE. I have further found that this depends on the size of the reader's screen, it's fine on some and not so on others--the sidebars squnch around. And it might not only be my kniting blog, it might be this one, who knows? I don't know how to compensate for this discrepancy and would welcome any ideas if there are any ideas. Firefox, safari, all work fine but, as usual, IE is problematic. Sigh.

stil blessedly pain-free

only thng is, it's 4:30 am and I have neither slept nor eaten today. er, yesterday, I guess. ah well, one can't have everything and at least the pain is gone. that's some Super Decon!

it worked!

i don't know why I never believe things will take as long as doctors say. somehow it seems to me that when you go to the doctor it should be over, am i right? but no, 48+ hours. give or take. so, at three 3am i awoke with a pounding head, pounding directly the top of my skull, insistent enough to awaken its inhabitant, and stumbled into the bathroom (a cliche, but the only way to approach the room at 3am) to gobble both a heavy duty d-con and a pain reliever, simultaneously, hoping it would kill me now. it must have been the accompanying tall glass of water, but I awoke just before 8, flat in my bed--180 degrees flat, a position unimagined for months!-- amidst a tangle of damp sheets, pain-free! pain-free! with apologies to prof. derrida, wherever he is, I've been decongested!

and so today it will be socks! on two needles, I'm going to my LYS and spending the day making socks. i'd been saying I was going to wait until fall cometh but Snow has inspired me. the time is now. Socks! Pink socks! and exclamation points! pink exclamation points !!!

well, that didn't work

i got up and my head exploded. i ate my oatmeal and drank my cappa and got dressed and then gave up. called in and left a message that I just couldn't do it. I could no more face work with this migraine, not to mention driving there i'd probably go off the bridge, than I could flap my arms and fly to the moon. I really had hoped to attend this morning's office meeting, if only to show them that I still exist and am willing to help out with whatever is needed for as long as I am there, but perhaps I don't exist after all, who knows. not me.

so i'm back horizontal again with my knitting and semele with the screen very dimmed. I give up. it has been improving some in the later afternoon and then I can become mobile, but i'm not safe to drive much. use up all my sick leave, i don't care. i can do no more. until next week, anyway.

the radio says:

tomorrow is the one-year anniversary of hurricane charlie. that makes sense, seeing that I've been stuck at home for much of this week with a crippling sinus migraine. going in to work this morning, i should be able to make it for just one day until the weekend, non? went to the dr. on wednesday, who gave me a new prescription sample heavy-duty decongestant and sent me home to sit in a hot tub--apparently i actually made it in there before a sinus infection took hold this time, which is much better than last year. sigh.

the hurricane around this year at present doesn't seem to be headed for here, but rather the mid-atlantic states. but it's irene, not charlie, so you can see how much more active this year has been than last already...

ted requires pictures...

of my cherry hair

today i am a camera

self-reflexive

cheers

Anouncing girly girl!

i've opened girly girl on CafePress! this is a place to purchase generic items printed with my images, which i plan to rotate frequently. I'm taking requests.

girly girl ain't no girl anymore.

heartbroken

I was so looking forward to it and now the weekend is just CRAP. I drove over to lunch and the traffic towards the beach was awful and I almost killed people to get there and then couldn't find parking and parked several blocks up the street into the neightborhood and then had to ask where the restaurant was and I finally got there just a little more than 15 minutes late. The guy said she had just left. I even called out her name in the parking lot, but who could she be, we've never met. Then I drove back home in the same traffic, took another hour and a half, and then the storms hit and I had to restore my wireless connection to get into my email and get her phone number and finally, her phone was off. It's still off. I can't even leave a message.

I am devastated. I had so looked forward to making a friend. I had made up such a nice festive package for gris gris. Now everything is all dark and black and thundery. WAAAAAhhhhhhh.

I knew it, there is just no way to make friends in this fucking town, I HATE IT!

goin' for lunch with a netfriend!

hard to believe that I've been online for less than a year and yet here I've made all these friends--friends I never have made in the decade+ I've lived in tampa. Friends I've missed having so much. Today I meet one of them for the first time,we're going to lunch! Yay! We can be Jo and Badger at BadMoms coffee, only we're not badmoms and we're having lunch. We can be ourselves! Life is good.

the yoruba lady

when I was in New Orleans a month ago, I encountered an young yoruba lady dressed all in red and set up at a card table under an awning in Jackson Square just as I was coming out of my restful pause in St Louis cathedral. She offered to read the cards and the bones for me. I only had enough money on me for the cards and so, after making sure she was benign, I said sure. All she read was quite good, and she didn't foresee the car accident a week away (but then it was really an accident avoided, so maybe that's why:) but she did say I would soon be receiving a blob of unexpected money. This was the least likely of the things she said since everybody to inherit from is already gone. It was a nice encounter, though.

Yesterday, a month after my spinout, I discovered that the lot in Port Charlotte, where the hurricane came in last year on the very weekend I had planned to go down to see it, which was worth just under $2,000 when I inherited it 12 years ago...my lot now lists for $65,000.

laginappe!

my little slices of N'awlins are arriving all over the country, only one to go now. Some folks are putting pictures of them on their blogs--what fun to see how they landed! Bakerina referred to her pralines in a scrine. Everybody got different stuff. I like this idea; think I'll do it some more! :)

Meanwhile, there's still the unclaimed tshirt. I suppose I will have to take a picture of it and dispay it in a plain brown wrpper here. Poor tshirt, nobody dares:>