Rehearsal Dinner
On Saturday, September 24th in the year of our lord 2005, (that is for my mom) Nat, my parents and I will hold a rehearsal dinner at my parent's place. This is by invitation only. You should have already gotten your invite.
I am completely new to this whole party thing. I suppose you have to have some kind of get together of the wedding party people just to coordinate. We can't have a real rehearsal because Ren-Fest doesn't support that sort of thing. I hope we can pull all this stuff off without out many troubles.
I'm thinking the following schedule.
12:00 People show up.
1:00 People get settled in and we go over the wedding plans.
2:00 We eat.
4:00 We wind down.
I'm sure this will all be subject to change. Nat will have a monkey-wrench or two to throw in the works. Sensible monkey-wrenches I'm sure.

Another Word of the Day
It's been a long day. We can have two.
Pundit: A Brahman scholar or learned man.
This is another one you find spattered all over the Blogsphere. It is used in a dozen blog names. I say, beware any one who is willing to admit they know something.

Word of the Day
Popinjay: A vain talkative person.
This word pops up all over the place in the blogsphere. It is an obscure way of saying that someone is full of shit.

Comment Spam
I'm leaving notes on people's blogs to turn on whatever means they have available to them to eliminate comment spam. I'm noticing several of my favorite blogs get spam for a while eventually turn on the stuff that is out there. My comments have a word verification do-hicky that is annoying as all get out. It is not half as annoying as comment spam advertising puppy farm dogs or herbal Viagra. Some bloggers have their act together. Hopefully it won't be long before it is more of a pain in the butt to generate spam than it is worth.

