Exceedingly Mundane

I haven’t been online in more than a week, and have been unable to write about our experiences with Hurricane Katrina, and with our families and how they fared. Here’s a quick synopsis, and I’ll be trying to write more in the days ahead.

My dad’s house in Hattiesburg (90 miles north of the MS Gulf Coast) was spared, in spite of all the pine trees in his back yard. Tim’s brother Mark and his family were equally lucky, as they had no trees fall on their house. Most of their neighbors were not as lucky – most every house had one tree or more on the roof or house or car. Dad and Mark’s family rode out the storm here with us in Madison (we’re about 200 miles north of the coast). Our house is fine, and we had no damage from either wind or trees. The wind did get pretty bad, and we’re a long way from where it was so devastating. We lost power Monday afternoon, and got it back about 48 hours later. The ones in Hattiesburg are not so lucky – no power yet and no idea when they might have power restored. My in-laws in Smith county got power back yesterday, so they are understandably ecstatic! No fun with no air conditioning in the South in August and early September.

I didn’t take any pictures during the storm, but tried to take some afterwards. Click the -More- link for the first couple… I will try to load more tonight or tomorrow.

I’m going to blog more about our gas problems – here’s the norm around here now. Most of the gas stations are either barricaded off, or the pumps are roped off with yellow Police Crime Scene tape. This particular station in our hometown has not had gas since before the storm. We’ve only found gas once, but I’ll blog more about that later:

Here’s a photo of the FEMA truck that we found and were able to get some ice. God Bless these wonderful people!

This is a tree uprooted on Main Street in Madison, in front of one of our historic homes. If I had to guess, I would say that this tree was probably 100 years old or more:

More later! 😀