Fit For a King

Since I'm back at work here in Metairie, La. I figured it would be easy to try to get into New Orleans every afternoon after work, just to see if I could get in. Yesterday afternoon I tried and succeeded.

I got home at about 5:00 which meant I still had some daylight left. That was good because the house still has no power. The first thing I did when I got there was to unload my car which was packed with two weeks worth of supplies like drinking water, bathing water, canned soup, packing boxes, clothes and a .38 revolver. Once the car was unloaded I removed the plywood from the windows on our two front doors so that I could have some light in the house other than candle light and flashlights. Then it was time to get to work. I taped the boxes back together (they had been broken down in order to fit more into the car) and started packing the house. With the boxes I had I was able to pack all of my books and DVDs, which are always the first to get packed any time I move. So now that part is done. I was sweating up a storm because there is obviously no air conditioning in the house. It was 90 degrees inside; hotter than it was standing outside.

When I ran out of boxes I pretty much had nothing to do. I was pretty tired and was beginning to get hungry. I tested the gas stove and it appeared to be working, but when I tried to light it, I got nothing. I checked to be sure that the gas coming into the house was on, and it was. I couldn't quite figure it out, and gas makes me really nervous so I decided not to bother with it. I shut the gas to the house off again, and drank a can of cold Campbell's soup straight from the can. When we evacuated we had four bottles of wine in the wine rack, so I opened up a bottle of Yellowtail Shiraz and had two glasses of that with my soup.

After dinner I called Lindsey, who is still in Lafayette, and we talked for a while.

By the time we finished talking it was getting dark and the wine was certainly not helping the fact that I was tired, so I went to sleep on the couch. Luckily Lindsey and I bought a battery operated alarm clock a while back because the power at our old apartment flickered all the time, so I was able to wake up this morning fairly easily. I got up this morning and went to sit in the car to smoke a couple of cigarettes because I was really hot and wanted to get some cold air conditioning.

After that I took a shower using one of the gallons of water that I brought with me. It actually worked really well. Who needs running water, you know? And now I'm back at work, only to do it all over again tonight.