Mitt liv som Tobin

10:14 Wow-water crept up silently in the night, over the sea wall and to 80 paces from Pooh's house. Met more neighbors; nobody seems worried, so we'll stay put.

10:23 Hiccups in the power; sounds like transformers are popping.

10:31 Heavy rain comes and goes, but we're cozy inside and drinking tea.

14:17 i think the water is subsiding

14:43 People are canoeing down the street. Some other folks rode by in the scoop of a bulldozer. Apparently this always happens. Some Houston evacuees here.

utilities trucks converge on my neighborhood

10:06 The weather is sunny and beautiful today. The local news station just texted me, "Sun & cloud mix. Isolated t'storms. High 92." That's standard Baton Rouge summer weather.

The worry now is post-storm mosquitoes and West Nile Virus. Damn the mosquitoes, they don't like me anyway. I slept with all the windows wide open. I can't say there was a cool breeze, but some cool air did manage to waft its way in.

Perks is bustling this morning, the chatter all about roofs and electricity and generators and insurance and storm surge and businesses opening up and "how'd you make out?" The flower shop across the street advertises "AFTERMATH SMILE DELIVERY".

Simone just texted me, "Let's start a co-op in br".

I texted back, "Yes!" That's something that Bree would definitely like too.

My friend Rose from Sweden just showed up on Livejournal.

And Ike is going to Texas.

--

11:27 At the Livingston exit from I-12 the National Guard is distributing food and ice. There's a sign that says "No Tarps." Their little station looks like it's running smoothly, a line of cars quickly moving through.

The gas station has a sign saying "WE HAVE GAS BEER EGGS BREAD." The staples.

We've resumed work on our laser interferometer gravitational wave detector.

From the boardwalk in Mandeville looking towards New Orleans. The structure on the horizon is the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway.

Well, I guess I really believe I am in Louisiana now. Waiting for another hurricane in a shotgun house on the shore of lake Pontchartrain.

Currently at St. John's Coffeehouse in Covington, LA, enjoying an americano and internet fix. Covington seems a pleasant, elegant old Louisiana town.

p.s. Sorry for spamming your friends lists the last couple days.

06:44 ...

11:07 Looks like they're using prison labor to help clean up the LSU campus.

11:37 Going to Mandeville

14:20 Traffic on i-12 is moving smoothly. Traffic towards baton rouge is a continuous stream of utilities trucks.

15:42 Arrived Mandeville

08:39 everything looks so soggy and bleak.

15:33 Living in California, I never paid attention to hurricane season. It's amazing how the Atlantic spawns these guys!

A few notes from Baton Rouge:

* still raining pretty hard with thunder and lightning
* traffic starting to move on the streets
* no businesses open

I'm at LSU, enjoying electricity and internet access.

I did see one USPS truck trying to deliver mail!

20:21 Spots of blue sky fade to pink; everyone scurries home to make the curfew.

12:28 Neighbors across the street just left, evacuating to Arkansas.

15:25 Ice cream truck just went by. (-:

19:10 first rain and wind

21:09 All quiet again. I guess that was the 'first band', the first spiral arm of the storm passing through.

In the late afternoon (5pm?) I took another ride around the neighborhood on a bike. No slowdown at all on I-10 through town; traffic was moving swiftly. All the gas stations nearby, however, were out of gasoline (although some appeared to still have diesel fuel). And out of ice. I saw a couple small sandbagging operations, too. But, overall, still very quiet. A couple places (near the Perkins overpass) with rooftop billboards took the billboards down (slashing them with knives, I think!)—a good idea, 'cause otherwise those things would just be sails and would rip the roof off!

I did a little tour of downtown by car at dusk. Very boring down there, most businesses closed (it is Sunday afterall, so maybe they'd be closed anyway). I am disappointed that there are no local businesses pledging to stay open through the storm to offer a gathering place, a 'restaurant at the end of the universe.' But perhaps that would be ridiculous.

Saw several tugboats scooting here and there in the Mississippi. Fortunately the river level is very low. From the top of the levee you can see the whole inside of the levee, and then grass and small trees at the bottom, and then the river. (By contrast, a few months ago, the river was a few feet from the top!)

