Hurricane Gustav

Watching CNN reports on the approach of Hurricane Gustav to Louisiana and dreading what will follow.

Regular readers know that I was in Louisiana from November of last year until May of this year, with the last 3 months being spent in Baton Rouge doing recovery work from Katrina.

I have friends and co-workers in Baton Rouge and New Orleans, some who are still there working on cleaning up after Katrina and some who were just deployed there in preparation for Gustav. They, like thousands of other first responders, have put themselves in the path of this storm in order to be ready to assist as soon as the hurricane passes.


Please send your good thoughts their way tonight and tomorrow. I know I will.

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Saying Goodbye To Louisiana

Today was my last day in the Baton Rouge office. I came in to find "Thank You" balloons on my desk and a nice card from everyone in my office. Throughout the day, e-mails arrived from other departments and offices asking me not to leave or wishing me well (in other words, "Can you leave as quickly as possible?") and then a nice luncheon was thrown for me and someone mentioned that they had never gathered together to do this for anyone else, so I should be flattered.

And I was.

But as I mentioned to Cindy, I would have much preferred to slip out quietly, under the radar. However, as much as I would have liked to do the "Lone Ranger" bit, I could also not be rude and ignore everyone's effort to wish me a fond farewell, so I smiled and thanked all of them for their kind words and actions.

Later in the afternoon I had to do the same thing during a managers and supervisors meeting.

Aside from missing my wife and family, I've enjoyed my six months here in Louisiana. I didn't have the free time to visit everything I would have liked to, but that's always the case when I travel somewhere for my job. Even though, in all honesty, I wasn't really welcomed by some when I first arrived, I managed to make those folks realize that I was not a threat to them. Today, that was borne out when they all expressly apologized, in writing and in person, for feeling that way in the beginning and thanked me for helping them prepare for the responsibilities their job and mission will require in the future.

Tonight, I'm going to an advanced showing of "Iron Man" since, once I get home, I won't have a chance to see it for a week after we return from camping in North Carolina. The movie was shown last night to media folks in Los Angeles and every single review has been good, so I'm especially looking forward to seeing it tonight.

Tomorrow I fly back to Orlando, arriving around 5pm local time. We'll have a very busy weekend and then leave Monday to drive up to the mountains and enjoy the great outdoors for a week. No international vacation this year, just an economical week of camping.

But, I'll still be taking lots of photos.

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Processed, And I Mean Processed, Ice Cream

There is a local dairy here in Baton Rouge known as Kleinpeter Farms Dairy. I know nothing about their products from a personal standpoint, but their marketing department might want to re-examine the radio ad campaign they have been running for their new line of ice cream products.

A voice purporting to be from the dairy farm states they made their first batch of ice cream and it was SO good that the cows ate every bit of it up! So now they've finished their second batch and it's on the way to local stores.

Which really means, when you think about it, that their customers are eating the first batch, it's just recycled.

April is Autism Awareness Month. Autism is more common than multiple sclerosis, cystic fibrosis or childhood cancer.

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I'm Right And You're Not!

Do you ever wonder how some people come to have an idea in their mind that they translate into fact, even though it may not be?

I was reviewing a document submitted by a worker who was responding to a complaint about a driver. The complaint stated the driver was speeding. The worker wrote that the driver was speeding and driving erratically. When I asked him to show me in the complaint where it stated the driver was driving erratically, he declared, "Speeding is driving erratically!" and became progressively more upset as I asked him to explain why he would equate the two.

I pointed out several examples where someone could be driving erratically, but not speeding (drunk drivers get pulled over all the time for driving under the speed limit but erratically), or speeding but not driving erratically (in full control of the vehicle), yet he simply could not see that the two were not synonymous. I finally had to just give him one of my looks and gently explain that, regardless of how he may interpret what was written (speeding) in the complaint, he could not add to the wording and to leave it as cited in the original complaint.

What was saddest to me, though, was that he was completely unwilling to even entertain the possibility that he might be wrong or, more importantly, be willing to change his perspective to look at something from a new direction or in a new and different light. Such close-mindedness is why some people never grow, never change and never expand their minds. All because they have an idea or thought and, no matter how wrong it may be, hold onto it as fact.

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Saturday In Baton Rouge

Saturday morning I had a class I had to attend for work. I could do an entire post on how useless it was, but no one would care except those of us who had to suffer through it, and to the best of my knowledge no one who attended the class reads this blog, so let's move on to the fun stuff.

