Welch for Judge

My sister was in a parade this past weekend as part of her campaign. Her truck looks awesome! it wears those decals all the time now, not just for parades.

Her team added some Christmas decor and threw candy to the crowd. My little nephew got ride in the parade along with some other children who had a blast cheering to the crowd to "Vote for Welch!"


She is still accepting donations to her campaign of course! So anyone who feels like donating can click over to her website where you can even give online -- WelchforJudge.com

Crabby People

Boy people are crabby around here lately. Even the newspaper ran an article yesterday where the writer explained that being nice can actually get you a lot in the post-katrina environment. Everyone is just sick and tired of it all I guess. There is not much sympathy anymore for anyone -- maybe from around the country (except forall those who have forgotten by now that this ever happened), but there is no sympathy for each other. It's "move out the way or get run over" around here.

The day before yesterday two friends stopped at my house during their evening walk. They needed to use the phone to call the sheriff because of a domestic issue on the street behind our house. I saw him hurl a huge recyle bin at the hood of his girlfriend's car as she tried to leave. Later we saw the police talking to her and an ambulance came to check her out. Nice.

The holiday spirit seems to be severly lacking as well. It's nearly a week after Thanksgiving, and there are hardly any homes with Christmas decorations up. Most people in our area put up holiday displays that rival National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation movie. This year, folks are just too tired I think.

Yesterday, we finally mustered up enough energy to put up a lite-version of what we normally put up. Usually we put lights up over the entire house. I just don't think we could stand to spend one more minute up on that roof this year. We've been up there enough already! So, we put up our big inflatable Santa and a bunch of white lights in the bushes. It looks nice. I think there are only two houses on our street with any Christmast lights so far. Normally we have a competition in our neighborhood for the best dressed house over the holidays. Not a lot of competition for that this year, I'm afraid.

It does feel good to stick to routines a little though. I think people would feel better if they would at least make an attempt at their old routines. On the other hand, I don't even want to think about going Christmas shopping.

They All Asked for You

We went on down to the Audobon Zoo and they all asked for you. (That's how the song goes...)

Seriously, we went to the zoo on Saturday. It was it's first weekend open since the disaster, and it was free to the public on this opening weekend. I think the entire population of the city must have been there - it was packed! The animals seemed actually glad to see all the people. They were right out there in front posing for pictures.

The zoo is located in Uptown New Orleans and did not flood, but it did get some wind damage. From what I understand many animals were evacuated to other zoos, but most have now returned.

My favorite sight was the new decor at the alligator swamp habitat. There is a floating swamp shack that is part of the display, and it had been altered to show the signs of the times with the addition of a blue roof, duct taped fridge, an empty box of MRE's and the telltale markings of the search and rescuers.

Most folks were very amused by it.

One rather ironic part of the swamp display that has been there for years featured an old flooded out car from the 1920's and a plaque that described the great flood of 1927 -- and how the New Orleans levees were built to prevent such a thing from ever happening again. If you click the picture you can read it for yourself. Harrumph.

(There is much controversy going on now in the City because the engineers will not commit to building the levees strong enough for a major storm. They only want to make them strong enough for a catagory 3 storm -- which is what we already have and obviously it was not enough! If they can't do it right, why bother?)

Anyway, aside from the crowd, most of the zoo looked pretty good. There were a few trees downed, the poor sloth had only one little tree left in his display where he could hang, a lot of the huge bamboo forest had fallen over, but overall it is still a very nice zoo.

Stuffed Turkeys

Here is a picture of three stuffed turkeys after they finished our Thanksgiving dinner. I guess they enjoyed it. :-)

Happy Thanksgiving

We are having a very low key Thanksgiving dinner with just our immediate family. We'll have turkey and all the trimmings, and the kids will help make most of it. They helped choose the menu and shop at the grocery store too.

We invited some friends from New Orleans to come if they like, but I think they just want to be home more than anything, so they are going to try to make dinner at home even though they have no gas, and therefore no oven. I can certainly understand the feeling of wanting to be home for Thanksgiving.

Neighbor's House Sold

Here's an update to House for sale across the street. Apparently the house was sold on the first day it was listed and they got the full asking price. According to the owner, they also had two more bids come in that same day. It was nearly 15-20% more than they probably would have gotten before the disaster.