Adam's Volunteer Experience

Laurie and I got up early and everyone that was on volunteer detail rallied at my house at 8:30am Thursday, September 8th.  Justin, Chris and Sarah all met us and we got underway.  We decided that we wanted to try to get into the thick of things so we went to the Astrodome.  After sitting in traffic for 45minutes, we were turned away by security guards saying that they were not taking volunteers.  At this time we heard that our second group of volunteers from work (Mike and Jennifer) got into the George R. Brown Convention Center and were doing data entry for FEMA.  This sounded tres easy so we beelined it to downtown hoping to get in and do our volunteer time in front of computer (as if I'd be that lucky). The people guarding the parking lots downtown were mega-cool to volunteers.  If you said you were there to volunteer, they let you park for free.  The city of Houston really amazed me that day.  Everyone was so appreciative of volunteer efforts.  So we went to the GRBCC and got turned away at two separate points.  There were volunteers there whose job was just to turn away volunteers.  It kinda pissed me off. Fortunately one of the "you aren't allowed here" volunteers directed us to the Star of Hope Mission which was just a stiff walk away from GRBCC (about a mile away). So we went past a couple hundred evacuees that were standing in line for who knows what outside of the convention center.  When we found the SoHM we were ushered in and sent to the back.  Good grief, the place was packed with donations.  There was a pile of donated clothes as big as a McDonald s that sat on a couple of basketball courts (and later we found out that that was just the tip of the iceberg, there were 5 more off-site warehouses full).  There were about 40 people inside an open-air building sorting clothes into boxes.  There were about 4 full-time forklifts mulling around moving stuff onto trucks.  There were three or four guys operating a bailer that was compacting clothes into portable blocks.  We show up at the mission and a volunteer greets us, gives us a two minute run-down and then lets us go.  There was no supervision or anything -- make your own work.  Basically SoHM is responsible for handling donations; they do several thing with them. First thing they do is hand out donations to evacuees that show up at the mission.  Second thing they do is box up sorted donations so they can give items out in the future to evacuees that show up at the mission -- these items are boxed and put on pallets and then carted off to off-site warehouses.  Third thing they do is throw a bunch of loosely sorted stuff together to be bailed and shipped to Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama to be sorted and distributed there. Laurie and Sarah went to work in the sorting department.  Laurie says that it needed someone to take charge and get everyone on the same page.  People were sorting stuff in random categories.  Some people were just sorting women's/men's/kid's.  Others were sorting women's shirts/women's pants/men's underwear/etc.  So there was no consistency. (As an aside, another group went to SoHM on Friday and some Chevron big shot took charge of the sorting operation and standardized the whole thing.  That guy did a lot of good.) Justin, Chris and I were put on manual labor detail and hauled clothes from the McDonald's sized pile to one of two sorting groups or to the clothes bailers.  It was pretty back breaking, but there was always something to do.  Over the course of four hours, I would say that about 5 people working the pile moved about 3000 cubic feet of clothing (30'x10'x10').  We may have moved 1/10th of the original pile. There was a misunderstanding at the mission.  There is a cafeteria there and we were told by one of the greeter volunteers that the food was for SoHM employees only.  That wasn't the case, however.  We found out after coming back from a great Mexican food lunch (at Irma's) that the cafeteria was feeding the volunteers.  Still, I'm glad I went to Irma's, it was very good (though pricey -- $15/plate). Things I learned about donating in times of crisis. o  Wash your donations -- do not donate dirty clothes.  In disaster relief there is not enough time for the donations to be washed before being distributed.  There was some bag in the pile that smelled like human urine.  I don't know if someone peed on the pile of clothes or if someone just didn't wash them before donating them.  I figure the latter is more likely than the former. o  Sort your donations beforehand o  Put your donations in strong, very strong, plastic bags (not boxes) -- I can not stress this enough.  If your bag of donated clothes bursts, there is a good chance your donations will be thrown away (a lot a burst bag ends up with all the clothes in the dirt).  I had a bag burst on me and a bunch of clean, but stained, men's briefs rolled into my face while I was carrying them. o  Clearly label your bag o  If you donate shoes, connect the pairs together somehow.  When sorting clothes, a lot of times all bags are just emptied into a large pile.  If a sorter picks up a shoe with no mate, chances are they will throw it away.  Or if they keep it, it will be so far away from its mate that no one will be able to use it. When we finished at 3pm, I went home and slept for two or three hours. It really sucked the energy out of me.  If I do any more volunteer work, I'll be sure to go back to SoHM.  I felt appreciated there and they had work to do.  I actually walked in on two SoHM employees arguing.  One of them was grumpy because all the volunteers were making him work harder and he was telling people to stop working.  The other was telling him to knock that off and not scare away the volunteers, that we were needed. I liked hearing that argument. I'd like to address the rumor that the evacuees are all mean-spirited, greedy people.  I talked to several that day, and walked around tons of them.  All of them were super-nice and appreciative.  I never once met any jerks (though I assume they are there somewhere).  I think its a case of a couple of bad apples spoiling the bunch. Adam

Well, God bless you. I'm glad you did it. I hope Laurie feels better quickly.
I did a very minor part for the Katrina relief effort. I helped collect and deliver some items at my company. We basically lugged boxes back and forth for an hour or so. I had the opportunity to go to a homeless shelter and volunteer more of my time, but I did not.
Please feel free to comment and toot your own horn.

Jen's Newsletter

Hi everybody I'll be playing this Friday at a neat little place in LaGrange, called The Bugle Boy.  It'd be a great getaway (most of us need it, right?).  Go to www.thebugleboy.com for directions.  I'll be playing from 8-10pm.  There are some wonderful bed and breakfasts around the area too. I've been spending my waking hours getting gigs and housing for New Orleans musicians displaced by the hurricane.  Please go to www.noahleans.com to see the wonderful work that's being done. Thanks! Jen www.JenRathbun.com

I republish this with permission (I think). Please give Jen your support. She is worth it.

Pictures are up.
Video too.

Good News
Well, here is some good news. The guy who took over the Katrina relief effort has set some goals. Thad Allen sounds like he has his eye on the prize. I have to tell you, it looked for a long time like the U. S. was putting up a cluster-fuck effort.

Day
Saturday was pretty good. First, Nat said I didn't have to go to a baby shower. <score!> I stayed home and burned some DVDs. Actually, I fell asleep and missed the phone call from Nat that every one was headed over to Ken and Jen's place after the party. I was in a crabby mood because I had to wake up. After we got there though, I was fine. Nat was awesome. I tried on some armor. I'll put up some pictures and hopefully a video soon. It is far too late right now.
Nat and I are off to watch a late night movie. I hope the DVD works. The last one I did somehow got the sound off. Bye the end of the movie it looked like one of those bad Japanese kung-fu theater.

