Should I be here or there?

Part of me now kinda wishes that I'd have stayed back at Stennis. At least then I'd be in a position to do something and help out, albeit at the price of no power, no Internet, and no idea how I'd be able to eat or take a shower.

So part of me is glad that I did evacuate when I did. My friends Billy and Seth have been great, and I'm grateful for them offering me a place to stay during this...event. But I can't help but feel a little guilty about having food, water, a shower, Internet, and a real mattress to sleep on when my co-workers who stayed behind probably aren't in that same situation.

I hope the situation improves....and soon. I'm sure Stennis is more or less intact, but I want to know if I still have an apartment to go back to....or if I still have any household goods.

The good and bad of Katrina...

Starting with the good:

- I'm still in good health.
- Still have my laptop and car intact and functional.
- There's at least some promising reports of rescues and goodwill from the Coast.
- At least one Biloxi landmark (the Beau Rivage) is still standing.
- Most of the French Quarter looks to be more or less intact.
- Friends who are letting me stay with them as long as I need to.

Now to the bad...and unfortunately there's a lot of it:

- Damage and death by the score (no need to go into details here...it's plastered enough across the news media).
- No word on when we'll be able to return.
- *NO* word on any of my friends or co-workers.
- *NO* word on whether I still have an office or an apartment to come back to.
- No word on the status of my household goods, which were supposed to be delivered to my apartment tomorrow (fat chance of that happening now), and last word I had were sitting somewhere in Biloxi.

A special rant for the news media, who seem to be concentrating on New Orleans and Mobile, and a little bit on Gulfport/Biloxi. What about the rest of the region? Picayune, for example, is a decent sized town, yet there's been no word whatsoever on its status...and there's been very little out of Slidell either. How about spreading out some of the coverage? At least *ONE* news item or status report would be nice from areas that haven't received such over the news...

That's enough from me. I'm gonna play Civilization now...

What a way to start...

Been thinking about setting up a blog for months now, and just finally got around to it....though the circumstances behind my setting it up aren't the greatest. The Deep South's latest enemy, Katrina, pushed me north out of Picayune a week-and-a-half after reporting to Stennis (my new duty station) and barely 4 days after getting my new apartment. I've had a rant formulating about the situation for a couple days now, which gave me enough motivation to finally set up a blog (though I took the lazy way out and didn't put it on my website directly). Maybe I'll get around to that one of these days...