Merry Christmas.

We are back home. We drove three long days from New Orleans, getting in last night. The twinkly Christmas decorations all over town were welcoming in the dark. It was the quietest Christmas Eve I've had.

It's weird to be home, sort of. I was just getting used to finding my way around in New Orleans. Of course the food was absolutely fabulous (unlike the culinary black hole that is Utah). It was a privilege to be there and see everything first-hand. One survivor told me that the nation needs to know how severe and widespread the damage is. People need to see it to "get it." It has been almost four months since the storm, but because the scale of damage is so huge, it seems like very little is getting done. It seemed the city was slowly awakening the longer we were there--traffic got worse, more people were out working, and you saw less of the MPs. It was interesting and uplifting to see that arc over nine days. I guess folks just wanted to be home for the holidays, even if that meant living in a trailer in their front yard.

It's hard to describe what we left down south. I have to say that I'm glad New Orleans is still there, even in its truncated, post-Katrina incarnation. Aside from actually working while I was there, I have to be honest and say that I wanted to see if the city's soul was still intact. I wanted to know with my own eyes if the people were broken and beaten down, or if they were getting motivated and picking up the pieces. I now have no doubt they are making it; you can handle anything as long as you can party in the streets on Sunday afternoon.

I cannot even imagine the number of square miles that are completely devastated. It's overwhelming, and the rebuilding is beginning, but it's going to be a long, long haul. The 2004 hurricane season was not pleasant either, and I'm sure Florida is still trying to pick up the pieces from their troubles. I pray 2006 is a little easier on the Gulf Coast.

MPs and Parades.

Yesterday we worked on the condo a bit, and we were just finishing up a delightful gumbo and rice lunch when there was a commotion outside the window. Police had pulled up and began blocking traffic on St. Charles. We heard music...a parade! Apparently, this was an impromptu Sunday afternoon of music and merry-making just wandering the streets of Uptown and the Garden District. Me, my husband and his cousin Dorothy all ran outside to join in the wandering crowd that had gathered and was headed down Washington Avenue. Dorothy has lived here since the 1960s, weathered Katrina, and was the first tenant back in the condo after the storm. She is actually my mother-in-law's first cousin, a classy southern woman and a great music lover. We all caught up to the parade crowd and the music was hypnotizing. Everyone was dancing, smoking, drinking beer...it was truly wonderful. Dorothy started crying. Apparently, this kind of event hadn't occured since Katrina. Everyone was happy to be dancing in the streets. She leaned over to me and yelled, "I love this city." Yeah. Me too. We followed the growing crowd down to Annunciation, where they turned west. There was this crazy white guy in a suit that was jumping up on cars and dancing--he was a total freak. Everyone was laughing at him. He had one of those small, orange survey flags sticking out of his ass--I think. He was just wacky. It was the best Sunday afternoon I had had in years.

Another bit of happy news came yesterday in the form of streetcars running on Canal and the Riverwalk. Right now the city is borrowing the old St. Charles line cars since the newer cars used on those lines were destroyed during the flood. It will be a while before the St. Charles line runs again. I believe that little by little, things are trying to return to normal. I can't say enough about how terribly destroyed so many parts of the city are, but people are trying to clean up and go on. And lots of people from other states are here helping out, too. I asked a bartender how he felt about the military police being here; he said he didn't mind since the NOPD needed all the help they could get. Plus, the military guys are so low-key...they know they could be in a much worse place and I think that they are thrilled to be working here, actually. They have all been completely nice when I have had a chance to speak to them. They just show up anywhere...the grocery store, a restaurant...they walk in with their flak jackets and their M-16s and they just wander for a bit, then leave. There is always an MP hummer down on Bourbon Street, and the night we went down there drunk revelers would just walk up to them and thank them for their service. People in my town would freak if the military sent a presence to keep the peace. It seems to be working here. Order is more desirable than lawlessness, no matter how it is created. However, I believe in the long run that a city police force is ultimately more desirable than a military presence.

