So, I might as well write it here because the delivery time and distance are the shortest possible, and the postage on my site hasn’t gone up 2¢.  Yet.  The government can achieve all manner of miracles theses days, so it’s only a matter of time.

So, the Austin vortex is capturing another two hapless, helpless souls… this time from the left coast.  Welcome D & A, let’s hope you can at least stay on the event horizon and get jobs (that you enjoy) within a reasonable span of time, unlike the mass of bodies worm-holing their way around the far reaches of the many universes known and unknown.  We’re keeping our fingers crossed that the whole house deal works out in your favor and that the property isn’t located on the one and only earthquake fault-line in the state, which consequently would be exactly the length of the lot.

On a more personal note I’m still looking for acceptable, gainful employment.  I have managed to fill that void with coffee snobbery — a new and meaningful force in my life.  It started with the simple, yet powerful need to replace the coffee maker that was manufactured during the Roosevelt administration — when coffee was untreated tap water filtered through road gravel and dried beetles, "and by god we liked it that way" — which admittedly was free, but in the same vein so is yellow fever, and neither of them is good for your kidneys.

So, after much research and opinion asking, I bought a 12 cup French press pot and an electric kettle.  Why the electric kettle do you ask?  Need you really ask that question?  Yes?  Ok.  The electric kettle is for rapidly heating the water to a boil (4-5 minutes for 8 cups of water cold from the tap) and turning itself off when the temperature is within 195 to 205 degrees which is the magic range of temperatures with which to extract all the goodness from the beans without leeching out the bitterness.  Yes, I have the badge to prove that I am a coffee geek.  It’s right next to the beer snob badge on my sash.

I could very well have bought an automatic drip coffee maker and saved myself a little bit of effort in my pursuit of a cuppa’ joe, but frankly it is only a little bit more work to use the press pot.  I also get better tasting coffee because the optimal conditions are met for brewing — drip coffee makers either under or over heat the water, and the water doesn’t spend enough time in the grounds for proper extraction.  Finally, I’d have spent over $100 to get a drip machine that was at least better than half-assed at what it does, and I spent less than that gathering up all the fun gadgets to make coffee my way.  Frankly, with a cheap thermometer and a little extra time you can just use a stove-top kettle and simply shuck out the $40 for the 12 cup French press pot and be done, but where’s the fun in that?

I’ve also been made the bitch of a board game called Settlers of Catan, more specifically, the expansion Cities & Knights Of Catan.  Think tabletop Warcraft.  It’s an amazingly well designed game that forces you to use your brain for complex strategies, and has awesome replay value.  I’m not the only one addicted to it, both Lady and ToppledGod have tasted it’s sweetness and are drawn to it like a junkie is to a little baggie of smack.  We have the Californians to thank for this phenomenon.  I think they were setting us up to be their thralls before they breeze into town and take over.

Austin remains an awesome town to live in, in my opinion.  I’ve been riding my bike around Town Lake a few times a week, and it never ceases to amaze me how picturesque a setting it is, how many people are out there running/walking/biking at any given time of the day, and how much "smoking hot trim" is included in that crowd.  In keeping with my angry roots though, I am never far away from the urge to knock a few of those motherfuckers off the path and into Town Lake if they don’t stop hogging the available space for people to pass them.  I mean c’mon, the path is only about 6′ wide and if you assholes walk three or more abreast (or even worse, two mommies with their extra-wide athletic strollers) so you can gossip and otherwise chitchat, then that leaves about 2′ for everyone else to use.  Bear in mind that this is a 2-way path and that remaining 2′ is to be used by folks coming the other way and folks passing your slow ass up either on foot or bike.  Can you see my frustration here… I gotta’ slow my speed to a walking pace (a pain in the ass on a bike) and wait for oncoming foot traffic to clear before I can pass you, when I should have been able to do it easily in the middle space your are currently occupying.  These buffoons notwithstanding, it’s still a pleasant ride.

And that’s all I have to randomly gibber about today, kiddies.  Catch you another time.

Due to requests, I have posted on Craigslist my recent plea to my neighbor… and here’s the link.  Help give me some anonymous fame by flagging it for inclusion in the "Best Of Craigslist" by hitting the button at the top.

