Monday, September 22, 2008

I Am Still Alive, Part Deux

Hey there, how are ya?

I have been good. I know I have been gone a while. And I am sorry :(. Fortunately it was not due to any problems from storm damage or anything like that. It started when I went home to Baton Rouge to get away from Hurricane Ike. And I had Internet access while I was there. Then it continued as I had time off work because my work building was damaged by the storm. So there has been no excuse for me not posting. In fact I have been reading blogs but just not blogging myself. I have begun this post many times only to not finish it. I have thought about it often. The fact is that I just do not feel like I have much to say. Of course things have been happening and I enjoyed my unplanned week long vacation from work. I could be talking about the mundane but honestly nothing has inspired me. I suppose I went away for too long and then I was out of any sort of habit of writing here. I do not know why I feel like I am in such a funk. Hopefully it doesn't last.

I am looking forward to going on a short weekend trip soon. I still do not know where we are actually going though. It seems the trip curse has struck again. I like to jokingly blame most of it on R, but the truth is its not his fault or mine. Bad things just like to happen to us whenever we try to make plans. Something will inevitably come up and affect our plans. He has tried to surprise me with trips before and they just didn't work out. I have tried to make plans only to have something happen and we can't do them either. It seems that often we do not have plans but the minute we try to make any we then suddenly have 3 conflicting requests for our time. This upcoming trip is honestly no different. He is going to be training in another state next week and then I was going to fly out and meet him for the weekend after and we were going to go to the Nascar race. We made sure that we both had nothing that would conflict with this time and I went ahead and booked my ticket out there. Then R gets a call that he is needed for a meeting on the first day of his class which is out of the question and he is annoyed because this was supposed to happen well before his class. Also we had plans for the weekend and were getting some tickets for camping and now those tickets do not exist anymore. Which sounds bad but we can get free accommodations and did not truly need the tickets in the first place. But it is just typical of our luck that the tickets are not available for us anymore. It is always something last minute. But since we were never really that overly excited about the race we are thinking of maybe just skipping the whole thing and going camping somewhere else. Thing is it is still a last minute decision because we need to have stuff packed and in the car that R will be taking this weekend. And the place I really want to go is all booked up because we were forced to make this decision last minute. And we just don't know what to decide anymore. You just get to a point where you have tried and been shot down too many times that you just don't feel like trying to make plans anymore because what is the point...But we want, no we NEED the vacation and just to get away. Maybe the time off will help us get some enthusiasm back for trying to do things again. But right now we are just both fed up, with pretty much everything. So I suppose that may be why I have no desire to write anything. I do not feel the urge to do anything for anyone but myself, and even then I make excuses not to take care of myself.

When you get in a funk because nothing is going right...How do you get out of it? What makes you happy again? What makes you want to do things again? What makes going back to work any better than before? How do you change your attitude back to normal? Does anyone have any suggestions?

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Hurricane, Hurricane, Go Away!

This year's Hurricane Season is just icky!

So far I have written about Eduardo and Gustav. Now I am going to talk about Ike. I know that I have more to worry about because my home and where I live now are both on the Gulf Coast. But honestly I did not think the hurricanes that hit the Gulf Coast this year would all aim at those places. Remember a couple of weeks back when I showed you the map of Gustav and his projected path? Well yeah he pretty much followed that path and did some pretty good damage to Louisiana. I can say that Baton Rouge was one of the areas that was hardest hit and I still know there are people without electricity.

Here is the projected path of Ike:
And every time they update the map, the path moves closer and closer to Houston. We have been making sure everything is secure at work and we get off tomorrow and Friday so we can evacuate if we want. I am headed home for sure. I am going to pack up some clothes, pack up an ice chest of food I do not want to spoil if I lose electricity, and pick up anything of value off the ground in case my apartment floods. I am leaving as soon as I can, not because I am terribly afraid of the storm, but because I want to avoid as much traffic as I can. So I am asking again for you guys to keep your fingers crossed that my home in Houston stays safe. I will be ever so glad when this Hurricane Season is over. I do know I am glad that none so far have hit the panhandle of Florida this year. They are almost done rebuilding some roads and I am very much looking forward to being able to go camping at Fort Pickens again.

So I am off again, but I should have Internet access this time so hopefully I will not be quite so lazy and actually post some on my long weekend.

Stay safe everyone!

Tuesday, September 09, 2008

I am Alive

Yes, I am here. I made it through the whole Gustav Debacle okay. I ended up home in Baton Rouge for the storm. We were able to take back roads to avoid contraflow traffic and bring R's mother home to Alexandria and make it back to BR safely. While the family weekend was cut short we all still had a good time. I cooked some good rice and gravy and everyone was happy. R's family decided to evacuate north but my family all stayed in Breaux Bridge. Everyone ended up okay with no damage to homes. Fallen trees and branches were everywhere and tons of people lost power. But everyone we know came out of it okay. Our families were only out of power for a day and a half which was good. The power came back on to our house in BR after about 6 days. We were extremely lucky to have such great neighbors. Our generator of course refused to work but our neighbors were great about letting us stay with them. They plugged up our refrigerator to their generator and we put our window unit in their house. Everything went as well as could have been expected and we got to know our neighbors a lot better in the process. They are great. I know the house may not be perfect but I am so glad R bought that one because the neighbors are so wonderful.

We went ahead and packed some stuff and left for northwest Louisiana on the Wednesday night. R had a meeting scheduled up in Alexandria on the Thursday and then we had decided to go camping from there. Since we had made these reservations weeks before the storm and we knew the campgrounds had power while we still didn't, we hightailed it out of BR. We had quite a good time. We went to North Toledo Bend State Park as well as Hodges Gardens. Both parks were great. The cabins were awesome and well furnished, the weather was quite nice, and we had a great time on the lakes. We rented a boat at both parks and managed to get only a little sunburned. I will have to bring fishing poles next time we go! North Toledo Bend is a nice park and what you would expect from a campground. Hodges Gardens is really neat because it was built by A.J. Hodges. He built the lake and his home on an island and these wonderful botanical gardens with amazing waterfalls. We really enjoyed our time there and loved waking up to a lake view.

So I made it through Hurricane Gustav, had a good camping trip, and made it back to work this week. Now all I have to worry about is Hurricane Ike possibly making landfall near Houston where I live. Hopefully it stays far enough away from me. I want to be able to make it home to BR this weekend before it hits. Keep you fingers crossed for me and everyone else along the Texas coast that Ike is not a bad storm.

I will get back to more regular postings and hopefully will get some pictures of our camping trip up here too!