The house I love.

Ok...here is the picture of that spooky house that I love.

We are starting to get this city sort of figured out. Things aren't quite back to normal yet. For instance, restaurants close early. Really early. So you need to go get your coffee, etc., before 2 or 3 in the afternoon because the little local shops don't stay open any later. There is still a curfew in effect; you must be home or going home by 2 a.m. I'm not sure if this is good news or bad news, but there are NO Starbuck's Coffees open anywere in the city. They are are still closed. All the little local places are open and doing fine, it seems, but with very limited staff. We heard a radio interview with Emeril yesterday; he is just opening his restaurants as of last week. He is only at 50% staff at one, and 30% staff at another. Another restaurant will not be open for a few weeks. So he is only open for dinner, and not even seven days a week.

Well, I have to go. I am at a little local coffee shop that closes at 3 p.m., and it's about that time. Gotta run--

New Orleans.

We are here in New Orleans. The damage from the 2005 hurricane season actually became quietly noticable about an hour outside of Beaumont, Texas, where Rita came in. It started off as a few branches down on the ground here and there. Then, whole trees down. Then whole sections of trees down. And you would start to see more and more blue tarps on roof tops as you drove along. Then the debris piles became more noticeable. At first, you would drive by a house and think, "Wow. They sure are throwing out a whole bunch of stuff." Then, more homes had junk out by the driveway. Then, the piles became bigger. Then, we passed a HUGE pile of I-don't-know-what that was burning. This particular pile was at least a quarter acre in size and 20 feet high. By the time we drove through Beaumont, I would guess one in every six commercial signs was completely destroyed or damaged. The McDonalds signs fared the worst. They were damaged everywhere we drove from Beaumont east.

As night fell we drove into Louisiana. We saw two more huge debris piles burning outside of Lake Charles. And by huge I mean that these piles were easily acres in size. It was apocalyptic. The drive into New Orleans from Baton Rouge did not betray any great differences to us, as it was dark. The only thing about the drive that was odd, since we were on I-10, was that there were no 18-wheelers. We came into New Orleans at about 10:15 p.m. local time. We were diverted off of I-10 into Metairie, through a neighborhood that was flooded. As we left the highway, there were no streetlights. The streets were dark, and debris was EVERYWHERE, except in the streets. That had been cleaned up. For instance, you would see a plastic lawn chair and hundreds of pieces of micro-garbage in a front lawn, and the home itself would have the black lines from where the water once was. There are dead cars everywhere, dusted with dried mud in strange tan stripes. The road we were on eventually rolled passed the Metairie Cemetery, and that was pretty creepy to drive by in pitch dark. You could see the outlines of the crypts in the moonlight. We were able to get back into the City of New Orleans proper, and the electricity was on there. We found the way to our destination on St. Charles Street, and sat, stunned, at what we had just driven through to get there. There is a moldy smell throughout the city. I'm not sure if that was here before Katrina or not, but I can smell it.

Yesterday, we went down to the French Quarter and, from a visitor's point of view, all is well there. Those people and businesses are putting on one helluva show considering what lies just outside of the downtown area. We walked the dog for a bit and she really like the Quarter (see photo). I would take more pictures, but I find it really strange to just walk up to a trash pile and take a picture. It was "large broken/useless appliance pick-up day" in the Quarter, and we saw dozens of refrigerators sitting on curbs on every street we walked down. One refrigerator had a this message scrawled on it with magic marker: "Dick Cheney's heart inside." Most of the city, no matter where you are, still has broken tree branches just lying by the curbs, and there are random, huge debris piles everywhere you look. Fighter jets fly over every morning, and the military police ride around in desert-camo hummers, although they are fairly low-key. As fate would have it, Governor Blanco and Mayor Nagin were on Capitol Hill testifying before Congress yesterday, and that is all the buzz around town. It was on every TV everyplace we went in the Quarter, and the local talk radio channel was also carrying it. Not surprisingly, the folks here are still angry about what happened that week. I overheard at least two very heated conversations about how the governor screwed up. Oh yeah, they keep finding bodies in attics, too.