The Lady and I made a brief trip back to NOLA because the bulk of our immediate families (both sides) would be in the same general zip codes for the first time since the hurricane.  While in town I made some time to go and take care of a few minor errands at the old WHoReS.  Since I had to sledgehammer the front door off in order to get into the house last time, I had my faithful manservants Fiddy and GonzO go and install some boards over the gaping hole that used to serve as the front entrance (a bit slapdash, admittedly, but I don’t think neatness was an issue anyway).  First and foremost I needed to paint my house number on the boards since the originals were on the demolished door.  I also couldn’t help but notice the newly acquired mounds of crap in the front of the house that wasn’t ours, and consequently, the utter lack of crap that we threw on the lawn during the recovery operation.

I went to the back of the house to have a gander in the garage to see if there were one or two tools I could recover, and found none.  As I came around the corner heading to the back door something caught my eye.  In the ocean of dead and brown vegetation there was a green mass that stuck out like Mayor Nagin at a Clan meeting.  I started to chuckle to myself, this was just too strange.  "What is this?" I asked myself as I approached for a closer look.  I stood there for a second, and as the realization of what I was seeing dawned on me, the evidence to back it up came into sharp focus.  I bent double, hands on my knees, and laughed for a solid five minutes.  I laughed until my sides hurt and tears were streaming down my face.  A pumpkin patch had sprung up in the back yard, just in front of DeJockamo’s little nook, and there were actual pumpkins growing on the vines (a bit under ripe, but pumpkins none the less).  The seeds were likely a remnant from the Halloween party — a full year ago — and I had been mowing the little sprouts down every time I cut the grass without much knowing it.  I had noted what looked like a little pumpkin seedling when we went to scavenge the house last time but promptly forgot about it.

This was the perfect poetic moment.  In the aftermath of a disaster that has wrought nothing but destruction — including the death of most all vegetation — the WHoReS threw up it’s fists and shot the bird with both hands at Katrina.  A final "fuck you too, cunt!" from the spirit of the house that loved Halloween so much that it grew a full blown pumpkin patch just to defy that damnable storm.  The WHoReS got the final word, and it used its last breath to say it.  This made me indescribably happy.  It lifted my spirits, and put a spring in my step.  Frankly, I think that little cluster of vines gave me some strange form of closure, exactly what I needed to say goodbye to the WHoReS and move on a bit.  The groovy thing is that there were lots of little blossoms on the vines, and blossoms mean new pumpkins.  I can’t wait to see what that patch looks like in a month or so.  I hope that fucker takes over the entire back yard.

As I drove out of the neighborhood, I saw a few signs of activity.  Folks were gutting houses in preparation to rebuild.  There were however still many signs that a terrible force has passed through and left an indelible mark on the city and it’s residents.

We were invited to dinner and Christmas tree trimming by Lisa and Slinky.  A wonderful meal, some wine and good company was to be had.  At the end of the visit, there was a beautiful tree to behold.  I also learned a lesson: the old adage "let sleeping dogs lie" is only true if you are sure the dog isn’t faking it, and really, would a face this cute lie to you?

In the absence of anything actually constructive to do, my fellow apartment-mates have lost their minds.  I present to you Exhibit #1 and Exhibit #2 which are the events of a cat (and dog) fight that resulted from a difference of opinion about some music being played at the time.  There was much screeching, giggling and bra strap snapping.  It’s was loud enough that the neighbors were either going to call the cops, or record it as audio porn for later use.

*** BEGIN UPDATE ***

I finally got a replacement Bluetooth dongle so that I can transfer pictures off of my phone.  These are the two pics I took of the old 4-Runner after it died a painful death upon our second trip into Austin — Picture 1 & Picture 2.

*** END UPDATE ***

Well, apparently there is a great outpouring of need to view the remains of the recently deceased wHOReS NOLA.  The coffin is open and you may pay your final respects as you see fit.

The following represents less than one tenth of the pictures we took while at the house, scavenging for what we could rescue that was of any practical or emotional value.  Anything that we would have to eat out of or cook/serve food in was left behind.  We no doubt could have cleaned and sterilized it to our hearts content, but the visions of them soaking in the raw sewage and human-remains stew would remain forever.