After leaving the class I went downtown to visit the LSU Museum of Art and walk around the banks of the Mississippi River, which is still rising. The first photo below was taken on February 9th and I've included an arrow to show how much the river has risen to where it is in the second photo taken yesterday, where you can see people using the steps of the levee to walk into the river and how the steps and rails disappear into the still rising water.





The LSU MOA is a rather small museum (at least for what I would expect in a state capitol) but does contain some very nice pieces, ranging from work by Childe Hassam, an American Impressionistic painter, to Jackson Pollock's abstract work to one of Andy Warhol's most well-known piece of art.



I have several other photos up on my Flickr page, which you can view by clicking on the Flickr badge over on the right column.

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Mudbugs

When I first arrived in Western Louisiana back in November of last year, some folks from the local office were driving me around the area so I could become familiar with the local geography.

One day a young woman was taking me out into the more rural areas and I kept seeing what looked like rice fields. I assumed they were rice fields since I had already seen several rice processing plants during our travels...but I was only half-right.

The fields were vast. low-lying lands that were covered in water and had strange looking contraptions placed throughout them. When I asked what they were I was told they were traps. "Traps?" I asked, "Traps for what?" I was thinking there must have been some sort of predators out there eating up all the rice. Thus you can imagine my surprise when she said the traps were there to catch crawfish.



Because, you see, that was my second misconception. I had always thought crawfish only lived in rivers, lakes or other bodies of fresh water. I had no idea that there were crawfish farmers raising them on land by creating those bodies of water.

Here's where I was half-right. Those WERE rice fields. But come September or so, after the rice has been harvested, crawfish farmers flood the land, dump crawfish in to eat the rice stumps that are now in mud (good for making crawfish grow and it clears the rice stump from the land) and have lots of baby crawfish, then trap them, sell them and have their land ready for the next rice crop. It's really a very efficient system. And it's how crawfish got the nickname "mudbugs."



But that's about as far as my admiration for the system and crawfish extends. I haven't eaten any of them or dishes with them in it while here in Louisiana. They remind me of lobster in their looks and of shrimp in the way they are eaten and I've never cared for either of those crustaceans so I have serious doubts I'll find these appetizing. What was it someone called them...the cockroaches of water life?



Or, just as appetizing, mudbugs.

April is Autism Awareness Month. The optimal treatment of autism involves an educational program that is suited to the child’s developmental level.

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Supercuts, Indeed

I've been needing to get a haircut for about 3 weeks now. I really should have gone to my regular place when I was home last month, but I was only there for 2 1/2 days and didn't want to waste any of the little bit of time home on something like getting my mane shortened.

Now I wish I had.

The schedule has been so tight since arriving in Baton Rouge that I have not had time to get the needed haircut until today, when I worked a half-day. As soon as I left the office I made a beeline to the nearest haircutting establishment to my hotel, which happens to be a Supercuts. I'm not sure that I've ever been to a Supercuts, usually opting for Great Clips or Haircuttery near my home. I don't think I'll ever be patronizing them again, even if I have to drive several miles to avoid them.

(NOTE: The photo in the upper right hand corner of this blog is about 4 years old and does not accurately reflect my usual hair length these days. It's usually just over my collar and ears. I just didn't want anyone thinking I lost ALL that hair in this incident.)

So I get in the chair and tell the woman what I always say when I get a haircut; "I'd like to just have it trimmed up a little so that it just touches the tops of my ears and collar." I even had to repeat it a moment later because she was called away to the register after I told her the first time and she didn't remember when she returned.

Then I opened my magazine and started reading.

Big mistake.

Apparently she still didn't remember even after being told twice because I suddenly had the feeling I was being mauled by a Pit Bull and looked up to see half my head gone. Ok, actually it was my hair, not my head, but it was gone and there was nothing to be done about it but to let her finish or I'd look like a lawnmower ran over half my head. If this was "touching the tops of my ears and collar" then my ears had grown to the top of my head and my collar was sitting in the middle of the back of my head.

Now I have a haircut that looks like the one Mark Harmon sports on "NCIS"...except I'm nowhere near as handsome as he is in order to make up for it.

I've had hairstylist friends tell me in the past not to go to Supercuts, but I always thought it was just a professional bias against the chain.

Now I wish I had listened.

Oh well, at least I won't need to get another haircut for three or four months, if that.

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Directional Difficulties

I spent last Saturday, Sunday and Monday in Hammond and Slidell, Louisiana. I saw quite a few interesting things in my travels, including what you see below. I turned a corner onto a street in Hammond and was greeted by this sight.



Pulling into the parking lot of a now closed lounge, I took several photos of the car that apparently belonged to someone who was having directional difficulties after imbibing a few adult refreshments.