We are staying in an old apartment building that is now a condominium. It is gorgeous. The windows are amazing, there is little to no storm damage, and we are up on the third floor looking down on St. Charles. All the houses and buildings along here are pretty amazing. They tested the streetcar line yesterday, so I did get to see a streetcar, even if it was pulled by a pickup truck. I am not used to city noises at all. A huge fire truck freak-out occured at some point in the night last night and woke us both straight up. We're used to quiet, so when people here say the city is a ghost town I have a little trouble believing that. There is the most amazing apartment building one block behind us. It is really old and strange--of course I adore it. It looks just like a haunted house. It is antebellum, brick, and has greenish-black iron railings and a huge iron fence around it. There are very tall shutters on very tall windows. It looks like no one has come home since the storm. I will get a picture of this fabulous place in here soon.

Until this moment, sitting in a coffee shop in Metairie, I have had trouble finding an internet connection that works. Although the City of New Orleans had a big to-do about their wireless internet service they were offering for free, I tried it yesterday with no luck. I had a strong signal, but no connection. I suppose that EVERYONE and their dog was using it, and there was no available bandwidth. So, yeah, it's free, but...you get what you pay for, don't you? I don't really trust government to do everything right, though. Especially here.

In Austin, Texas....

So I saw a great bumper sticker wandering around on Guadalupe Street today:
"Drunken frat boy drives country into ditch." The weather here is grand and I'm pleased to be in the deep south and out of single digit temps.

I have to say that if you are going to drive across the country, do yourself a favor and get an XM Radio. We love it. I can get all my favorite cable news and talk shows while we are on the road.

I am perplexed as to where the photo addition links in blogger.com have gone. I have these great pictures to post and no way to do so suddenly. Hm.

The Drive South.

Day one was spent driving away from the Canyons of southern Utah and what a stunning rear-view it was. There is absolutely no question that Utah is one of the most beautiful, alluring, mysterious and alien places in the lower 48. And I mean alien in so many ways. We ended the first day on the road in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

On day two we headed south out of Albuquerque, up and over some high country through a town called "Chilili." Chilili is an old Spanish Land Grant. As we drove through the town, there was an unfriendly sign that said, "no trespassing, no photography," and some other "get-out-you-don't-live-here" warnings. Within two minutes of passing the sign we drove by the cemetery which was a completely Mexican, Day of the Dead freak-out...it was unreal. It had ribbons and statues and fences and...I don't know what else. We obeyed the sign and did not take a picture (I wanted to, badly). Not much later we passed a roadrunner. The real bird. Roadrunners are beautiful, dinosaur-looking things, and proudly turquoise.

We drove toward Corona and UFO crash country. As fate would have it, the front page of the Albuquerque newspaper that morning featured a picture of the National Christmas Tree at Capitol Hill. The tree came from Santa Fe National Forest in northern New Mexico, and school kids from across the state had made all the ornaments. The photo was a close-up of an alien ornament with the Capitol Building in the background. It was awesome! Some school kid was putting the aliens back into Christmas, where they belong. Only in New Mexico. Then, we were in Roswell by lunchtime (Coincidence? I report, you decide). The Wal-Mart in Roswell actually has an alien on the front of the building, and the Arby's proudly welcomes aliens as well. There was a store there selling "Indian Jewelry--Mexican Imports--Alien Gifts." Bizarre. We camped at Davis Mountains State Park in West Texas on night two. A mule deer walked into our camp and walked up to us. I held out my hand and it sniffed me. In all the years of living out west, seeing hundreds--maybe thousands--of mule deer, I have NEVER been as close to one as I was on Friday. Its nose touched my hand. It was clammy like a dog's nose. It was, in a way, an alien encounter of sorts.