Hits
I am obsessed with who is reading my blog. I was looking at the "referral" section of SiteMeter and found that someone had emailed my blog around. I don't think these are links that I sent out because one of them is in Missouri and the other two are in Malaysia. They are all using Yahoo mail.
I got another hit off a friend's blog.
I get a hit from SiteMeter itself. It turns out to be another blogger checking a hit from my page to theirs (via the next blog button I'm sure). His SiteMeter results are exposed for any one to view. I go poking around. This liberal so-and-so gets more hits in an hour complaining about the world than I get in a week.
One of the hits is from a comment I left on someone else's blog. I try to leave a link to my blog from every comment. Many people turn off comments because of all the spam. I recommended to a couple of people to turn on the word check feature in Blogger. That helps a little bit.
I still get hits daily from George Carlin Radio. I blogged about the page and the administrator commented that he mentioned my blog in one of the news articles on his site. How cool is that?
Fifteen percent of the hits on my blog use FireFox. That is too cool.
Several of the referral pages are listed as "unknown". This can mean many things. Either the mechanism used to gather information from the browser is disabled locally, or it was from a shortcut. These hits might come from people who have bookmarked my site. That is kind of cool.
Then come the search results. These break down into two categories. The hits from Google Image search kind of piss me off because it does not necessarily mean the people saw my page. I know that I don't go to the source page all the time when searching for an image. Many times I just steel it off Google's page without even looking at the author's information.
The other type of search is pretty cool. These are the web searches. I find hits all the time for things that have absolutely nothing to do with the content of my blog. I got a hit the other day for "Kelly eats worms". Where the hell did that come from? These folks at least got to my page at some point. Even if they were just clicking on every single result, they had a chance of viewing my content.
Some people's lives and careers hinge the hits to their content. It would drive me mad if my livelihood depended on the fickle hit meeter. I don't pretend to understand how any of this stuff works. I know that the best way so far to bring traffic to my blog is to comment on others in an intelligent manor. I will continue to obsess and bring you the details here.

Puerco Pibil
Nat made the most amazing dish. She made every effort to make the meal special. It was delicious. I ate enough to feed the Mexican Air force. I've traded computer work for a home cooked meal before. I have had friends cook me meals for special occasions. My mother makes a mean Thanksgiving feast. I have to say, I have not had a home cooked meal that good in a long time.
Nat made a couple of changes to the recipe. She used lime juice instead of vinegar per one of the suggestions on a message board. There were a couple of other little things to soften the spices of the dish. It was not even close to bland. We now own a coffee grinder just for spices. I raved about how good it was and Nat finally said "Don't worry Kelly, I will cook again in the future." I can't wait.

Below Sea Level
People keep telling me that New Orleans should be rebuilt. I'm not so sure it ever will be, or ever should be the same place it was before. Will the exact same thing happen next hurricane season? People keep saying "look at Holland". You know, I'm trying to remember the last time Holland was hit with a category four hurricane. What works in northern Europe may not work the same on the U. S. Gulf Coast.
Does any one out there have a good idea or an opinion on the subject? Chime in.

Evening with the Family

Elle is in bed, though I doubt she is asleep. I'm watching Electra.
It is late. I should go to bed. Natalie is preparing the Puerco Pibil dish I described earlier. There is quite a bit of preparation the night before. We went to Fiesta for most of the ingredients. The guy we asked about the banana leaves gave us a funny look until we pointed to a print out of the recipe. He knew exactly what we needed then. We had to go ask the butcher for "pork rump" or "pork butt" as it said in the clip on the DVD. He chopped it up for us and drew a little picture on the package. We had to go to Wal-Mart for a coffee grinder to mash up the fresh spices. Judging by the sneezing fit Nat had, they are pretty strong. I can't wait to try it.
While we were in the store, I felt like I was part of a family. I didn't want to leave. This is how it should be.

