I went to work at my coffeehouse at 6:00am this morning, amidst torrential rain and hard winds, and found that not only had half the tables been left out on the patio all night, but the front door was unlocked and someone had come inside after hours.
That’s not the fun part of the day though.
So we made it back to nola in one piece, and it looks like the city did okay against Gustav.
There’s debris and small branches all over the place, and a good bit of the city is still without power, but we didn’t see anything too terrible once we got here.
However, some of the places we saw on our way back were hit a little harder. Not exactly massive devastation, but some pretty serious damage nonetheless. From what we saw, the boats were the biggest issue: Gustav lifted them from their moorings and deposited them wherever he pleased, including the highways (as in the case of this boat blocking the westbound lane of I-90).
As for us in New Orleans, power is still out at our house, and we have no idea when it will come back (the power company says by Monday at the latest, but it should be much sooner). For now, I’m staying with the one travel companion whose house has power. All my junk is unharmed (as far as I know) and both Ozy and I are uninjured.
Could have been a hell of a lot worse.
So we’re in Tallahassee and all is well. I got a call from me landlord and he said the house is fine but there was no power as of yesterday. One of our travel companions does have power in his house, so we’re chancing it for today. we’ll leave Talla in about an hour, hopefully getting in to NO at a reasonable hour.
I’m going to try to use the time in the car to get some writing done, so that will hopefully mean that I’ll have the bonus story up soon. JUST FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO CHECK THE BLOG: it’ll be the Nedrak Creation Myth.
Also, I might put up a map of Khartan (the country/area of the world in which Shawn lives).
Regular story will hopefully start up again at the end of next week, once I have my life sorted out. (it WILL happen eventually, i promise).
So Gustav may be heading our way. Katrina hit the first day I moved into my dorm sophomore year, and Gustav (if he hits us) will hit after I’ve had one class of my final semester here at Tulane.
I can’t say for sure what this will mean for the site and the story, but I doubt it could have a positive impact.
I’ll keep posting updates on what I’ll be doing, but right now I have to go start training for my new job. Excellent timing, no?