On day three we drove down to Marfa, Texas, home to the mysterious "Marfa Lights." Marfa has a whole visitor center set up at the light viewing area. It's amazing...I visited two very strange places within 24 hours. We drove on through Alpine, Sanderson, and then to Langtry, home of Judge Roy Bean and his guilded lilly saloon/courthouse. It was a high desert, wind blown, weathered wood building, standing only by the grace of God. Oddly, Langtry is almost a ghost town itself, with many derelict buildings. Mexico was just a look away. Bean hosted a boxing match on an island in the Rio Grand River so the US authorities couldn't come and break it up. Bizarre, again. The West Texas desert is big, open country. It has a certain zen to it, sort of like the plains of western Kansas. We drove north into Hill Country and stayed in Junction, Texas. Suddenly, with a bend in the road, we were in white tail deer country, and mule deer were behind us to the west.

On day four, we drove on east through Hill Country toward Austin. We stopped in Fredericksburg for breakfast and walked the dog around the very sweet limestone historic buildings. We are now at my grandmother-in-law's. She is 96 and sort of forgetful, but at least she's happy to see us, and thrilled that we could come and visit. From here, on Tuesday, we will go into Louisiana. And that is the trip so far. I've kept good notes in my hand-written journal, and transposing them into the blog is sort of strange. Plus, I'm not used to blogging without being online, either. So this entire process is totally new for me. My writing seems stilted, sort of. But I am also trying to condense four days into one blog entry. It's not exactly working, but at least I'm blogging. Photos are forthcoming.

Hello, this is Drew writing this. This is NOT Julie writing in this paragraph, but in fact her husband Drew. Please do not confuse this paragraph (which is written by Drew) with the previous paragraphs and, in fact, this entire blog which has been and is authored by Julie, not Drew (with the exception of this paragraph). Thank you and hello.

On the road. AGAIN.

Well, we got a new laptop. It came via UPS yesterday and I have been busy putting all of our camera software on it so we can take and send pictures from the road. I'm actually typing on the new toy right now, testing out the wireless internet card and how it connects to Wi-Fi and all that crap. I haven't owned a cell phone since 2000 (there is no cell service here, so there is no point. I like not being connected and it is truly a blessing, I think) so using a wireless computer is a whole new ballgame, which I have figured out in fairly short order. My mom called and wanted us to borrow a cell phone for the trip; she was worried we might need it and anything could happen, and you never know...blah blah. My mother is so sweet, really. She also begged us to stock up on bottled water in Texas before heading into Louisiana. Mom. *sigh*

It's hard to believe we'll be in New Orleans on Monday. The big adventure begins tomorrow, so I will not be posting for some time. When we road trip, we usually drive as much as we can. You may rest assured that I will try and use the free Wi-Fi the city has recently installed (note to Tucker Carlson: I will send you an email and let you know if it is a huge gimmick, as you claimed, or if it is really helping businesses and people). I have explained to my mother and my good friends that I will be keeping a road diary on the blog and instead of sending mass emails, I will send one email with the blog address and then they can check in on me at their leisure. This makes me somewhat nervous because I've never told anyone about the blog and I'm not sure if my writing will change now that I feel I'm under some amount of scrutiny. Probably not. I told them it is an anonymous blog, but I will probably have to put my name on it sooner than later so mom doesn't get confused. Plus, Joe Gandelman is a big proponent of blogging with your real name. Why, I'm not sure. It sort of scares me.

Typing on the new computer is sort of strange...the old laptop was a perfect fit for my wrists and fingertips and was quite conducive to writing. This new baby seems to be a bit of a reach for me, and I've had to retype and backspace continuously up to this point. I hope it grows on me. The really cool thing about the computer is that we can listen to media on it; I know, I know...I've been living in the stone age (you don't know the half of it). But this makes me happy as I can download and listen to my regular podcasts on the road as well.

