Well, now that we're basically caught up to speed it'll be nice to talk in the present tense.

People have been flipping out over Rita, and understandibly so. Just yesterday it was a simple tropical storm, today, as of 3 p.m. central time, it's a 5. Another 5! And it's still got quite a bit of the Gulf to go over.

Nagin already called off all residential and business re-entry into New Orleans. The Army Corps of Engineers had a mandatory meeting this morning to discuss whether they're going to evacuate the city. Everyone's worried that if Rita comes too close it'll send in a storm surge that will break the levees again. Shit, even if we get some heavy thunderstorms it might happen. Besides calling off re-entry, Nagin's telling all Orleans Parish residents already back to leave. A good chunk of those people have decided to stick it out, figuring if their area survived Katrina it can survive this. You have to wonder if it's ignorance keeping them or if they're just plain tired of running. New Orleans has been lucky since Katrina in that the weather has been cooperative. Almost no rain in three weeks. If something does come our way and the levees break again, who knows what'll happen.

Us? We've got hotel rooms booked in Tunica, MS starting tomorrow. We'll wait until tomorrow morning to make a decision either way, but if it turns towards us we're good as gone.

So far, all of Louisiana except the most southwestern parts are out of the cone of probability, which bodes well for our area. We simply can't handle even a small storm, much less another Cat 4+. It sucks for the Houston area, though. It's almost hard to believe we were there just a couple weeks ago. Our friend Toby is flying out on Friday to the Small Press Expo, so at least he'll be out of the area. We do know some other people staying there that we've yet to hear from, so hopefully they'll be okay.