Latest hurricane Katrina news from my friends (I would have written last night, but I got deathly ill to my stomach, another story... bad food or just nerves?):

The hospital my friend's husband had gone back to work at decided with no electricity or water to evacuate the patients and close down. Her husband had been told that there was nothing left but rice and tomato sauce before he arrived, but when he got there the local police had gotten into a grocery store and they were having barbecues in the parking lot instead, so at least they had food to get by with. Armed guards patrolled the perimeters to keep away looters that were after drugs, he said several were persuaded to "turn back, and walk away" at gunpoint. Apparently, people were being allowed to walk across the Mississippi River bridge at first, but after a mall near the bridge was set on fire, through traffic was stopped.

So her husband has been reassigned to another hospital near the Louisiana/Texas border, and he was given an armed escort to their home in Uptown to retrieve his car, which had been left behind. There was no flood damage to their home, thank goodness, though the upstairs french doors had blown open during the storm and gotten some water had gotten in the master bedroom and dripped down to the kitchen below. The other side of the house had just been hand painted and stenciled, so fortunately it was undamaged. He secured the house once more, and headed his Land Rover back to Texas. After another nightmarishly long drive, 18 wheelers had run into each other on I10 in one of the wetland "no exit" areas in East Texas, he finally made it back to his wife and child and the safety of Beaumont. My friend Mary feels she is so incredibly lucky to have escaped the wrath of the storm without harm to her family or her home.

An interesting image he saw that hadn't made it to the AP newswire - a woman walking through the floodwaters in a full-length mink coat carrying an automatic rifle (apparently Sak's was looted before it was burned down). Also the story that guns were stolen from a Walmart by looters is untrue, the police actually removed the guns before the store was looted.

Also per my friend, while Dubya was getting his photo op at the New Orleans airport, all other (i.e. rescue) activity was brought to a halt. People were dying stuck on the runway while he chatted and waxed nostalgic about the Big Easy.

From the truly horrifying end of the spectrum - a friend of my husband's had called and left a message last Sunday that he had gone to the Superdome to wait out the storm. He is unfortunately (fortunate in retrospect?) basically homeless and was actually planning to come back to Houston over the last few weeks because of the difficulty of keeping a job in New Orleans. He called this afternoon to report that he was now in Fort Worth, where he was ironically evacuated to after spending what he describes as a week in Hell inside the dark, damp and violent Superdome. He said (these are his words alone) he had seen people killed in fights right in front of him, seen people urinating on the dead bodies that were strewn about, he said he'd never really been around dead people before, but they were everywhere. He hadn't eaten or slept in may days, but he had helped out when the rescuers did come, and had been finally put on a bus to Texas, where he stated they "were treating him very well" now. My husband and I had been seriously wondering about his fate, because he is also one of those people who tends to say the first thing that comes out of his head, and had gotten in arguments and fights regularly here in Houston. But he is also a NOLA native, so apparently some survival instinct to keep his mouth shut must have kicked in.

Today's news (OK technically yesterday)...

Word came early this morning that my friend's house in New Orleans seems to still be OK. A co-worker of her husband drove through the area and said it looked like the house had not sustained any water or major storm damage. Her husband has been unable to actually get to the house himself, he is currently staying at the hospital he works at in Gretna.

At 11 pm Thursday the Astrodome had apparently reached capacity and the emergency management people decided they weren't going to let any more of the waiting bus passengers in. Somehow they had not counted correctly and realized they were over their fire code limit (which is nuts because the stadium has held over 75,000 people). Bad move, people started freaking out. The local news stations came back on the air, their poor hapless reporters wandering the parking lot, asking the poor police officers what was going on. Cameras were no longer allowed inside because of the chaos, already one person has died (of natural causes supposedely), and several were arrested (men sneaking into the women's shower areas).

Then they decided 'OK, they can come in, we'll figure something out' and began slowly letting the evacuees in again... after searching them and sending them through a mock triage. One of the doctors that was volunteering grabbed one of the newspeople and begged for more medical help, he says many of the doctors who were supposed to be there had not shown up, but there were some Baylor medical students there. It was announced that part of the precious new Reliant exhibition hall would be opened up for the overflow. And I guess the rest of the people will go on to San Antonio and Dallas. What a mess...

Dubya flew over the hurricane devastation (and waved?) from a plane (don't blink) and pointed out that a church was still standing. Down on the ground it was Escape from New York, oops, New Orleans. Groups of stranded NOLA residents were actually chanting on TV tonight "Help Us, Help Us"! But he did have to finish up his golf before leaving for Washington. Speaking of "Escape" maybe someone could toss him into the melee like in the movie, see if he loses more than an ear.