The current renters are moving out today. They apparently have a big FEMA trailer at their house in New Orleans right now waiting for them. The new owners are moving in after December 10th. Supposedly it is a young couple with a 1-2 year old baby. She is supposedly in nursing school (somewhere local I guess), but I didn't find out what he does. It will be nice to have a family over there instead of the construction company.

Speaking of FEMA trailers, I got a tour of my next door neighbor's trailer this weekend. It's a bare-bones travel trailer, but it is brand new and very nice inside. It has central air and heat and a sectioned off master bedroom area. It has a fridge and microwave and a regular oven and is all hooked up to the sewer and electric. Once they start repairing the inside of their home, they will probably be stuck inside that trailer for a few weeks. I don't know what is taking their contractors so long to get started. I hope they don't end up spending the holidays in their trailer!

‘Twas the Night ...

This poem (below) came to me via email this morning from a local friend. It had been forwarded several times and unfortunately the original author was lost in the messages. If I find out the author, I'll post it.

It reminds me of an adorable book that was given to us by my mother-in-law a few years ago called, The Cajun Night Before Christmas where they take the traditional story of jolly old St. Nicholas, dress him in muskrat from his head to his toes, pile his skiff high with toys, and hitch it to eight friendly flying alligators.

The drawings in that book of Santa with his alligators pulling the skiff are wonderful.


I guess we have a new story to add...


‘Twas the Night Before Katrina, Cajun Style

'Twas de night before Katrina, when all tru da state
Not a gas pump was pumpin', Not a store open late
All da plywood was hung, on de windows wit care,
Knowing dat a hurricane, Soon would be dere.

Da chilren were ready wit deir flashlight in hand
While rain bands from da hurricane covered over our lan
And Mom wit her Mag-lite, and me wit my cap
Has jus filled da battub for flushing our crap..

When out on de lawn, there arose such a clatter
I sprang from da closet to see what was de matter
The trees on da terrace, and de neighbor's roof torn,
We feared we'd be dyin' in dis terrible storm.

Wit a little wind gus, so lively and quick,
I membered quite clearly our walls was not brick
More rapid than Eagles, her courses they changed!
And she whistled and wafted and surged all the same.

Off shingles! Off sidings! Off rooftops! Off power!
Down trees! Down fences! Down trailers! Down towers!
On da street of New Orleans, she continued to maul,
Screaming Blow away! Blow away! Blow away all!

As da wind ripped and tossed da debris tru de sky,
I peeked out the shutters at the cars floatin' by.
So go to the attic my family did do,
With a portable radio and some batteries too.

And den in a twinkling, I heard on da set,
The end was not coming for a few hours yet!
As I calmed down da kids and was turning around
Tru de window it came with a huge crashing sound

A tree branch it was all covered in soot
De wind blew it smack-dab on top of my foot!
A bundle of twigs now lay in a stack
And my Livin' Room looked like it was under attack.

De wind how it howled, de storm very scary,
Myself and my family were all too unwary.
Da dangers of hurricanes are serious ya know,
Dey are taken for granted as Betsy did show.

Wit da winds dying down and da danger beneath,
I noticed my tool shed was missing its sheath
So I grabbed my last tarp, and nailed it on down,
Den I got in my car and drove into town.

Da traffic was awful and stores had no ice,
My 5-gallon cooler would have to suffice
Generators was scarce, not one left in town,
Dere was trees on the roads and power lines down.

FEMA was ready wit people to work,
Electrical companies came in from New York.
I sprang to da car, and gave my family a whistle,
Den away we all went like a Tomahawk missile!

You could hear us exclaim as we drove out of sight,

"The heck wit dis place, Texas seem just right!"

Tid Bits of Note

For most of the years we have lived here, there has been almost a murder a day in New Orleans. And as a sign that things are returning to normal, yesterday a New Orleans woman was stabbed to death in a violent murder. Read more about it in this storyfrom the paper today.

And sadly, something that is NOT normal along those same lines also happened this week in St Tammany where we live. The body of a teenage girl bound and gagged was found in the river, about 12 miles from my house. The police cannot identify her despite the detailed descriptions they've publicized over the past two days. I hope this is not a sign of a trend. With all the transient workers here in St. Tammany, this makes me very nervous. There are too many strangers here in our little suburb where we used to feel safe.



