I'm ba-a-a-ck

Greetings, all. I evacuated for Hurricane Gustav, but have returned safely. I had no damage, either bodily or to property. The biggest aftermath for me is exhaustion.

I spent three days preparing to evacuate--packed LOTS of stuff this time.

(That's the Katrina Aftereffect: When I evacuated for Hurricane Katrina I expected to return home in two or three days, so took only a few changes of clothing. I didn't anticipate serious flooding, despite the TV warnings...I've been through dozens of hurricanes; there's always exaggeration in the preliminary warnings you hear on TV. Then Katrina came through: the levees broke, New Orleans was devastated, and I couldn't return home for more than three weeks. Although my own home survived Katrina safely, the visions of others' losses stayed with me. For Gustav I was wiser and planned for the possibility of being away for weeks and/or losing my house to wind/flood damage.)

I left on Saturday, August 30, with my daughter and a friend of hers in three vehicles, each vehicle loaded. We didn't go far--to a rural community north of Lake Pontchartrain, about 50 miles from where I live. I have friends there who were willing to house us and our menagerie of pets for the storm. (We had six animals with us--four dogs and two cats.) It's the same place where I stayed during Katrina. It's high ground, no possibility of flooding, although of course it can suffer wind damage. (My friends lost 30 trees from Katrina.)

We settled in and waited, per the usual. The storm came. Lots of high winds, and lots more rain than from Katrina. The high winds lasted for two days and the rains continued on and off for four days. Amazingly, our refuge did not lose electricity, although most around us did. Not only did we have lights and access to TV, we had AIR CONDITIONING (the most important thing to me). We went through the week in comfort, with only anxiety and boredom to plague us.

We returned home on Friday, September 5, to find the house in good shape, with electricity and cable TV working. On setting foot inside my house, I dropped the armload of stuff I was bringing in, sat in my favorite chair in the living room, and burst into tears. I didn't expect it; I guess it was the relief of being safely home. While evacuated I wasn't conscious of feeling extreme anxiety--in such a situation, you have to go from moment to moment and not think about all the awful possibilities--but I guess it was there underneath.

I've spent the last four days doing what has to be done--putting away stuff at home, restocking the fridge, going back to work on Monday, etc.--then collapsing and sleeping a lot. I guess there's some post-traumatic stress stuff going on inside me. It seems odd since I experienced only inconvenience this time (didn't even lose the AIR CONDITIONING), but who can account for the ways of the psyche?

I just hope we don't have to do this again this year. Now Hurricane Ike is down there in the Gulf, but it's heading for Texas/Mexico, and all we'll get is some rain. I don't wish harm on anyone else, but I'm glad it's not heading for us.

And thus ends my tale.

Yikes! Not another one!

I've been drafting a couple of different blog posts with the Katrina Anniversary in mind, but now we have Tropical Storm (possibly Hurricane) Gustav down in the Caribbean, soon to be in the Gulf, and things in this area are going in to hurricane preparation mode...which means I must do that also. So, unless Gustav changes his mind and heads for Texas or Mexico, I will be probably be offline for a few days. (I hope it won't be longer than that--it depends on where I evacuate to, if evacuate I must, and whether the electricity goes out.) Bye for now.

Alternative Olympic Sports

My last post noted that the IOC has added BMX racing to the Games this year. In an earlier comment Steve Malley had listed BMX as one of the sports on his list of fantasy Olympics games. His others are pole dancing and dodgeball.

I suggested the addition of pogo stick. Steve Malley immediately came up with a list of pogo stick events: "single pogo, team pogo, triple-bounce for height and again for distance, single-bounce the same way, perhaps even a sort of pogo-obstacle course!"

Lana Gramlich suggested bungee jumping....(Cool, but really scary to me--no heights, please!)

Shauna Roberts suggested cat herding--it "would require athletes with speed, balance, and agility." (Claw-proof uniforms, too...that probably would be the most challenging Game of all.)

Bzzzt! (Light bulb above head) Faithful readers, what are your ideas for alternative Olympic sports?

New Olympic Sport Added This Year

In response to Excelsior, my August 12 post about the Olympics, Steve Malley commented with his typical dry wit, "I'm waiting for pole dancing, BMX biking and dodgeball to be admitted as new sports..." Well, Steve, one-third of your wait is over: BMX is now part of the Olympics, beginning with the Beijing games this year. Who knows, maybe in 2012, the IOC will add pole-dancing and dodgeball, especially since they're removing softball.

A Few Interesting Links

I recently came across some interesting blog/website links to share with you. I can't recall where I found two of them, so if those two came from any of your blogs/websites, I apologize for not being able to credit you:

1. On Indexed Jessica Hagy cleverly converts all kinds of ideas and concepts into graphs and charts. Humorous and good for a daily laugh. This has become so popular she has produced a book, which you can buy from any of several popular online booksellers through links on her website. The book's description on Amazon.com states:

A unique, hilarious take on the modern world

Jessica Hagy is a different kind of thinker. She has an astonishing talent for visualizing relationships, capturing in pictures what is difficult for most of us to express in words.

At indexed.blogspot.com, she posts charts, graphs, and Venn diagrams drawn on index cards that reveal in a simple and intuitive way the large and small truths of modern life.

Praised throughout the blogosphere as "brilliant," "incredibly creative," and "comic genius," Jessica turns her incisive, deadpan sense of humor on everything from office politics to relationships to religion.

With new material along with some of Jessica's greatest hits, this utterly unique book will thrill readers who demand humor that makes them both laugh and think.

2. Contrarywise is a website featuring literary tattoos--tattoos based on books, poems, lyrics, and many other things. The site is simple: a photo of each tattoo, with a blurb underneath setting out the exact language used in the tattoo, and usually an explanation of why the person chose it. Some of the tattoos are copies of illustrations from books rather than quotations, such as the rocking-horse fly by Victorian illustrator John Tenniel from the 1871 first edition of Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll.

It's fascinating to see the quotations people choose to wear on their bodies. I'm not into tattooing myself, but if I were to get one it would be a quotation from a book. For example, an excellent one recently posted is a quotation from Gandhi: "My life is my message."

3. On The Ninth Muse, my friend roz m has a link to Wordle, which she says "makes a word cloud that visualizes the word frequency in a passage you copy to the wordle site. You can experiment with different layouts, colors, and fonts until you find the image that makes you most content. This seems like a good tool to use in writing; it could allow you to see what the dominant words (and the ideas linked to them) are in a chapter or scene." Clever idea. Thanks, Roz, for the link and for your description of it. (Unfortunately, I wasn't able to experiment with it on my aging and cranky home computer, but I plan to try it on my office computer next week.)