• Exhibit 01 — Lady’s car — having been left in the driveway — was completely submerged.
• Exhibit 02 — The water line (marked here for clarity) was higher than originally reported… between five and six feet.
• Exhibit 03 — Here’s the front of the house looking deceptively intact.
• Exhibit 04 — This would be the remains of the computer room.  The main computer table collapsed under the weight of the two monitors, Pac got thrown to the ground, and pretty much everything else went everywhere else.  The Nintendo cabinet was the only thing that stayed where it was, and I have no idea how or why.
• Exhibit 05 — The ceiling fans were all growing various types of stalactites, looking suspiciously like a very large nose sneezed a copious amount of phlegm on them.
• Exhibit 06 — This is likely the best picture I have ever seen of the mold that grows on the walls after a flood.  Lucky me… paneling is the perfect breeding ground.
• Exhibit 07 — And here’s Pac.  He fell and blocked the door to the kitchen.  I was forced to break down my own front door with a sledgehammer to get to the rest of the house in as safe a manner as possible (safe being a relative concept).
• Exhibit 08 — This would be the sofa that gave all of us a place to be useless turds while watching movies all weekend long.  Anyone care to doze off on it now?
• Exhibit 09 — These are the remains of the dining room.  Note to the world: anything made of solid wood — hardwood floors, solid oak tables, chairs — left underwater for too long will swell.  That swollen wood has nowhere to go and therefore will shatter itself along its joints in the attempt to go someplace.  The floors were buckled and "teepeed" all over.
• Exhibit 10 — Here’s a closer view of the table after it ate itself…
• Exhibit 11 — … and one of the chairs.
• Exhibit 12 — This is the dearly departed china cabinet.  Everything inside of it was filled with some of the foulest smelling liquid I have ever encountered.  We rescued our wedding glasses from here and abandoned the rest.
• Exhibit 13 — And here is the "filling station" that we all held dear.  Drink up!
• Exhibit 14 — And here is the Donkey Kong Junior cabinet in the spare bedroom.  It too succumbed to the pull of gravity after a brief float.
• Exhibit 15 — Our lovely library, including the years and years of collected gaming books (most no longer in print and of some value).  Also, you can see the rocking chair where it landed on the DKJr. cab, and the ice-chest of photos that mostly didn’t survive.  Yay!
• Exhibit 16 — The brand new bedroom set that we bought ourselves for our anniversary and enjoyed for two weeks.  Also note the unfolded basket of laundry that I won’t have to worry about folding any more.
• Exhibit 17 — The dressers of the same bedroom set.
• Exhibit 18 — Here is an almost perfect picture to illustrate where the water line rose.
• Exhibit 19 — The dresser and light table in the studio.  I was able to save my lifecasts, but precious little else.  Shit was so tossed around I couldn’t find anything.
• Exhibit 20 — Jack, moldy as hell, never looked better as a corpse.
• Exhibit 21 — Jack from his ‘good side’.
• Exhibit 22 — This is the table where Triad and Fallout were housed.  You can just make out the bottom of Mensa’s emergency bottle of Capt. Morgan in the background.

The best way I can describe the devastation in the house is as such: imagine a giant took a humongous fiber enriched shit in there, filled it with water and shook it like an enormous snow globe.  Anything that could float, did so.  Anything that could be destroyed by water and mold was.  Doors had to be smashed to get into rooms and closets, and there wasn’t much to find once you did.  No amount of washing will clean clothing once it sits in water for over two weeks and is allowed to grow mold for another six.

Everything in the attic was thankfully still intact and mold free.  Unfortunately, it represents a small fraction of the things we held hope to recover.  I scooped up all my DVDs and CDs, still in their cases, and continue to this day to scrub and dry them in an effort to at least have something we invested a considerable amount of time and money gathering over the years.  Every time I don a pair of rubber gloves and sit before that big basin of sudsy water, I plunge into a black mood unparalleled by anything I have experienced in recent years.  It takes a good night’s sleep to dispel it, and until I’m done I get to look forward to the whole thing over again.

For those of you who returned to find your homes still intact, I feel a great deal of relief that you didn’t have to go through this nightmare.  You may have helped some other folks clean their shit up and pick through the ruins, but you didn’t have to have your heart broken every time you picked some ruined something up off of the ground and realize you’ll never get that back, ever.  For those of you who returned to ruin… there are no words.  You know what I’m feeling, and I know your heart too.  All that is left to do is move on.  This is not a godsend of insurance claims, no windfall at all.  There is no amount of money that can replace what we have lost.

My heart pains me on a daily basis.  My spirit is shaken to its very core.  Please for the love of all that is good and right, the rest of you stay safe.  I can and will get over the loss of a house and the shit contained therein, but to lose a friend or family member to something other than a peaceful death at a ripe old age will leave me broken.  I’m being very selfish here, but for a good reason.  I love you all and want you all to keep yourselves well.

The WHoReS as we knew it is officially dead.  Still waiting to find out what our insurance company says about that, but she’s a goner.  Yesterday we were finally able to enter our home after a month and a half, and part of me is glad I went and the other part is still sobbing somewhere in the recesses of my mind.  Stuff and I are alive, but our home is dead.