The Noah's Wish temporary animal shelter in Slidell where I spent a couple of days walking dogs will be closing this week on Thursday. They still have about 200 dogs and cats that are now up for adoption or fostering today. Read more about it in Lost and Pound.

Any of my neighbors reading this who still have a fridge hanging around please take note! St. Tammany residents can call the EPA's "Household Hazardous Waste Hotline" to have it picked up (800)401-1327. The fridges in my neighborhood were all picked up just before Halloween, but I'm sure there are many more lurking out there.


And can you stand one more fetid fridge story? When dh got back to his lab last week, he was greeted with a freezer full of dead rats that have been sitting for two months with no power. It may be some time before they can be disposed of since these are a hazardous waste that require certain protocal to remove them under normal circumstances. But there's no rush now that the power is back on, since they have simply been re-frozen. Yummy. ;-)

The Joys of MREs

This morning I am having a lovely (NOT) cup of cappacino -- MRE style. For anyone not familiar with the acronym, MRE stands for "Meals Ready to Eat". It's military field rations, and it's what everyone around here ate a lot of during the first 2-3 weeks back after the storm when the grocery stores were bare. They require no refridgeration and many come with self heating packets that really get hot. Here's a photo example in case you've never had the pleasure.


You never know what you're going to get when you crack open a thick plastic bag that comprises one MRE. The condiments and after meal snack varies from meal to meal, and some of them also have dessert which can be anything from a pack of M&M's to gummy worms. Most of them also have two pieces of Chicklet style gum. I guess that's so soldiers can have nice breath after eating tobasco flavored industrial food. Many of them have tiny little bit of toilet paper in them too. I guess that's for...well, I'd rather not say. We still have a box of unopened MRE's in the garage. They will probably last until the next millenium.

Anyway, we have a container on our kitchen counter filled with miscellaneous little condiments and drink packets that came in the MREs. My favorite condiment is the teeny tiny little bottle of tobasco sauce. It is probably less than half an ounce.

My local grocery store is out of my favorite flavored New Orleans style coffee (surprise), so rather than figure out how to work our coffee machine and drink the Folgers, I found a packet of cappacino mix in our MRE condiment collection. I'm not really an MRE aficionado and have tried to avoid them whenever possible, but it would be a shame to let all these cute little packaged condiments and drink mixes go to waste. So I'm sipping away at my MRE coffee.

I wish I could say it was tasty. ;-)

House for Sale across the street

The neighbors directly across the street from us put a realtor's for sale sign in the yard this week. Currently the house is being rented to a family member of theirs from New Orleans who has a contractor business. I have to admit that I will be very glad if they sell the house to someone other than the contractors. It has been very unsettling having a crew of strange men showing up at the house every morning and parking their cars all over the street and on other people's lawns. I'm hoping the realtor's sign means they are not doing a for sale by owner to their current renters. They began having their new roof installed yesterday - ironically it is being installed by a different contracting company than the renter's business.

They appear to be asking a decent price. As a nosey neighbor, I naturally had to look up the listing on realtor.com. As a rule, housing prices in Louisiana are probably the lowest in the country. You can get a wonderful house for hardly any money at all. Our house in most other places would probably cost 3 times as much. At any rate, the asking price for the neighbor's is easily 15-20% more than it would have been two months ago. I guess that's good news for us. Our homes were undervalued already. It's about time they started to catch up.


I am cracking up at this listing that shows a house in my friend Jeannie's neighborhood that still has it's blue roof in the listing photo.

FEMA Trailer

A FEMA trailer moved in next door while I was away in NYC.

The neighbors are going to have to stay somewhere else for a few weeks while the inside of their home is repaired (from where the ceiling caved in after the attic took on water during the storm), so they qualified for a trailer from FEMA. They are also going to have to move a lot of their belongings out, so their plan is to rent one of those PODS for their furniture.

I've seen dozens of these trailers around town. People are living in trailers and mobile homes everywhere. There are some camped out in the Walmart parking lot, church parking lots, in many driveways of damaged homes, and in the parking lots of private businesses where the owners most likely had their homes destroyed. A year from now I imagine there will be a few homeowners associations in a tizzy over the trailers regarding their deeds and covenances. A couple of neighborhoods over in Mandeville have already had issues with the trailers.

