A bit on gas prices...

There have been a lot of people along the Mississippi Gulf Coast complaining about gas prices and how much higher they are compared to nearby areas (like Mobile, Meridian, and Jackson). Many are claiming that the oil companies are price-gouging.

While I'm not discounting the possibility of price-gouging, I have to stop and wonder if any of these complainers have considered that...:

A) there are a lot more people along the coast...not just from New Orleans refugees but also *A LOT* of relief, recovery, and reconstruction workers.

B) because of (A), there are a lot more vehicles and a lot more traffic out on the road, using up a lot more gas than is normal around here.

It's a quintessential example of supply-and-demand.

Regarding (A), someone told me recently that officials are estimating there are around 45,000 people in Picayune right now. Before the hurricane, Picayune had around 11,000...

More catching up...

This time with my household goods...all that survived was my dining room table, and even that took some damage, though I think I'll be able to sand it down and refinish it.

As an aside, I never realized just how expensive kitchen stuff could be until I had to go and replace it all...

A bit of catching-up

Quick notes since I haven't been on this thing in a month...

- My apartment fared quite well...only minor ceiling damage. My household goods are another story...even at this point, I still have no word on them.

- Not quite as much damage around Picayune as I thought there would have been. Most of it was wind damage...flying debris and such. Of course, you'd never know that from watching the news media, as they never made it up here after the storm...

- Household goods aside, things are starting to get back to normal...more or less back to normal ops at Stennis, which means I'll finally be getting busy with what I came down here to do originally.

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...