Low and dry

I fled Baton Rouge on Friday in spite of having planned to stay the weekend. That is, a few days ago I was unwilling to spring an extra $600 to change my ticket from Boston to NYC, where my girlfriend has been working for the past four days. But as the women I work with tracked Rita, it moved North, slowed down, got stronger, and generally looked like the source of a week of electric-free living. That means food gets scarce, except for what you grill, which is in too great a supply - where do you keep it when the fire goes out? And a cheaper ticket popped up on my travel site. So I took off.

New York had perfect weather for walking the city. We did. Between fits of TV watching and web surfing to find out whether the South central US would shut down again for a few days. I'm glad that so few people were hurt during Rita and that it didn't hit property harder. But I'd have been very glad for a couple of days working from a NY hotel room. Besides the kind of typical incompetence one expects from airlines, the return at o'dark thirty Sunday morning was uneventful.

Baton Rouge gasped with traffic. And like Katrina, God's own leaf bag was shaken out everywhere. Here and there a downed tree. From those who stayed, the report comes that power was on and off for a twelve-hour period. The freezer stayed cold. Humidity soared yesterday afternoon, or maybe that's just the contrast to the Northeast. By five it felt normal again.

This week I relocate my cubicle to the building about six miles down the highway where the training rooms and staff are located. One week until the start of classroom training.