Gustav: See You On the Other Side

Every parish around us has issued a mandatory evacuation. Jeff Davis, Cameron, Allen, and Calcasieu. Hurricane Gustav will make landfall in South Louisiana in less than 24 hours.

We chose not to act on the "recommended" evacuation order. We will stay.

We stayed through Hurricane Rita in 2005. We were without electricity for seven days, but we never lost water pressure. It was really, really scary. I just knew that one of the oaks in the yard would fall on the house or the wind would just take the roof off. So loud...for so many hours. Trees went down in the yard, but none landed on the house and the roof stayed on.

So, why in the h*** would we stay for Gustav?? Couple of reasons. One reason is that Gustav is behaving differently than Rita. Gustav will come ashore a couple of hundred miles away in southeastern Louisiana and come at us from an angle (we are just a few miles from the Texas border on the west central side of the state). Rita came at us from due south, right up the Sabine River valley. Not a lot of land there to break the forward momentum before it hit us. And it was supposed to have hit Port Arthur!

And another reason, for me anyway, is that I want to come back when I get ready. When you evacuate, you have to remain outside the area until the authorities deem it safe to return. That might be weeks.

Also, we have two, big dogs and two cats. The dogs really don't get along, and the cats merely tolerate each other and the dogs.

So, we are staying. My daughter left Baton Rouge (AFTER the first LSU game of course) and then she and my husband--who had attended the game with her--both left Baton Rouge and went to his dorm/apartment in Alexandria, where they will ride out the storm. Today is my husband's 45th birthday. Happy Birthday, Dear!

See you on the other side!

Arrivederci!

100

Happy 100th post to me! So, this is my first post since mid-July, and I have much to tell. So much, in fact, that it may turn into more post than I can stand at one sitting.

First: I PASSED! I have been trying to pass the new statewide notary public exam since June, 2007. I paid $700 for a notary exam prep course taught by an attorney from Lake Charles in early '07, and took the test three times--June '07, December '07, and June '08.

And I failed all three times. Yep, that's right. I failed all three times. No one from my class passed the first time. Some took it one more time. I took it on all three of the next test dates, and had decided that I would take it just one more time, in Dec. '08. Then, out of the blue, I got a call last week from the test administration agency saying they had revised the passing criteria and that my score now fell within the passing range. Can you say, "Oh, yeah!"? I really did it! My paperwork came in the mail yesterday, and I filled it all out and will start the filing process with the Clerk of Court and Secretary of State.

Second: Hubby has finished his Associate Degree in Clinical Laboratory Technology! He has applied for his provisional CLT License, and when that comes in he is going to start working part-time. (Part-time because he has decided to take a couple more classes this fall that he will need if LSU-A ever does implement a four-year degree program in Clinical Laboratory Science.
I am okay with that for now.)

So, I will try to be more expansive another time. For now....Ciao!