Right now I’m sliding into a hole, a hole full of mold and mildew.  I hope that driving away from this place tomorrow will help to get the smell out of my nostrils so that I can breathe again.  Will help to make me forget the life I had, and make me want to return to the land of the living.  I just want to lay down in a fetal position and not move.  Part of me says “drama queen” and part of me says “damn straight”. 

In short, I am a broken lady.

It’s funny.  It all seemed so permanent.  Driving through Metairie and Kenner, and friends and families neighborhoods that we use to frequent, I realize that we were living a chalkboard life.  Then somebody came and wiped it all away.  It’s strange being in a place I considered home for thirty-five years, and being a stranger.  Everything feels different and alien, and somewhat surreal.  I know that we are some of the fortunate ones, but that doesn’t make this less real.  Now we drive around looking at what use to be, waiting till tomorrow, mostly anxious, to see what was.

I am continually amazed by this town and the cool shit people find to do on an average — oh, I don’t know — Tuesday evening.  We just got back from the Alamo Draft House downtown, and their fairly regularly featured Buffy: Once More With Feeling sing-along.

Those of you who remember, and enjoyed the old Movie Pitchers in NOLA (before if closed down a bunch-a years ago) will really enjoy The Alamo Draft House, because it is what Movie Pitcher was striving to be.  Every row of theater seats has in front of it a bar-like table and you can order tasty food, beer, wine, sodas and desserts and enjoy them all while taking in the flick.  They show old and new favorites and off-kilter cult classics.  They spend the entire month of October celebrating zombie and horror flicks.  They feature Rocky Horror on a regular basis (complete with floor show).  They have The Sinus Show, which is basically a live version of Mystery Science Theater 3000.  I LIKE this place, they’re wacky and irreverent… count me in.

For the Buffy: Once More With Feeling sing-along, they handed out plastic vampire teeth, bottles of bubbles and cheap lighters… you were to try and sing as Spike with the teeth in during "Rest In Peace", the lighters were for when Buffy sings "Walk Through the Fire", and blow bubbles during Tara and Willow’s "Under Your Spell."  Everyone is encouraged to boo and hiss Dawn when she’s being a total twat, dance wacky along with Anya during "I’ll Never Tell", as well as stand, join hands and sway during "Where Do We Go From Here?"  And just to make sure you got your money’s worth, they opened the evening by showing the first season’s Halloween episode.

They are also featuring two showings of their own "The Nightmare Before Christmas" sing-along on October 13th and 16th.  Tee-hee-hee.  It makes me very happy.

All in all, a good night at an excellent venue.  Just enough to help us escape for a little while.

Yuppers, we’re in Austin… all official-like.  The apartment is nice, the city is fantastic and the food is every bit as eclectic as it is (was) in New Orleans.  We’ve met a handful of friendly people and the town is every bit as off-kilter as I had hoped.  Hell, what more can I say about a city who’s motto is "Keep Austin Weird," and no, I’m not joking about that last bit.

Our cellphone numbers are changing in the next day or so, and of course our address has changed.  I’ve sent out a mass e-mail to everyone in my contact list, but I’m afraid it’s not as complete as I should like… I even got some failures and bounce-backs.  I’m going to call as many people as I have in my phone’s directory, but THAT may not be as complete as I’d like, either.  Sooooo, the upshot is this: if you’ve been overlooked, please take no offense and just email me and let me know that I forgot you and I’ll send you the new info.  My email address is over there on the left.  I’m trying to avoid broadcasting my new information to the known free world.

Also, I think I’m going to convert to Pastafarianism.  There might even be a Flying Spaghetti Monster car plaque in my future.

Here the Lady and I sit in Fort Worth, having been run out of Houston by Sister Rita.  We’re high and dry courtesy of Gretchen, and in a meager attempt to repay her kindness and generosity I’ve been doing some odd jobs around the house in preparation for her to sell it.  Of course, my arsenal of tools is still in New Orleans — mostly soggy and ruined — but I’m making due with the materials at hand.  Sadly, I will not be able to construct the new minarets and crenellations I envisioned, but at least I can fix the things that need fixing.

Our apartment in Austin will be ready this weekend, and weather and storm permitting, we ought to be able to move in on Monday afternoon.  I have a job interview on October 4th, and with any luck possibly a job to go with it afterwards.  Otherwise, the hunt continues.  Vincero!

That’s my update and I’m stinking to it.