Another Day, Another Hurricane . . .

I have to admit I was rather surprised at the intensity and duration of the wind and rain that we felt up here in Jackson, LA as Hurricane Rita came ashore nearly 200 miles away. From around midnight until 5 or 6 a.m. a relentless and gusty East wind battered the 150 year old house as the rain pounded on the metal roof. All night we could hear the wind rushing through the two large pecan trees outside, and I wouldn't have been too surprised if some large branches had come down from them. Somehow, though, the trees and the house stood up to hurricane Rita and around 7 a.m. I went downstairs to make some coffee. Although most of New Orleans weathered this one pretty well, the lower ninth ward was again flooded when the water in the industrial canal poured over the temporary patch that the Corps of Engineers had made only a couple of weeks earlier. Of course, I didn't sleep very soundly last night. Every now and then the steady roar of the winds would be inturrupted by a sudden gust that would shake the house a bit. Somehow, we never lost electrical power except for a few times when it went out and came back on a second later.

It rained pretty much all day today, and it wasn't until around mid-afternoon that the strong wind gusts and sudden downpours finally ended. Riding today was just not an option, and so I spent a couple of hours building a website on Blogspot that we can use as a temporary home for information and announcements about research grant opportunities. It was kind of fun, but of course Blogger isn't really intended as an HTML editor, and I was missing my copy of Dreamweaver that resides on my office desktop that I hope is still safely tucked away in the supply room of my office.

The University is organizing a group to go into the Tidewater Building on Tuesday to retreive some essential stuff - computers, documentation, paperwork, etc. - and I think I may be part of the team that will be doing what Mark D. recently called "authorized looting." Mark works for Shell, and he did some major authorized looting of One Shell Square recently, carting off to Houston three tractor-trailers full of computer equipment. He's now in Houston babysitting all that stuff. Luckily, Hurricane Rita took it really easy on the Houston area. Apparently Mother Nature wasn't quite finished slapping South Louisiana around yet. In preparation, The Wife picked up some of those little flashlight things that you strap to your head. Since there's no power in the building, we'll be hauling equipment and stuff up and down10-20 flights of dark, damp and slippery stairs. Sounds like fun!

So the big question is whether I'll be able to ride tomorrow or not. The weather is, to say the least, unsettled and unpredictible, so I suppose I'll get up around 6:30 and make a decision then.