Help from FEMA seems so random (although they did pick up our pile of debris!). There are so many people that I know who don't have a home at all, and they still don't have one or don't even qualify. For example, Bob who works for the city, has been living with friends and in other buildings where ever he can for a week or two at a time. He did not qualify for a trailer because he was not "living in a shelter". The man is completely homeless since his was completely flooded and several large trees finished it off by crushing it completely (including the wheelchair ramp his wife needed). It is a total loss. His wife is now living in another state with family while he works here for the city of Slidell. It seems very strange how they decide which families to help and which to keep mired in red tape.

Other repair news: We finally decided on a contractor to repair our fence. Supposedly we're on the list and he should get to us sometime after Thanksgiving. It will be nice to have a private back yard again. Then we can run around outside in our skivies and not worry about the trailer occupants next door staring at us. (Just checking to see if they are reading this. LOL). ::I'm waving through the window!::

Anyway, I'm looking forward to the tour of their new digs. I wonder if they'll hang some lights on it at Christmas? :-)

Elect My Sister!

OK, folks! My wonderful sister who took me in during the evacuation now needs our help!

As of last week, she is officially a Democratic Candidate For General Sessions Judge, Division 8, in Nashville, TN! Her campaign officially began on November 3rd. She has been preparing for this opportunity for years, and it is her dream to serve as judge.

She has already spent months pounding the pavement in her grass roots campaign to meet people and get the word out locally that she is a candidate for General Sessions Judge. I have seen her in action at a political function this summer, and I can tell you personally that she is awesome. She has been a police officer for many years and worked hard to earn her law degree during that time, and she has also served for the past three years as a Special, Substitute Judge for the General Sessions Court in Nashville, ruling on a wide range of cases.

Being elected judge will allow her to "continue to protect and serve". If there was ever a person who was made for this position, it is my sister.


How you can help: I'm just going to put it bluntly -- send money to "The Committee to Elect Welch for Judge"!

We all know how the political system works. It takes money to get elected.

Tonette has a campaign committee together and is going through all the official channels. Ideally they need to raise $100,000 dollars or more toward the campaign for her to be a contender.

Any amount will help. You do not have to live in Nashville, or be one of her constituants to contribute to her campaign. If you would just like to see more women in politics, starting with this incredible woman, then get out your checkbook or click her Paypal link and donate online! Legally, you can give up to $1000 per person, LLC or partnership. Corporations cannot donate.

Remember, any amount will help, from $1 up to $1000!

Information about how to contribute is on her website at Welch For Judge.com. She has a Paypal link too!!

The election primary is May 2, 2006 and the final election is November 2006. Let's get out there and help her WIN!

Fun in NYC

Well, I'm back from my very short trip to NYC with my friends. We had a great time. Here's a picture of us at the fountain outside theLincoln Center. This is the same fountain in the movie "Moonstruck". We stopped there on a walk through the city so Aviva could use the restroom at the Metropolitan Opera House. We told her that she has now officially "performed" at the Met. We're so proud.

On Thursday before our show, we had dinner at the the Carnegie Deli where we did a little star gazing. Actor Brad Garret from the TV show "Everybody Loves Raymond" was eating an enormous chicken salad and meat sandwich at the table right behind us. When he stood up to pay his bill, I snapped a picture of Devra with Brad in the background wearing the baseball cap. I didn't want to be a completely obnoxious papparizi-like fan though, so I didn't use the flash and unfortunately the whole photo is out of focus. You're just going to have to trust me that it was really him. Why else would I post such a blurry photo for everyone to see!?

Before we left the deli, we managed got into a conversation with one of the owners of the restaurant while she showed us her snapshots of herself with Barri Manilow from Vegas. We asked where Brad Garret's photo was on the walls which were covered in celebrity photos, and Devra asked how we could get our photo on the wall. When they found out that my friends had a book published, they were delighted to take our photo with Sanford Levine, acting president of the deli and MBD (Married to the Boss's Daughter). They gave us their card and asked us to get them an 8x10 and said they would hang it up (after we all autograph it of course).

