I love Fridays!

Today is Friday.
It is my day off.
I am going to be home.
I am going shopping with my mother.
We will buy all sorts of great things.
Hopefully a pretty new dress for my Christmas party next month.
Hopefully some trinkets from bargain stores.
Possibly some early Christmas presents.
We will eat lunch in a resturant where I used to work.
We will have great Lebanese food.
We will shop some more.
We will look at new cars.
We will look at new buildings.
We will get take-out for dinner.
The mall has the best Chinese food!
We will go home.
I will go home to the Penguin baring gifts of wonderful Chinese food.
I will make yummy yummy chocolate chip cookies for friends.
I will eat some for myself, warm out of the oven, with ice cold milk.
I will watch trash on TV.
I will go to bed happy.

Back to Nature

I like pretty pictures.

You like pretty pictures too right?

I thought so. Everyone likes pretty pictures.

I wanted to talk about how soothing nature is and how much I love it. I wanted to talk about my recent camping trips and how much I have enjoyed them. I wanted to say something special about how it feels to be out in nature and how relaxing it can be. Things about how beautiful it all is and how your troubles seem to not be quite so important anymore. But for some reason my words today are not working well enough to be able to describe my feelings to you like I want them to.

So, maybe I should just show you instead. Here are some pictures from some of my most recent camping trips. We went to North Toledo Bend State Park and Hodges Gardens State Park. Those links are to the Reserve America website because they had pictures but the Louisiana State Parks website has good information too. If you live within a reasonable distance I recommend you making a visit to Hodges Gardens. It was created by A.J. Hodges and he did some really neat things. He made his own botanical gardens with numerous waterfalls and built his house on an island in the lake. R agrees that this has been his favorite place we have been camping together thus far. We visited the gift shop before touring the gardens and noticed someone who had signed in said they got engaged there that weekend. While we were walking in the gardens we noticed a rock with a heart and some familiar initials and a really recent date and guessed that it was the same couple who got engaged. While I do not necessarily condone the defacing of property, it was kind of nice to think of getting engaged in such a wonderful place. So I want to to just enjoy some pretty pictures. Relax and imagine yourself there or wherever your favorite places to be in nature are.

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!

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!

Getting Prepared

So things just continue to be uncertain. A few things are good though. My grandmother had surgery yesterday but is doing well enough today to be out of the ICU and should go home this afternoon. Also R's family will be in town for the holiday weekend. And reservations have been finalized for our camping trip next weekend. Things were finally all falling into place and working out, BUT, (well of course there is a but, there is always a but, and this is one hell of a big but, sorry about that, the pun was not intended but it just fits) we now have to worry about Gustav. Have you heard about Gustav yet? Well he is a Tropical Storm who will soon develop into a Hurricane and has the potential to be pretty bad. He also has one of those foreign names that are kind of fun to say. You remember me talking about Edouardo from a couple of weeks ago right? Well apparently he didn't do a good enough job on the Gulf Coast so his big Brother Gustav is coming to try and finish things. And Gustav is pretty pissed. He might be starting out slow but he is making sure to hit everything he can along his path. He actually changed course just so he could skirt around Jamaica and dump enough rain on them to do some pretty good damage. And he is toying with us, because he is a very unpredictable storm. He could hit the Gulf Coast anywhere from Texas to Florida and that has everyone pretty worried. He might get enough protein from all those fish in the gulf to build up strength and be a Category 3 or 4 by the time he reaches land. And we do not know who pissed him off or where is is going. But so far most maps forecast that he will hit Louisiana, probably somewhere right around New Orleans, which could be devastating. Especially as slow as he is moving, he could bring all sorts of rain. Perhaps you heard about Hurricane Katrina that hit New Orleans? Yeah well in case you didn't know today is the 3 year anniversary of the day she hit NOLA. And honestly she was bad, but what really did people in was all the rains and the levees breaking and the flooding. NOLA has had 3 years to fix the levees and make them stronger so you would think they have it all under control by now, Right? Well, you would be wrong. There are still problems with the levees and the rain from Gustav could be absolutely devastating and ruin lots of lives all over again, some before they even finished rebuilding from Katrina. This makes me pretty sad because I like New Orleans, and I want the city to do well. I want everyone who received damage along the Gulf Coast from Katrina and her little sister Rita to be able to rebuild their lives. My family was lucky enough not to get any real damage from either of those storms, but I knew plenty of people who did. Gustav does make me worry though.

