Sunday Update

It's all Gustav, all the time. We're watching the storm and making plans.

Seven or eight years ago, Milady and I were sitting at a local bar one Saturday afternoon and she saw a local fellow down at the end of the bar. Milady addressed him, "Hey, I thought you were offshore?"

"I was," he said, "but a sy-foon done blown up in the Gulf and they evaporated everyone off the rigs."

Well, we took that as an interesting play on words and there has been a lot of evaporating going on around here.

Looking at the various hurricane tracks, it looks like Gustav will pass south of us and will be a tropical storm when it passes. We're due to get a lot of rain and a lot of wind, and, yes, we're in the northeast quadrant of the storm.

Momma lives in the woods and we're set to get her out tomorrow morning, evaporating her over to our house. The main concern there is the huge number of trees on Momma's property and we don't want her to get stranded, unable to move in or out. She'll ride out the storm at my place and when it's over, she can go home when she's able to.

My house sits on a ridge line, and I have very few trees around the house. I'll pick up Momma's generator tomorrow morning and bring it here. If the electricity fails, I can use the generator to keep the refrigerator going. We won't have A/C, we've got lots of candles and flashlights, we can cook on a butane camp stove and we've got several days food.

I'm impressed with the way that the citizens are responding to this emergency. There's no sense of panic, just a generalized sense of urgency and preparation. People are still moving about, buying supplies and getting ready to hunker down. There is bread in the stores, along with batteries, water, and all the essentials. The stations have gasoline, although ice is in short supply. For some reason, there is a general shortage of hot dog buns. Go figure.

There are a lot of evaporees moving through the area, but there is no panic. We've done this for years, we've done it poorly and we've done it well. The shelters are working. My daughter-in-law is working at one of the shelters and reports that everything is satisfactory. I'm surprised that I haven't heard more about shelters being open, but expect to hear more as we get further into this exercise.

I've cleaned off the back porch and deck, and I'm listening to a wind chime tinkle in the afternoon breeze. I'm reminded that I need to put it away until this blow is over. The storm isn't expected here until tomorrow afternoon or evening, continuing through the night until Tuesday.