I was going to blog about this web site I found called www.northpole.com...you can send Santa an email with your Christmas wish list! Unfortunately, Santa wants to know a few things about you in return, like your age, sex, and what kind of toys you like (perfect for reselling information to marketers...it's a very cynical thought, I know). In any case, I'm not so jaded that I'm not in the Christmas spirit. I will send Santa a letter, but I will do it the old-fashioned, snail-mail way. I watched a great Christmas movie for grown ups called "Love, actually" last week and it put me in the spirit (it also made me laugh and made me cry, even...amazing). These are the things that are special about Christmas, the spiritual things...not shopping and presents. Well, I must get up and do some packing now that I've fully tested the new laptop's internet capabilities.

It's good-bye until some later date, hopefully within the week.

The Emperor has no clothes

U.S. gets low grades on anti-terror: Bloomberg.com

I just don't know what else to add to this headline, let alone the story. I simply cannot believe that after everything we went through that horrible day, that nothing has really improved as far as homeland security is concerned. And, we now have the largest expansion of government since FDR, the Homeland Security Department, and apparently nothing to show for it. The recent hurricane season vividly illustrated the department's shortcomings.

On the 41 recommendations the commissioners made in their final report last year, government agencies received five "F's," ten "D's" and two "incompletes," with a "scandalous" lack of progress in risk-based allocation of homeland-security money, upgrading emergency communication systems and preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

Where is the outrage? All that tax money, and for what? We can't even keep illegal aliens from crossing the borders, let alone help our own citizens during their time of need in natural crises. What exactly is this administration doing? I am sorry to say it, but it looks to me like a whole bunch of independent contractors and old business buddies are making a killing on government contracts for all of this, and the American people are not any safer. I am no liberal, but the whole good-buddy-making-money thing is pretty clear and I for one am appalled.

I love you!

A molecule of passionate love?

Gosh! Finally, an explanation for why people lose their minds when they are falling in love. I have known people that are "addicted" to this love molecule, NGF. Once the "passion" is gone, the relationship they were in ends as well. That inexplicable behavior (which I judge as a lack of willpower) makes more sense to me now.

Although the passion fades, hopefully the better part of actually being an adult human being takes over. If you choose to stay in the relationship, you learn and grow, and love turns into something much more real, stable, and challenging. Sometimes, a really nice bonus-round of the NGF molecule happens with a long-time partner. I know that's been true for me, anyway.

Sometimes, a really nice bonus-round of the NGF molecule just...happens. Ugh. That's where the challenges come in. It's a chemical, for god's sake! Possibly, could you buy a "patch" in the future to fend off unwanted NGF molecules? Or would you rather feel love, even though you wouldn't act on it? Weird to think about.

Thanks to Free Talk Livefor sharing this story -- what a great podcast!

Spin, Iraqi style.

Demands Grow for Details About Paid Stories

Of course the military is planting false, happy stories in Iraqi newspapers because our efforts REALLY are going badly.

I can put two and two together when Jack Murtha comes out against the war and Defense Department officials in Baghdad are, as they put it, "(providing) factual information to Iraqis." This conflict will become much worse, or just fester as the pile of shit that it is, for our fighting men and women.

Bring our soldiers back home now, please.

Bush called for Jury Duty

Bush Called for Jury Duty in Texas

This is about the only story I felt like commenting on today--that and the Australian drug smuggler that was hanged (Citizens of Singapore are not welcome in our store. We support a boycott of Singapore. We stand with Australia on this). But that was too depressing and I am already in a crummy winter day kind of funk, so...

State District Judge Ralph Strother told the Waco Tribune-Herald he expected to get a response about the summons but didn't expect Bush to report for duty. "Running the country...especially in wartime, takes priority over jury service."

Jury duty would be an extreme hardship on the president. Just look at what great leadership we've seen from the administration over the last year especially. Lord knows the president doesn't need another thing on his plate. I'm thinking that the Weekly World News article about the West Wing becoming the Arrest Wing might dovetail with this story somehow, but I'll have to think about that a little bit longer.

I wonder what kind of case it was, the jury duty case Bush will miss. Hm.