Head Shaving and the Price of Gas

A note to all you guys who are doing drugs, rugs or plugs, to all the men who are still letting their barbers talk them into that comb over or who still believe their barbers when they say, “That’s NOT a bald spot, it’s just naturally thin for your age.” If you ever wonder what us guys who have accepted the inevitable think of you who are fighting it, we’re laughing. Seriously, we find it funnier than hell. You may call me Uncle Fester or Cue ball all ya want, but dude, when the wind catches your comb over and it starts to fly…it just makes my whole day. The Daily Brief

This is a good description of shaving one's head. I can't believe I learned something by reading it. I must agree and emphasize the dabbing with the dowel instead of rubbing. I may have to try the disposable razors he mentions. I'm really upset at the cost of razors.
Gas was 2.99 for regular this morning when I passed by the local station on the bus. I pay $2.00 ever year to ride the bus, but every one else pays $1.00 per trip. There are ways to get a bit off that as too. I wait biting my nails for the municipality to raise the price of the bus. Right now, I just about break even on the cost of gas alone with the short commute I have.
So, it is the reality of the old guns and butte analogy. Now that the price of gas has gone to $3.00, I'm looking for cheaper razors. It still applies.

Good Google
I watching "Once Upon a Time in Mexico" when I noticed the recipe for Puerco Pibil. It is the pork dish that  Nat and I went to one of our favorite Mexican restaurant this evening only to find they did not have it on the menu. Not only that, but today was a holiday so the normal cook was apparently boozing it up with his family, because the food was far below their normal quality. Anyway. Nat said she would cook the dish for me if I took the time to write it down from the DVD. I hope this suffices. Google is far too efficient.

Day off
We worked on some invitation stuff this morning. Mostly Nat did all the work. Then we went to Mike and Ronni's son's Ben's birthday party. He turned four today. We made it home and I wonder if we still have some some things that need to be done. I really wish we could just call it an evening.
Tomorrow we have to get the oil changed in the car. It is the first oil change. Then we need to get some bins from Wal-Mart. We have a pact to fill one bin every night until we are unpacked. I can't wait to find out how much we end up throwing away.
It was kind of nice having a day off, but really, I wish I had worked today. I need the money. I'm going to try to work four ten hour days the rest of the week. I'm pretty sure the work is there.

The sun comes.
Sunday. Another day off tomorrow.
I'm up before the world. I'm playing.
Little spots of sunlight sneak though the blinds to my skin. Will I leave my apartment today?

Tune back later for more details.

MPH
The speed limit in Texas is 70 MPH.
Unless you are an eighteen wheeler, then it is 65 MPH.
Unless it is at night in an eighteen wheeler, then it is 60 MPH.
Unless you are in a car towing a large trailer, then it is 55 MPH.
Because, having every one on the same road all drive the same speed at the same time just doesn't make any sense.

Katrina
OK, OK Here is a link to a bunch of photos and videos of Katrina fallout. Get off my back.

Tsunami (I mean) Katrina Videos
I'm not linking to anything. You can track all that down yourself.
I'm watching tons of videos.
* Aftermath

I wondered to myself on like Monday afternoon, "Who the hell stuck around?" Well, it was a couple of elderly white people and a bunch of black people. I hate to say it like that. That sounds racist. I suppose it might be. I got fucking eyes (sort of). Some blogs tout that it was poor people who could not afford to leave their stuff and jobs. I believe it. Someone else mentioned that Baton Rouge is 80% black so most of the people in the videos would be black. Fine. I buy it.
Roving gangs are running around and steeling everything that isn't nailed down. Some people are swiping bottles of bear and some diapers. Some people are swiping iPods. Which do you suppose I would say "guilty" to if I were on the jury?
They are violating the same law. Some people are sticking to their store and shooting people. More power to them.

* Storm Surge

There are videos of the storm surge. Some guys put themselves in the way of the Mississippi side of the storm. They were in a hotel lobby. A van washed up against the wall. A car washed into the lobby and down the hall.

