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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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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Road Warrior

I'm leaving in a few minutes to drive to Lake Charles, LA where I'll be working (at least as of now, things can always change) for the remainder of my time in Louisiana. Lake Charles is about 200 miles west of New Orleans, so I have a three hour drive ahead of me.

Can't honestly say that I'll miss the city of New Orleans.

I did get to go waste spend a few hours in the French Quarter this past Monday. Hopefully I will be able to get the photos posted soon.

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