Take a look at this map and you will get a better idea of why:

The arrow pointing to Home is approximately in the middle of the two places I consider Home. I am originally from a little town just outside of Lafayette, Louisiana. I moved to Baton Rouge for College and that is where R owns a house. These two cities are only about 45 miles apart and they are separated by the Atchafalaya Basin which is a big swamp. Currently they are right in the path of the storm. While I know neither home will flood, I wonder about wind damage and power outages and traffic chaos. I am planning on going home for this Labor Day weekend because I would rather be with family who have generators and such rather than alone in Houston. Plus the storm could turn and come to Houston quite easily. They are already planning evacuations in NOLA and other parts of Louisiana if necessary. This could really hurt me trying to get back to Houston for work next week. But honestly I would rather be stuck at home with family. Then I was planning on going back home next weekend to go camping. I was going to go home on Wednesday night. I wonder if the storm will have passed by then and if they will even let me get back home to Baton Rouge. I cannot decide if it would be better for me to take a few extra days off and stay in LA or if it would be better for R to take the days off and come stay with me and we can leave for camping from Houston. Gustav is screwing up all my plans. It is also making rain for my vacation which I do not like, not one bit.

So I suppose I am just here to tell you that I might not post too much in the next week because I will be having fun with Gustav then hopefully having a good vacation. Do not worry about me too much, we are pretty well prepared. Just cross your fingers and do a little rain dance to make Gustav miss NOLA and keep my family safe. I really hope I have good traffic karma over the next week. I hope everyone is safe and sound.

P.S. I am really annoyed at Gustav because he made them move up the LSU football game from 4pm to 10am and it won't be on ESPN anymore it will be on ESPN Classic which is a channel we do not catch. And Baton Rouge takes LSU football seriously, that is why they moved the game, because they knew people would be going counter to the flow of evacuating traffic just to get to the game no matter what the weather. Because as they say, It Never Rains in Tiger Stadium!

Rain Delay

So yesterday was a lazy day. And I am glad for it!

There was a Tropical Storm with the potential to become a Hurricane and his name was Edouard. He was supposed to make landfall Tuesday morning around 7am somewhere near Galveston on the coast of Texas. I like Edouard because he never made it to Hurricane strength. I also like Edouard because he turned some and hit to the west of us here in Houston so we got less rain than we might have. So while we did get some rain, there was no flooding. This made me happy happy since I live on the first floor and am near a bayou. Also just saying the name Edouard is fun and makes me happy, typing Edouard is almost as fun because it still makes me think about saying the name Edouard and contorting my mouth into funny shapes to say it. :)

I got out and drove around some to see what was going on, but it wasn't much. I thought about going to the mall but decided that my bed was looking much more attractive. So I went home and took a nap. Normally I don't nap but the day was sooo lazy and also I hadn't had the chance to sleep in quite like I wanted. R decided to call me when he got to work to make sure I hadn't drowned in my sleep. Quite nice of him, but I would have preferred the sleep. Though me getting up that early did have the advantage of being able to get a sausage biscuit from McDonald's so I suppose I should be thanking him for the call too, even though my ass doesn't.

So lazy I was for the entire day. All I did was play on the internets and watch some instant netflix. Well I did do some laundry and water my container garden. And I made spaghetti for dinner, which was quite yummy!

Thinking back now on what might have happened with Edouard is not so nice. But I am content to know that Edouard was lazy too and just decided to send a little rain our way. So thanks to Edouard for the rain delay, I enjoyed my lazy day!

Edouard, Edouard, Edouard....see its fun to say! Okay I guess I can stop now.

Edouard!~

Okay I maybe I can't!