Meanwhile, Condi is actually out buying new Ferragamo's (I guess she's not planning on going anywhere damp anytime soon). And U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R) was quoted by the Daily Herald of Arlington Heights, Ill., saying it makes no sense to rebuild New Orleans where it is. "It looks like a lot of that place could be bulldozed." he said. Yeah, that's the spirit, bulldoze it and build condos! Or maybe Walmarts and Starbucks cafes. To hell with all that history and beauty. And the beautiful people who have lived there for many, many generations.

I can't think of those idiots anymore... they make my head hurt with their complete lack of empathy. My husband was asking aloud why the government hadn't done anything more to help... because THEY DON'T CARE! Maybe if it was a bunch of young blonde, upper class white girls. (Quick, somebody toss one in... then they'll have to go find her)

Last thing, a charity called Noah's Wish is in Louisiana trying to save some of the lost and injured pets that were left behind and misplaced from the storm. So next time you pet your dog or kitty, think of all the homeless ones on the Gulf Coast and give them a couple of bucks. And be glad you're warm and clean and dry.

There really are no words for the horror that is going on just east of me, my favorite city in the entire world has been transformed into a watery hell. My best friend's valiant husband actually returned to the city to help and work (he's a doctor), but there is no word on the fate of their home yet. She, her baby, mom and three cats are staying in Beaumont with an aunt and uncle. Beaumont is not too far from Houston, maybe I can make a day trip over and see her and the new baby, it sounds like they're going to be there for awhile. At least her aunt's house has two extra bedrooms so the cats can have their own and there is room to set up the baby's crib. I spoke with her on the phone Tuesday night, but she is cellphone-less now, and she was out running errands when I called earlier. Her aunt said that they had not heard from her husband since he'd gone back to New Orleans. He was going to try and get to their house, and if it was not underwater, stay in it. I hope he's still got his shotgun with him...

Sparky has been saying it's the end of the world (oh and Dubya got his happy ass back to work today, what a lousy vacation he must have had), and now he is seriously freaking out because they are moving 20,000 or more hurricane refugees from the Superdome to the Astrodome. People have already been trying to get into the Dome, a stolen school bus actually made it to Houston tonight before the official buses arrived, they were going to turn them away but finally relented. The reason Sparky is worried is because we live maybe 7 or 8 miles from the Dome, I actually went to that area today to pick up several prescriptions from Sam's Club before the chaos descended on the Astrodomain (now known as Reliant Park, blecch). Sam's was busier than usual and there were several extra HPD officers in the store, looking a little alarmed. I looked at all the gas station prices when I was on the way to Sam's, I was down to half a tank, and actually tried to fill up at Sam's discount gas pumps. The SVU in front of me's bill was $74.14. But my membership card must be scratched up or something, because the machine told me it was unreadable and spit it back out.

What the hell, their gas was the same price as the Chevron in my neighborhood, $2.89 a gallon for premium, so I decided to just go back there on the way home. I pulled into Chevron, which is busy most of the time anyway, but it was a fricking circus tonight. People coming from all directions to try and get to the pumps. I got mister "too cool to walk fast, pay inside then go get his change" guy (he got change back?), and while I was sitting in line, trying not to get rear-ended by the cars whipping in off the street behind me, mister "crazy end of the world street preacher" began making his way towards me. I used to see these guys all the time when I worked downtown, but this guy seems to like to hang out at the Chevron. He has a nice captive audience. Luckily he went over to one of the sisters, who was merely amused by his ranting about "there's no more money" and "the pretty women with makeup", I think he was calling her a prostitute, he kept poking her in the arm to make his point, but she just smiled and nodded.

She was finishing up just as change guy ambled back to his car and left. And the street preacher began looking around for someone else to scream at. But when I worked downtown I got pretty good at the "leave me the fuck alone" stare, which amazingly worked through the car window, because he wandered on off to rant at some people waiting with their car windows down. Usually when I'm in the car, dodging windshield washers, I have to violently shake my head and yell NO to keep them away from my car. I guess I just didn't look like I'd be any fun. And I also have a handgun in my purse, which seems to magically help. Too many years working security to look like the unarmed innocent. Good.

My little half tank was $25. I usually get a full tank for a little over $30 with the Maxima. Wow, that means it would take over $50 to fill it up now. I'm surprised people aren't rioting in the streets. Somehow I really don't think Katrina caused the oil prices to actually go up in just a few days, she was just a convenient excuse to fleece the already broke American people.

