Thursday, August 30, 2007
New Orleans
Well, I have a lot of things that I have been planning to blog about, and even some photos to share. But I'll save all of that until later. I'd really like to blog about what's on my mind right now.
I decided a little while ago to change my plans for my driving route. Since I have planned to drive from DC to Colorado via Buffalo, NY and Houston, TX, I realized that this is going to be the perfect opportunity to drive the Natchez Trace (a National Park that links Nashville, TN to Natchez, MS). I'll talk about that in a later post. As you can tell by the title of this post, I am currently typing this to you from New Orleans.
Due to a lot (a LOT) of rain for a day and a half in Mississippi, I arrived in New Orleans a day earlier than I intended, so instead of driving straight to see my friend in Ponchatoula I would take a hotel right in New Orleans tonight and meet up with her tomorrow. So I drove a different route to get into the city than planned.
On one hand, I'm glad that I drove the route that I did. But I have to tell you that it was absolutely and completely depressing. In most of the places I drove past it looks like the storm happened just yesterday. There are fences hanging on their frames, there are broken windows, collapsed walls of homes, and so on. I drove past one neighborhood that I saw from the interstate that had trailers (the infamous FEMA trailers) in every front lawn. The rest of the neighborhoods I drove past were just a mess without any trailers in sight. There were whole shopping plazas vacant with broken signs and damaged buildings. I drove past this type of thing for about 10-15 miles. There was even a hotel that had about 15 floors with all broken windows and damaged walls. And I only drove past one side of the city. Totally depressing ... it made me cry ... even the hotel where I'm staying tonight is next to a shopping mall that is only half used ... the other half looks like it's being cleaned out, but is in bad shape.
Truly, if Katrina had happened yesterday, I can't imagine it looking much worse than what I saw. (Although I know that it must have looked much worse ... at least the interstates were up and running ... and there was a huge traffic jam to the SuperDome to see the Saints game (By the way, thank you to the Saints for beating the Dolphins!! Meanwhile, the Bills beat Detroit IN Detroit! Yay!!) so some things must be working.)
There were some interesting bill boards, too. One advertised a Katrina victims' lawsuit. Another advertised Lowe's "Katrina Cottages". Hmmm....
I don't know what I'm trying to say. I just know that it has been so sad. I hope to have some time to explore tomorrow.
Monday, August 20, 2007
Just left my brother's family...
My brother and his family live in Upstate New York. As I posted several days ago, I spent most of this past week with them. I got in on Tuesday around dinner time. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday Karl & Danielle went on an Anniversary trip through the Finger Lake region. Aunt Lou Ann had the three boys for the three days and we had a BLAST!! :-) I can't even tell you how wonderful it was to have the opportunity to babysit my nephews. They're all such sweet boys. Ian spent a few hours each day at dinosaur camp (yes, dinosaur camp!) So I had a few hours each day alone with the twins. We went out for a donut one morning after dropping Ian off (between myself and the twins, we barely finished one donut). 
We went to a playground another morning. After picking Ian up every day, we went to McDonalds for french fries. (That was a very popular outing!) We played in the backyard for hours on end. We watched "Little Bear" and "Dora the Explorer". We really had a fabulous time. When Karl & Danielle got back from their trip, Karl had a lot of work over the weekend. Danielle's brother & niece from Maryland were visiting her parents at the same time, and they all came over for dinner on Saturday night. I really like Danielle's family, and it was fun to be included in their get together.
I'm including some photos of the boys. In the individual photos, Ian is the one with the chocolate ice cream, Aaron has a red shirt on and Will has a striped shirt. There's also a photo of the three kids playing in a tent that we put up in the back yard and a photo of the twins wearing the sunglasses that they made at the Vacation Bible School that they went to a couple of weeks before.
A funny thing to note. I had some problems with ragweed allergies when I lived in the Buffalo area, but that was over 11 years ago. And, up north, the ragweed season begins sooner than it does in the DC area. Usually, when I lived in Virginia, I had started school by the time ragweed was out, and didn't spend much time out of doors at the beginning of the school year. In the Buffalo area, the season starts around the middle of August, so I've always avoided visiting my family at this time of year. Well, after about three days of playing outside with the boys, I couldn't figure out why I was sneezing so much. But, at one point, when we were playing in tall grass behind their house, I could barely talk between the sneezes. Duh! I had completely forgotten my allergies. My sister-in-law picked up some Claritin for me, and I have been fine since. I'll need to get a few more Claritin tablets to make it through the rest of this week at my mom's, but it will be so much more wonderful than sneezing like crazy!! I wonder what the allergy season will be like for me in Colorado....
Well, I'm at my mom's for about a week.... Maybe I'll post again when I finish the Harry Potter book ... I have about fifty more pages to read........... In the meantime, I have some photos on Flickr. There are a few from Africa (publicly viewable) and some more of my nephews (only viewable if you are a Flickr "friend"). Or, you can still look at my Africa Blog. Or, if you're still reading all of this, you probably ought to pick up one of the Harry Potter books ... they're much more interesting. :-)
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Goodbye, DC
I just wanted to post a quick update. I had breakfast with a dear friend yesterday (8/14) morning and hit the road ... leaving DC for the new life that I hope to build for myself in Colorado. I will be visiting my family in New York for a couple of weeks before actually heading west. My first real adventure will be spending three days babysitting my three nephews while their parents take an anniversary trip. My nephews, by the way, are ages 5, 3 and 3. Talk about an adventure. :-) I'll update my blog now and then over the next couple of weeks. Comments and/or e-mails are always welcome!