* Helicopters

Someone flew around in a helicopter and filmed the Mississippi coast. There were people just standing in front of their cars, staring at a pile of broken two-by-fours that was their home. There was nothing left. It looked like a bulldozer had flattened the entire area.

Municipalities have been flying around looking at the tops of levies. The talking heads usually come on about then and make excuses.
I saw a video from one helicopter that was filming a military helicopter snatch someone off a rooftop. I'm thinking couldn't they do something constructive? Fly down and drop some bottled water.

* My Personal Note

I know one person working security at the Astro Dome. He says the people getting off the buses are the most "gimme gimme gimme" fucks on earth. He said they are the dregs of society. They have nowhere to go once they get a meal and a place to stay. Thank God the fire martial limited the damage to 15000 at the Dome.  That sounds absolutely horrible. It is the way I feel.
I'm sick of being the world's cop. We take on Afghanistan. We take on Iraq and Husein. We help out first with the most when the Tsunami hit the Far East. We have something happen here, in our own home town, and it takes five days to pay any attention. I am sick of people telling me I should not have my own gun. I look at the mayhem that happened in Louisiana and, God willing, I will have access to the means to protect my family.

* How to Help

Don't offer food. Don't offer cloths. Offer a job. Offer training. Offer an ax, a shovel, a hammer, some nails,  and a plot of land in a new territory.

I should just shut up. I know no one wants to hear my opinion. Where am I going to be when I'm the one on the other end. These things are easy to rant while in a dry building, sipping on a coffee, watching a bunch of videos.

US Inseargancy

Armored military vehicles and national guard troops started moving into New Orleans Thursday morning amid continuing reports of violence and chaos, including shots fired at the Superdome that interfered with the Superdome evacuation after only a few hundred people had been moved out to Houston. WashingtonPost.com

Things are in hell, forget the hand basket. What is the motivation of these assholes to shoot at the relief helicopters? I don't get it. maybe it is just because they stole a new gun from Wal-Mart. Maybe they are mad it is not they, or their aunt Martha on the chopper. Perhaps it is the hysteria of the moment. Lashing out at all  that a lifetime of "the system" can dish out comes to mind.

Armed Populous

"This is ridiculous. You work hard. You're trying to get out of there to save your family and you have people running around taking your stuff," said evacuee Pamela David. "It just doesn't make any sense to me at all. But we have our family here and that stuff can be replaced. That's why you have insurance. I got to let it go.". "It's horrible. It's just horrible that somebody would actually break into your house when you are trying to get your family to safety," said evacuee Lisa Allen. KTRK

There are a bunch of really evil people out there.

Chaos spread across New Orleans along with the brown, toxic floodwater in the early hours of yesterday morning, and the thousands of stragglers still trapped awoke to find themselves in a city with few laws, little mercy, and no clear way out. The police seemed to have all but evaporated in the course of a night of looting and gunfire, in which at least one police officer was badly injured. A few camouflaged national guard trucks could be seen moving through the downtown area in convoy, but there were no guardsmen on the streets to deal with the wreckage of the city. ... "It was like a war zone here. There was shooting and looting, and I saw people beating women; it's fucking ugly," said a man with bare, tattooed arms, carrying an empty water canister. He identified himself only as Jason, pointing out he had been in trouble with the law himself. "I'm just trying to get to a bus stop so I can get out of here. Which way are you going?" he wanted to know. ... "The police said you were on your own," Ms James said. "If you're not in the Super dome, you're on your own." ... "As if water worries weren't enough ... now the looting is becoming extremely serious. In Uptown, one the few areas that remained dry, a bearded man patrolled Oak Street near the boarded-up Maple Leaf Bar, a sawed-off shotgun slung over his shoulder. The owners of a hardware store sat in folding chairs, pistols at the ready. They broke into the Shell station across the street. I walked over with my 12-gage and shot a couple into the air.' A supply store sported spray-painted signs reading "You Loot, I Shoot". Guardian

This news among the dozens of blogs talking about how frightening the atmosphere feels in the city tells me that there is indeed a reason for law-abiding citizens of this country to be aloud by their own government to own firearms. I just might join the NRA again. It looks like we are all one hurricane from bedlam in our own home towns.