Still very calm at that point, but maybe a more urgent calm.

The local liquor store was doing a bustling business, however. They, too, were out of ice.

I'm told Albertsons was mobbed at 4:15pm. They boarded the place up and closed at 5pm. I'm told that Whole Foods was empty, open, and giving away free ice.

Someone on batonrouge says she saw two tornadoes this evening.

Someone on neworleans just posted a video of the hurricane's arrival there.

Add those two communities as friends if you want to follow what's happening... I'll probably just update livejournal until the power goes out. And use TxtLJ after that.

p.s. How do I, with AT&T and a Samsung SGH-a737, upload photos from my mobile phone to flickr? I tried the usual email gateway (SMS to 111 with the email address as the first word in the message) with a picture attachment, but it didn't work. I couldn't even email myself a photo that way.

Terribly bored. Somehow I came down with a cold yesterday that has me moping about and sniffling. After finding some cold medicine, I felt energetic enough to go on a bike ride. Baton Rouge remains eerily quiet, though perhaps not quieter than usual. The weather is perfect. Folks are out mowing their lawns, weeding their gardens, jogging, etc. I stopped in at the cafe by my house for some caffeination. Some folks there were gathered around a laptop computer, looking at Weather Underground, talking about how the hurricane leaves a track of cooled ocean water behind it. Which is true.

My housemate was in a car accident yesterday. I saw him briefly today. He's pretty badly beat up, but apparently in decent shape considering what could've happened (he's walking, talking, nothing broken, but not a very happy camper). He's now recuperating at his parents' house.

Inexplicably, our neighbor, who lives in the other half of this duplex, decided to go on vacation in Gulfport MS this weekend. Allegedly he is coming back on Monday, but I expect there will be difficulties in doing so.

Gustav is now "Category 4" and is predicted to grow into Category 5 in the gulf. Baton Rouge is directly on its trajectory. Frankly I am excited. But hopefully I'll be able to find some friends with whom to sit out the storm--this house is just too quiet. (Maybe I'll go over to Ivanhoe street?)

Gustav—downgraded to a tropical storm but predicted to grow into a category three hurricane as it crosses the Gulf of Mexico—is certainly a topic of conversation here in Baton Rouge at the moment, but apparently little else. "It's too early to tell," and "It'll probably hit somewhere else" seem to be the most common attitudes. And if it does hit? The talk is of hurricane parties. When the city shuts down, apparently there's little else to do than get together and drink beer. Sounds good to me.

I've heard stories of a gasoline shortage, of a run on bottled water and batteries, of rationing of ice cube trays (!), but my observations are all directly to the contrary. There was no one else at the gas station when I refuelled this evening; Albertson's was calm as could be. If anything, there's a run on football supplies. Saturday's game, first of the season, against Appalacian State, has a far greater grip on the city. The Winn-Dixie supermarket's parking lot is already full of R V's, LSU fans camping out for the game.

New Orleans is 80 miles southeast of here, but in many ways is worlds apart: that city faces possible mandatory evacuation, and state police are preparing to implement 'contraflow' (fascinating!), in which traffic flows in the same direction in all lanes of the Interstates on both sides of the divider, that direction being 'away from New Orleans.'

In Baton Rouge they might do well to implement contraflow to deal with game-day gridlock!

Tomorrow or Saturday we'll hear whether our lab is to be shutdown, in which case we'll be forbidden from going to work!

On another note, Banksy has apparently been decorating New Orleans!

Meanwhile, the Atlantic has given birth to Tropical Storm Hanna--so there are two storms spinning out there. It's amazing how quickly the ocean spawns these things!

It looks like the storm is currently predicted to make landfall late Monday. At the moment everything is completely normal in BTR.

It is amazing and horrible what is happening in New Orleans, and I only know 1/100000th of it. I feel very media deprived on the issue, but I get the feeling most people (not there obviously) are still in the "just another hurricane" mindset. I wish I could go down there and be of some use. The stories, though, are crazy.

Does anyone in ROC have an extra TV antenna?