Now that I'm back home, I need to catch up on some work. Speaking of work, Hubby actually got to go back to work for the first time this week. They finally got the power on in his building Monday, so Tuesday he was in his lab at Tulane trying to get things straightened out again. He left this morning for D.C. for his annual conference with the Society for Neuroscience. It's a big conference with 30,000 attendees that meets in New Orleans every few years and rotates a few other cities. The conference was scheduled for New Orleans for 2006 and 2009, but they have already found new locations for those future meetings since New Orleans won't be able to handle that crowd for a while.

Anyway, I had a fabulous time in NY. It was so much fun to get away for a bit. Thank you so much to my friends Devra and Aviva for showing me around! If you get a chance, check out their book, Mommy Guilt. It's fabulous!

Disaster Relief in NYC

Just a quick note from the hotel lobby. My friends Devra and Aviva are administering some disaster relief by rescuing me from the disaster area I live in. I have joined them for a girls weekend in New York City!! I flew in this morning and spent the afternoon at the Museum of Modern Art, and had dinner with some of my favorite cousins Kate and Joel. Devra and Aviva and I just got back from some good times out where they introduced me to some ethnic food, (Blintes and Monte Cristo) and tomorrow we are going into Manhatten to do the town and see a play on Broadway. We are seeing "Avenue Q"! I'll let you know how it goes when I get home. Whoopeee!!

On the Mend

As promised, here is a photo of our house now that we have completed the siding and fascia repair, and replaced our missing shutters. The new roof looks spiffy too. Also included here for your reference is a "before repairs" photo that was taken one week after the hurricane. Be sure to click the photos for a larger image. The red arrows are pointing to our nifty new fascia that we made with the metal brake this week.

Next we are working on getting a contractor for our fence repair. Unfortunately the entire fence belongs to us since we had it installed when we moved in six years ago. It is going to cost a LOT more than it did initially. But fortunately, our insurance finally came through!

Since we are going to have to replace the entire thing (about 80% of it was damaged or destroyed), we are not going to attempt this ourselves. I've had two estimates from contractors already and they are both on par with the insurance. Only one of them says he will haul away the old debris though. I do not want any more debris hanging around! FEMA came by and picked ours up already, and I don't think we get a second trip!

We are very fortunate that we have been able to get repairs done so quickly. Driving around our neighborhood, I can see that we are definitely one of the first ones to get our house back up to speed. Doing some of the work ourselves has also been very satisfying.

Most homes around us still have their blue tarps on them. Down the street, the garage door is still precariously leaning against the house. Right next door they finally got a crew to come close up that big hole and they are working on their roof. There is another crew of roofers across the street and one more behind us today. This place sure is busy with construction.

So with a lot of hard work, sweat, and tears, our house is on the mend. And with a lot of prayers and eyedrops, so is our dog. Oscar, our pug, had once again, another checkup at the vet on Monday. His eye is doing much better. He thankfully no longer has to wear that crazy neck cone. He wore that thing for almost 6 weeks! He does not have much vision left in that eye, so he's close to being completly blind since he can't see at all from the other eye. But at least he is no longer in pain and it looks like he won't have to lose the eyeball. Thank goodness!

I feel like all I do lately is make trips to the vet and hang out at Home Depot. Every time my sister calls me, I'm looking for something in Home Depot!! It's our new second home.

Gimme a Brake!

Yesterday we rented a big machine called a metal brake. We used it to bend the sheet metal that makes the trim for the siding on our house, also called the "fascia". We have been unable to find any professional to do this for us since we have a relatively small job (about 70 feet of missing fascia). The contractors are only interested in big jobs right now making big money. So, hubby and I have been doing the siding ourselves a little at a time.

In case any of my neighbors are reading this and want to know how we did it: We got a roll of "PVC trim coil" from Home Depot. The store in Slidell did not have anymore in the color white, so I went to the Covington store to get it. Lowe's doesn't have it at all. It was not expensive - about $60 for 50 feet. Then we rented the metal brake from Home Depot (about $60 for 24 hours). They also rent them at Tuff Equipment Rentals in Slidell for a lot less, but you need to call and reserve it since they were all out for this week. The brake is about 10 and a half feet long and very very heavy. It fit into my minivan only because we took all the seats out before we went. It still hung out of the van a couple of feet, so we tied the door down.