I hope I hear from Mary tomorrow... I've gone back into 9/11 mode, I've looked at every single photo gallery of the hurricane devastation I can find, I feel like I HAVE to, I can't stop looking at them. I know New Orleans so well I look at every photo for some sort of landmarks, I feel so helpless just sitting here 350 miles away. I know I'm obsessive compulsive, but I have some sort of masochistic streak also that won't let me look away. I did give to the Red Cross (specify Hurricane 2005). I don't have the physical health or stamina to do much else, but every dollar helps. The country should have plenty of money for natural disasters, but all of our surplus has been sucked into the pockets of Halliburton and friends. OK, I don't want to go there...

Wow, even though I'm in SE Texas (which is still hurricane country) I've been obsessed with Katrina this weekend. My best friend Mary and most of her family live in the New Orleans area... which is currently the projected bullseye for Category Four Hurricane Katrina (which was a Category 5 just a few hours ago).

I called Mary the other night, before Katrina turned into a giant monster, and asked her if they were planning on staying and they were all prepared and ready. After the last big storm in July they had bought generators for their house, plus her mothers house. They had most of the storm shutters already up on their 100 year+ home. And this week her husband even went and got her mom a shotgun (just in case).

But Sunday morning the mayor issued a mandantory evacuation of the entire New Orleans area and people began fleeing. But there aren't that many routes to get out of the New Orleans area, and all of them became instant crawling traffic jams. Mary had called and left a message this morning that she and her husband, mother, three cats and her new baby (three weeks old) would be leaving as soon as they finished securing their house. My husband wandered into my darkened bedroom about every hour or so just and gave me an unwanted update of what the storm was doing and announced each time that it was basically the end of the world (or at least the end of New Orleans as we know it). I figured I'd better get as much sleep as possible if we would be having houseguests, and after his 1:30 proclamation that she had just called and said they had just got on the road I figured I'd have plenty of time.

Finally the apocalyptic cuckoo clock (known as Sparky) took his afternoon nap and stopped bothering me and I finally got a bit of uninterrupted sleep. I got up, fiddled around some, made salad for Sparky, ate some coffeecake (it was weird food day for me again), and then decided I'd better try and give Mary a call on her cell phone to see how close they were. After five hours in the car, they'd barely made it out of the city - they had given up on getting to I-10 and were taking the 90 alternate and were almost to... Houma? Yikes, that's all? Their caravan consisted of Mary and her husband, their baby, and three alternately yowling and hissing cats in the back of the car, with her mother following them in another car. So the revised plan was to try and at least make it to Beaumont and stay with a relative. The normal, light traffic commute from New Orleans to Houston is six to seven hours, so Beaumont sounded a little saner. I asked her to call me anyway to let me know everything was OK. This was sometime around 6:30 pm.

So I spent the evening checking up on the storm on the Weather Channel online, the National Hurricane Center, and aimlessly flipping around between the various live cams on Nola.com just to see what was really going on. Couldn't concentrate on my Ebay work, didn't get much accomplished at all. By about 11:30 I thought perhaps I should try and call Mary's cell again, but I figured they'd probably made it to Beaumont and were tucked in for the night. With the new baby she's not really a late night person as she has been, but more of a crack of dawn person (not by choice). I washed some clothes, nice brainless activity, but at least it's one chore done...

3:34 am, the phone rings. Sparky is snoozing in the next room but I'm still puttering at the computer. 504 area code on the caller ID, New Orleans, wow it's Mary! Are they in town? No, they are just now approaching Beaumont (which is a few miles inside the border of Texas), OMG! They have been in the car, inching along for like fourteen hours. The baby has been quiet, apparently she likes the motion of the car. One of the cats has been nonstop meowing pretty much the entire time, resulting in occasional hissing from one of the other cats. But, bless her little heart, Mary is still in a decent mood, she really is one of the most resilient people I know. And she's got an abnormal amount of endurance and apparently patience. And her husband was now driving her mom's car until they made it to a stopping place. Mom's got a lot of pep too, but it's 3:30 on the frigging morning...

Well, at least I know where they are now, it's 5:30 am now so hopefully they are in bed by now. Now if Katrina will behave and just move on through without stalling or destroying too much property. Did I mention Mary and her husband just spent the last three years or so non-stop renovating their Victorian home? It's really beautiful. And it actually sits in one of the higher areas (for New Orleans) where serious flooding is rare... Fingers crossed, and now I lay me down to.. sleep?