Recording Hurricane Sandy for the Record for Kaitlyn; I have a Katrina Blog, Let Me Add This

Pic of Day

       

 

 

 

 

 

So I continue on the quest to document events of my time and to that end I created an entire Blog devoted to Hurricane Katrina.

George W. Bush was President when Katrina hit New Orleans and it was said that Bush didn't like black people as he allowed them to die on their roofs and didn't send in FEMA to save the day.

Anybody expects the gubmint to get its act together fast enough to be the "goto" point in an emergency is dreaming. I think it's time those legislators sit down and get serious about this. Instead, any emergency is now a political event and how sad is this?

I lived in Delaware when Sandy came upon us, goodness, in October, still technically part of the hurricane season but rare. Sandy was an east coast hurricane. Because of the season change, Sandy would be classified as a so-called "super storm", a combination of a N'oreaster and a hurricane. Initially it was aimed directly at Delaware.

The unusual thing about Sandy was with the hurricane colliding with a cold front, the hurricane had enough force to push a huge pile of water inward to all coastal lands in its path. It was kind of like the fluid getting sloshed out of the bowl if, say, a leaf blower or something was blown full force into it.

I live a good ten plus miles from the ocean but it is not that far from me. Still and so, should the ocean descend on my house we'd all better have built us arks.

Sandy skipped over Delaware though some of the beach front areas were a bit stricken. It was New York and New Jersey that got the full force of Sandy and, as predicted, most of its damage came from that freak tide over-flow. Much like, for example, how Katrina caused the most damage in that the levees didn't hold up as planned.

Flooding they call it.

And even though NJ Governor Chris Christie put on a show hosting a visit from Obama, peppered with promises that the damage will be repaired quickly, that FEMA is here to save the day.

Only FEMA was NOT around to save the day. FEMA didn't even know up from down cause how's FEMA going to repair the torn and mangled electric wires? How is FEMA going to re-build the homes on Long Island and Staten Island (note the word both of these locales have in common...ISLAND)?

So I will paste this story along with my commentary in BOTH my specially created Katrina Blog, all links to stories in that Blog listed below.

I will also post this story in my regular Blog for my readers to decide if they want to visit the Katrina Blog. It sure is a wonder of documentation I must state so mildly.


The Hurricane Katrina Blog

First Entry-Introduction
Letter to Granddaughter about Kaitlyn-9/6/2005
9/8/05-Folk Wisdom from the Storm; New Lyrics to the Battle of New Orleans
9/9/05-All Katrina Gossip-Sean Penn/Michael Jackson
9/12/05-Debit Cards/Hillary's Katrina Commission
9/14/05-Email from FEMA
9/15/05-Ophelia
9/16/05-More Sean Penn
9/20/05-Katrina Kills Natalee Holloway
9/22/05-What Will Become of New Orleans?
9/27/05-Rita!!!
10/18/05-The TRUTH About the Convention Center
10/25/05-Ray Nagin All Atwitter
11/1/05-WILMA/Katrina and Pets
11/15/10-Katrina evacuees murder Good Samaritan12/6/05-Katrina Changes Political Climate in Louisiana
1/7/06-Myths of the Hurricane Katrina now shattered
1/18/07-Major Crime Wave in New Orleans
9/17/07-Two Years AFTER Katrina...Still Not So Much
11/5/07-After Katrina Louisians Elects REPUBLICAN Governor!
9/18/08-Gustav and dig the comment by a liberal idiot

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Drivel: The World's Out To Get Me

I've had one of those days.

I heard my last Drivel was too long, so I'll try not to get several stories tangled together in the future. I don't always know what's going to come out, though, and this one may be long, too. Certainly it was a long night and a long morning.

Last night was the final week's theatre production, Miss Saigon. I've not seen this one before. Harry went last time and I don't remember why I wasn't with him. I've missed a few due to sickness, so perhaps this was one of those.

Miss Saigon tells of the fall of Saigon, the Vietnam war, and the half-breed children left behind when the US troops pulled out of that country.

 

Miss Saigon tells of the fall of Saigon, the Vietnam war, and the half-breed children left behind when the US troops pulled out of that country. It was a powerful, tragic story, with catchy music. The scene where the GIs leave in a helicopter was especially awesome. Our theatre is a theatre-in-the-round so standard staging doesn't always apply and we all wondered how they were going to get a helicopter on the stage. Turns out, they didn't. They set up a behind-the-doorway *impression* of a helicopter. The doorway was lit by floodlights, shrouded by some kind of fog, and a rhythmic wind - as that from helicopter blades - swept over the seats close by. Added in were helicopter noises plus shouted orders, and inside the darkened theatre I felt the power and desperation of those folks left watching the helicopter depart so many years ago.

The beating of the helicopter's liftoff and departure made all of us look up, as if we could actually see it flying away.

It's a long show, though, and I didn't get on the road until after 10:30pm. The freeway is under construction in many places and one of them had me driving in a single lane, lined by those orange cones. When I saw the dead animal - a dog or a raccoon - in the center of my lane, I didn't have much in the way of choices. I tried to edge by it on the right but didn't quite make it. The car seems to be fine, but the incident gave me a few moments of panic.

I got home very close to 11:30pm. Harry had to get up at 1:00am so I tried to be quiet while I got ready for bed. I was groggy when the alarm went off for him. At 2ish, he was ready to leave and I locked the door behind him. I set the house alarm, my wake-up alarm, brought Hunter up onto the bed and settled in to sleep another four hours or so.

Harry came back home. When the house alarm started warning us that it was getting ready to scream ("I've been triggered! You have 60 seconds to disarm. . . 59 . . . 58 . . .better hurry!"), Hunter went berserk and jumped off the bed. He's going to hurt himself doing that someday. The alarm stopped its warning, so the intruder was definitely Harry. I got up to see if Hunter was okay and what Harry came back for. The dog was fine, but hyper about the change in early morning routine, and Harry was missing his tool pouch, searching for it through the house with a flashlight like a thief.

If you know him at all, you know he can't live, work, or breathe without that pouch. He's always reaching for some tool in it, and since he was working this morning, it was kind of important that he have it. (Ever left your watch at home? You keep looking at your freckles to see what time it is, don't you?)

The tool pouch was not in the house. He went back out to the truck, parked alongside the main road, and I tried to go back to bed. No such luck.

The cats were upset, jumping on and off the bed and making upset-cat noises. A moth had come in when Harry went out and the cats would *not* let me go to sleep until they caught it. Sometimes I rescue the creatures they corner, but I'm not very generous at 2:30 in the morning. I swept it down for the cats to have.

They pounced on it, took turns swatting it around, pressing it down with a paw and then carefully raising the paw to see if it was still there, and did other general cat things. When they'd beaten it to senselessness, the dog got interested. He went over to investigate.

Sniff, sniff. Boring. Hunter turned to come back to me and the moth was stuck to his wet doggie nose.

Behind him, the cats tried to figure out where the moth had gone.

I had to laugh; it was simply too absurd. I got the moth off the dog's nose and gave it back to the cats, who no longer wanted it. Apparently moths in dog sauce aren't very appetizing.

I went back to bed and got a couple of hours more sleep. Then getting dressed, I disturbed a huge wolf spider who had made a nest in my hanging blouses. Seriously. Now I'm not a clothes hound, but I *am* in that closet every day. I tried to kill the spider but I'm not sure I succeeded. Part of me wants to remove every blouse and wash it.

Then when I did leave for work, Harry's house keys were dangling in the front door lock, outside the house.

I guess it was a pretty bad night/morning for both of us.

Michelle
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