(no subject)

Feeling pretty good (I know, what are the odds of that?), and I feel kind of bad about that (okay, there we go), because New Orleans may go the way of Atlantis and, back here on the homefront, my stepfather was trying to hide that he was crying last night because they took Meko, our red pom, to the vet and it turns out that, in addition to her usual cheerful incontinence, she's also got diabetes and heart/lung congestion. I don't think any one thing would be a problem--it's that she's about twelve years old, and when the ailments start piling up, you know it's getting bad. The poms are his babies--stepdogs, really, although I feel like they're as much mine as his at this point, given how I'm the one who takes care of them during the day--and he gets very, very upset whenever one of them is sick. The weird thing is that Meko seems to be friskier than ever--she was a little heavy, but the heart medicine has made her even more incontinent than usual, with the side effect that she's actually lost a good bit of bloat and water weight, and is a lot happier (and lighter). The doctor was like, "It's the damnedest thing. You wouldn't even think there was anything wrong with her, just to look at her." So I'm hoping this just means that Meko's going to be a bit more high-maintenance, medically speaking, but that she's got a few more good years in her left.

And then there's New Orleans. (Wow, what an odd journal entry. "New Orleans may be wiped off the map but ohhhhh my dooooooooog!") Both people I know in New Orleans seem to have evacuated safely, and while it seems like the worst storm in 40 years for sure, the whole thing seems to have eased off the doomsday scenario we were looking at last night. ("Katrina weakened overnight to a Category 4 storm and made a slight turn to the right before hitting land at 6:10 a.m. CDT near the bayou town of Buras. It passed just to the east of New Orleans as it moved inland, sparing this vulnerable city its full fury.") I'm sure the damage will be catastrophic, but it looks like New Orleans will at least still be there tomorrow. I guess we'll have to see how bad the environmental damage is then.

I still have class today--I say "still," because my mother is always convinced that the least turn of bad weather will cause class cancellation, which is ridiculous. But she always makes me check the website anyway. As far as I'm concerned, if my modem didn't even flicker, yeah: we have class. And it's a good class--low-impact, so far. The kind of class that's very small, so you really do have to do the reading, but if you put a good bit of thought into it and participate in discussion, that's pretty much all you have to do. Our papers are short, informal, and fairly well spaced out--

Okay, no sooner do I write that paragraph and my mother calls and says that schools are closing. My university? "[We] do not anticipate closing due to weather related to Hurricane Katrina." My mother's going to flip. Sigh.

Anyway. Watched Rome last night, except that I missed the first ten minutes due to another Excruciating Family Dinner. It schools Empire (dammit! I still need to finish those recaps!) in terms of nudity and production values, but... somehow I miss the giddy cheese. Even in terms of good television, it was a little slow. Maybe the second episode will be better.

Ah, Meko's home from another trip to the vet. She's a bit groggy, so I need to go get her settled in.

(no subject)

takarakanashi, who's in New Orleans, mentioned a few things in a comment on the previous entry:

Here's the general rundown on everything that I've heard... stuff you may want to post in case you have anyone from the area reading your jounal (which since I'm reading, it's likely.).

Well... my apartment (in Hammond) should be okay. My best friend is going back tomorrow, and we may wait... so odds are things aren't messed up. We've had our windows taped since Ivan, lol.

My job, at Target in Covington, well... we have no clue. Covington is 20 minutes away from Hammond, and we are thinking that it's either under water, or close to being partially destroyed. Hurricane force winds ran through there.

My family lives in Slidell, they think that Slidell is destroyed. No definite news has come back on that.

The four worst flooded places in the city area are: Kenner, Uptown New Orleans, New Orleans East, and the Westbank. A building in Terrytown collapsed, no info on whether there was anyone in it. The aforementioned places above have water levels of at least 8 feet.

She's got a public entry where you can post anything definite that you know about what's going on in various areas. Both my friend Marcus and basket__case are saying that the 9th Ward is under six feet of water. I don't have specifics, but at least one or two towns in Mississippi were completely wiped off the map, according to my mother. I haven't specifically checked on Mobile, but I hear that it got hit pretty bad as well.