And I'm sorry, I couldn't help but laugh.

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And The Beat Goes On

I put in 13 hours yesterday and 9 today. When I left the building today I was supposed to be off tomorrow, but I just received a call asking me to work. I've spent both days (and will spend tomorrow as well) in the Hammond area, which is about an hour's drive from Baton Rouge

So, no 3-day, 2-day or even 1-day weekend for this little blogger.

I had hoped to be off at least tomorrow to try and catch up on some things. I still have to work on the photos I took of south downtown Baton Rouge and get those uploaded, plus I have a review for Athena Comics Guide written in my head that I haven't been able to put down on software and upload. That doesn't count some research I wanted to do for various and sundry thoughts that have made their way through my mind over the past few days.

But it's probably what I get for teasing Cindy about how she wasn't going to be off for Presidents' Day. I'm sorry babe; now will you call off the gods of karma...please?

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Frosty's

I worked a half day on Saturday, then left the office and drove to the downtown Baton Rouge area for two reasons; one, to eat lunch at a "hamburger shack" that several people had recommended and two, to do some photowalking around the area. I took about 160 photos over a three hour period and hopefully will have them posted on Flickr in the next day or so. That three hours only covered the southern portion of the downtown area, so my plan is to return in the next couple of weeks and photowalk the northern part of the downtown area.

Now, several people told me that before I leave Baton Rouge (and that won't be a while, as far as I know, but I was going to be in the area anyway so...)I must try the food at Frosty's, a sort of hole-in-the-wall restaurant that serves hamburgers, fries, onion rings (mmmmmm), shakes, floats, seafood, po' boy sandwiches, and...ROOT BEER!



As you can see in the photo above of the exterior of Frosty's, they pride themselves on their root beer. Too bad I've never been able to stand root beer, so I had to pass on that particular beverage choice. The outside reminds me of an old 7-11 store, with all the plate glass on the front and side, and even with it's angled placement on the corner of the block.

I ordered a cheeseburger with everything but onions, onion rings and an unsweetened iced tea. It's not something I'm really supposed to eat and I'll hear about it from my wife and my doctor, but you have to take these opportunities when they present themselves. The cheeseburger was a tasty hunk of meat; thick, juicy, nicely grilled and definitely NOT swallowed up by the bun. The onion rings were thinner and not as flavorful as I had expected, but they weren't bad, just less than I had hoped. The iced tea was VERY unsweet, for which I was grateful. Sweetened tea makes me gag.



Looking at the photo above (taken with my Blackberry, so it's not as sharp as it could be) you can see that the interior looks like a conglomeration of an old Steak n' Shake counter, old Denny's booths and an old Dairy Queen "special" board on the counter. The grill, fryer, bun warmer, etc were right behind the counter in full view of the customers, like the old Royal Castle restaurants used to be set up. The smell of grease was heavy in the air and the old jukebox in the corner was playing disco music the entire duration of my dining experience. The janitor was actually dancing as he swept and mopped the floors.

It was fun, even in its "hole-in-the-wall ness" atmosphere. I won't make a habit of going there to eat, but I'll probably try and be sure to stop by one more time before I leave Baton Rouge.

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Happy Mardi Gras!

It's "Fat Tuesday", "Shrove Tuesday" or "Pancake Day" (take your choice) and I'm planning to drive down to New Orleans from Baton Rouge, head over to Bourbon Street in the French Quarter and pull my shirt up to see if I can get some beads.

Ok, not really.

Actually, it will be another long day here in the Red Stick.

I DID have this past weekend off, and that was nice. Saturday morning, I ran some errands like getting groceries, stopping by the Books-A-Million, mailing some things home from the Post Office and then grabbing lunch. After lunch I returned to the hotel and then walked over to the Barnes & Noble that is nearby and after that walked a little farther over to the movie theater to watch "Untraceable" which, while predictable was entertaining nonetheless.

Sunday was pretty much a day to just relax, although I did eye the fitness room here at the hotel once as I walked past it. I'm trying to sneak up on my body/mind (hence the increase in walking) with this exercise thing. The doctor and my wife are getting pretty serious about riding my case regarding my diet and working out.

Other than that, it's mostly work, work, work, come home, eat sleep and repeat. The room here is very nice, as are the staff. I'm pretty sure I'll be working this weekend, but I'm hoping to get out and get some photos of Baton Rouge the following weekend.

And if you're reading this from one of the twenty-something states holding primaries on this Super Tuesday, I hope you'll be sure to exercise your right to vote.

