Dr. P and his brother headed out this morning after fixing a flat tire on their car. We had almost a little party last night, grilling a few chicken breasts and doing a good job on two bottles of wine. They had been in to New Orleans yesterday and flats seem to be a very common souvenier for visitors lately. The Wife and I did a nice easy 24 miles around 7 a.m., but after that things got down to business pretty fast. It felt warmer and more humid this morning, but by the time we returned to the house around 8:30 is was still quite comfortable. I have to admit that it's pretty nice to be able to ride out the door and within a mile be on a smooth stretch of nicely rolling asphalt with hardly a car in sight.
The Psych folks, including The Wife and Jim, had a meeting with the Department of Hospitals down in Baton Rouge, and so we went in early to buy some laptops for the staff who were arriving today. The Chairman of the department also needed a new laptop. So the first place we hit is Office Depot in Baton Rouge near LSU. Well, the entire shelf of laptops was cleaned out. There was just one lonely Toshiba sitting there. So we headed over to CompUSA where we had better luck. We were pressed for time because of the meeting and the gridlocked traffic that the evacuation of N.O. has caused in Baton Rouge, and within half an hour we had purchased three Toshiba laptops and one sweet little ultraportable Sony Vaio with built-in WWLAN and Bluetooth for the Chair. It took me quite a while to download all the automatic updates on the four machines (Windows, Norton/McAfee, etc.) and to convert the trial versions of Office to full versions. Anyway, while they were in their meeting, I found a little coffee shop in downtown Baton Rouge and hung out for a while. When I fired up the computer, there were about eight wireless networks within range, none of which belonged to the coffee shop. Four were unsecured, so I raided the closest one and plowed through some email while I drank my coffee.
I have a meeting in BatonRouge tomorrow at the La. Board of Regents, so we won't be making our first re-entry trip back into the city until Saturday. This should be an interesting meeting. I even stopped at the local Dollar General store to pick up some black socks since all I have are riding socks!
However, I did get a good report from The Brother-in-Law who was in N.O. and went into our house to check things out. He said that although some of the ridge tiles on the roof were missing, there didn't appear to have been any ceiling damage (aside from what was already there, I guess). The basement was of course musty and damp, and things that were directly on the floor were probably wet, but it didn't really look like it had been "flooded." Of course, electricity is still off, and there is some natural gas leaking somewhere (probably a pilot light or two that went out). He couldn't find the gas meter, since it's inside our basement, so the first order of business on Saturday will be to shut it off or re-light the pilot lights. Then the fun part will be dealing with a refrigerator full of perishibles that have long-since perished. It will be rank, to say the least. I might just duct-tape the door to the case and muscle the whole thing outside so I can open it up there and then hose it down. Easier said than done, of course.
So for now it sounds like although the homes of my three immediate family members here in New Orleans sustained only minimal damage and will be fine once the power is turned back on. The Mom's rental, however, had enough water to damage the wood floors and perhaps some of the walls, despite being raised about three feet off the ground.
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