The metal trim coil cuts easily with a big pair of tin snips. The whole job was definitely a two person job. You need two people to maneuver the long strips of metal into place. If you bend them at all, you've ruined it! We cut the metal into 10' strips and marked off where we needed to make the bends, and which side to bend them. We practiced bending it on a short piece first. Once we figured out what we were doing, it went fairly quickly. When we were done with the bends for each 10 foot section, I would proudly shout, "Look what we made!" to my husband's embarassment.

Installing the fascia onto the house was not as simple as it looked. It was hard to line them up with each other perfectly, and they didn't quite match the existing fascia which has faded a little with age. So, we ended up replacing more of it than we thought to make it look right. We also had to borrow a very tall ladder from another neighbor to get to parts of it. You need two people to install - one person to hold one end, and the other to hammer it in place. Don't hammer the metal!

The whole job took us a good part of the day. It was a lot of work for just a little fascia, but now it is done and it's one more thing we can cross off our list, along with the repair of our attic insulation which we did the day before (another job that was not as easy as it looked!). We also discovered quite a bit of displaced insulation in the roof soffet that had been driven there by the storm. Imagine us on the roof with our shop vaccum sucking out the roof soffets so they will vent properly before we could install the fascia. We were quite a sight. I'll post a picture of the finished fascia job later. By the time we finished, it was too dark to take a picture.

Today, Hubby went into his office in New Orleans to retrieve some data from another computer that he needs for his Neuroscience conference this month. His building STILL does not have any power. Supposedly they were going to have the power on last Monday. Officially, the university still does not have a date to reopen the building to allow his lab back to work, although they expect him to be back teaching Janary 2. He's hoping it will be soon.

I cleaned out the garage and stowed all the Halloween decorations and dragged them back up to the newly insulated attic. I'm exhausted from all the physical labor we've been doing around here. Tomorrow I am going to take a break and work at my desk instead!

Halloween

The long awaited ghoul family photos are here! Our Halloween party was a huge success. It was probably bigger than it's ever been. There were so many people in our neighborhood this year -- most likely due to many other neighborhoods not in shape for Trick-or-treaters.

We served chili and hot dogs, and my friend Jeannie helped make some other delicious treats. We put out all our decorations including our spooky graveyard and fog machine. The kids all had a great time and they were so happy. The weather was awesome - about 75 degrees. The rain (which we really needed) was kind enough to wait until everyone had gone to bed.

When it was all over, Jeannie's 6 year old son said it all when he commented, "That was a GREAT Halloween!" I gave him a big hug. They drove back to their temporary apartment in Texas today, armed with a fistful of contractor estimates. Mike will be back next week to meet with their adjustor again.

There were quite a few Katrina costumes around, mostly on adults, but a few on kids. Here's a photo of a couple of my son's friends whose house was closer to the lake and flooded completely. One is dressed as moldy sheetrock and the other is an embarrased Saints fan. I saw one man dressed as a looter (his shirt said, "looter" and he carried a box of Nike shoes), and a woman wearing the blue roof tarp. I saw another mom with posterboard that had fake money glued all over it and it said, "$2000 FEMA money". I didn't see anyone dressed as the Mayor or the Governor though. I have a feeling we'll be seeing many more of these costumes at Mardi Gras this year in the French Quarter.

Here are the photos of my little darlings. Maddie was a white witch. Justin was an executioner. Morgan was the Wicked Witch of the East (she had red ruby slippers and striped socks), and since no one really knows the color of that witch's hair (since she was smushed under Dorothy's house), Morgan decided pink was it. Be sure to click these images to see the larger photos.



Before we get ready to put all the Halloween decorations back in the attic, Hubby and I decided this was a good time to make repairs to the attic. We spent a couple of hours fixing the floorboards up there and spreading lots of new insulation to replace what had been sucked out of the attic during the storm. We lost more insulation than we realized, and a lot of it was stuck in places that blocked the attic ventilation. It's all good as new now.

Anyway, I'm SO glad that the kids had such a great time this year. I'm so happy that the turnout was huge. I'm so happy that so many people had a good place to come trick-or-treat.