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Twist And Shout

I'm sitting in the hotel room here in Baton Rouge channel surfing and I just came across one of the funniest movies of the 80's at the point of one of the best scenes in the film; "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" and the Chicago street parade scene where Ferris sings "Twist and Shout" while the parade goers and even nearby workers (including his dad in an office above him) sing and dance along.

I love that scene.

Just thought you'd like to know.

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Goodbye Lake Charles, Hello Baton Rouge

Arrived at the office this morning to discover that I had been ordered to leave Lake Charles and set up shop over in Baton Rouge. That's where I am now and for the foreseeable future.

I've already seen several good photo subjects/opportunities, provided I have the free time to indulge myself.

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Back in Lake Charles, Louisiana

I just arrived back in Lake Charles a few minutes ago after a week at the secret training location (cold and snow...brrr!!) and a weekend surprise visit home.

If you have e-mailed me, I'm not ignoring you. The secret training location is SO secret that broadband Internet connections have not yet found their way to the dorms I stayed in. The best they had was dial-up so my "connection" consisted of my new Blackberry and even that was hit or miss most of the time. I'll be replying to all who've e-mailed me this past week over the next few days and I thank you in advance for your patience.

I'm still recovering from the flu I mentioned 2 weeks ago and the non-stop schedule has only stretched out the illness. Hopefully I'll be able to spend the upcoming weekend recuperating and resting, but first I have to get through another week of work.

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Have It Your Way

Apparently, judging by the photo below of a Burger King marquee here in Lake Charles, Louisiana, the Burger King company really is doing away with the Whopper, as their new ad campaign points out, but they're replacing it with the...Wopper.

Seriously, do you think the king (who is just as creepy as the Wendy's mascot I posted about here, regardless of what my daughter thinks) is pleased that his subjects have no clue when it comes to the correct spelling of his signature product?

The sign has displayed this misspelling for the past 16 days. I'm not holding out hope that it will be corrected any time soon.

P.S. Funny, even my spellchecker kept alerting me that I spelled "Wopper" wrong.

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Vampires Beware!

There I was, sitting at the desk in the hotel room pounding out some kind of worthless drivel on the laptop with the TV on next to me when I heard her say "Vampires Beware!"

Now, of course, that WOULD get my attention because sometimes I consider myself to be, if not a vampire, then at least sympathetic to their... lifestyle. After all, my internal body clock has always been set to sleep during the day and do my work at night and, before I married my beloved Cindy, I was known for being extremely attracted to beautiful female necks. Plus, although I'm definitely NOT, I always felt like immortality might be pretty cool.

So, when those words, "Vampires Beware!" penetrated my concentration, I swiftly looked toward the TV to see what is was they should beware. Ya know...just in case. What I saw was an attractive blonde female on the right lower corner of the screen with a local car dealership in the opposite corner and various vehicles in the background. Then she repeated her earlier warning. Except this time, with the added visual assistance and my concentration focused on what she was saying, I realized what she had said was...

"Van Buyers Compare!"

I swear it's these darn local Louisiana accents.

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Lake Charles Photos

Back on December 2nd I was able to walk around the North shore area of Lake Charles (the actual lake, not the town) which is right across the street from the hotel I'm staying at here in the town of Lake Charles. Last night I finally had time to get 124 of the 213 photos I took uploaded to Flickr (if you're wondering about the difference in numbers; I didn't think the others were really good enough to put out for all to see. Heck, these 124 may not be good enough either).

If you start by clicking on the photo of the map in the lower right corner of the set and work your way back through the previous shots (because somehow that's how they uploaded) you can follow my route on the map.


It was an interesting walk and encompassed the city's Veterans Memorial Park, one of their earliest cemeteries (where they added the "Millennium Christ" statue back in 2000), Harrah's Casino and Hotel, which were closed by hurricane Katrina, and some of the interesting things found along the beach/shore of Lake Charles as well as the 135 tall I-10 bridge in the background of several of the shots.

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The Rain Conspiracy

There is a conspiracy afoot here in southwestern Louisiana. Since my arrival in Lake Charles, every time I have a day off it proceeds to rain the entire day. When I'm working, the sun is shining and the weather is clear. When I'm free to walk around taking photos, it rains.

All day.

This weekend, the rain was accompanied by 45-50 degree temperatures during the day, making it seem that much more miserable. I look out my third floor window and see nothing but slate gray skies, heavy, ominous clouds and the constant falling of rain. So much rain that, as of a few minutes ago, Calcasieu (Kal-Ka-Shoe) Parish was put under a flood watch.

Glad I'm on the third floor.

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