Katrina and the Waves

This afternoon, I made sure to call Jan and say "I'm glad you got a chance to see New Orleans this year... because it may not be there tomorrow."

Seriously.

For my friends north of the Mason-Dixon line, you've probably seen the reports on Hurricane Katrina on the news. And you probably think it's overkill. I know I would if I didn't live down here.

Dealing with hurricanes is one of the adjustments I've had to make living in the South. Knowing when to panic, and when not to. When a new tropical storm arrives in the Atlantic, everyone even remotely close to the gulf or the ocean immediately falls into a tizzy. What if it turns into a hurricane? What if it comes straight to us? People start buying batteries for their flashlights and gas for their generators as soon as they hear about a new tropical storm in the Atlantic.

Most of the time, everyone's freaked out about nothing. Sometimes, it peters out before it hits land. Sometimes, everyone freaks out because it's projected to hit them... then it starts heading in a completely different direction. People stash their C-batteries away in a closet, forget where they put them, and then have to buy new batteries when the next tropical storm hits the Weather Channel.

But then again, sometimes, it gets really scary.


Katrina looks like one scary mother of a hurricane. And she's headed straight for New Orleans.

Unlike most of my friends down here, I don't know anyone who lives in Nola. The closest is Rich in Baton Rouge. But Cory and I have a lot of great memories from our trip to New Orleans for the Sugar Bowl. It's one of the cities on our "list" of places we'd like to live. I've even thought that maybe Cory and I should get married there.

It'll be really sad if I can't go back to the corner of Toulouse and Decatur because its been washed away by a stupid hurricane.