Auntie Em! Uncle Henry!

So with Cindy behind us the city prepares for Dennis. I worked Tuesday night as Cindy came ashore, the rain pouring down. I have never seen so much of a blackout in the city. At first we heard news that parts of uptown had lost power, then the by-water, Metarie, the Garden District, but then we heard that the Marigny was out of power and we knew things were looking bad for the quarter. If the bar loses power we have battery back-up's for our registers but the soda guns and of course all the audio/video equipment would be gone. We ordered juices and sodas from the deli down the street (poor delivery man) and prepared for the worst. This was right about the time the eye of the storm came across the city and brought the winds and rain to a calm. Radar showed that the storm was turning west, which would have brought the east side of the storm (which is the side with all the rain) right over the city. It must have turned back because that was pretty much the worst of the storm for the quarter. With the configuration and type of buildings in the quarter, our location on the bend of the river and protection from the levy, the quarter receives a lot less abuse than other parts of the city. When I left work to walk home there was just an amazing amount of refuse on the streets. There were countless roofing tiles, trash cans and just things that had come out of people's courtyards and balconies. At the corner of Bourbon and Esplanade there was a large tree down, another on Barracks. I took some photos of the damage. Wednesday night I went uptown to see a show at Tulane. There were tons of branches and trees down, leaves and refuse everywhere, traffic lights out (which is scary when you're flying down St. Charles at night.) All this from a tropical storm and another one, a much larger one bearing down on us. Current tracking seems to show it hitting more in the Mobile/Pensacola area, the area destroyed by Ivan less than a year ago. I'm not convinced of that path so we are watching closely to decide what we'll do. If the city evacuates again there is one very unfortunate thing. It will once again put our Uncle Tom Mayor, Ray Nagin, in the national spotlight and the country can see what an idiot we elected. If I have to hear him remind people to hit cash machines and get some "Benjamins" again, I will evacuate and not come back. I didn't evacuate last year, instead I stayed put and ate my way through house and home...Maybe I better hit the store and stock up on oreos now, they have those new white chocolate ones...gotta run!