Wednesday, September 28, 2005

Who's Got It

Forget Snap: I've Got the Power!

When I arrived back at the house yesterday afternoon after work it was to discover that the house had power.

Top Three Things I Did When I Found Out I Had Power:

1) Turned on the air conditioner

2) Plugged in the compact refridgerator that I brought from Lafayette, then I filled it with bottled water. Wish I'd brought beer.

3) Used my electric weed eater to cut the grass

Other than the power coming back on, last night was pretty much like the night before. I cleaned the yard, finished packing everything in my office at home, and I emptied the attic. I've still got a lot more packing to do, but I can only do it in the evenings. I'm still working until the end of this week. Friday is my last day. On either Friday afternoon or Saturday morning Lindsey and I are going to pile into my car and drive it to Portland, Oregon. We are going for a week for the purpose of interviewing for jobs and visiting with my Mom, and Scott and Elise. I've managed to line up a couple of interviews, and I hope one will turn into something promising. We will also be leaving my car in Portland, in the care of my family until we are able to move there sometime in October.

Lindsey is coming to meet me this afternoon so that we can really start to tackle some of the packing that needs to be done. It'll be nice not to be at the house alone. It's pretty creepy being there alone. I've gotten accustomed to the helicopters flying overhead all the time, but when they aren't there it is eerily quite in New Orleans. It's like a big ghost town and it's a little weird.

Last night I had a new noise to put up with. There was a GIANT Army plane flying back and forth across my neighborhood all night. The crazy thing is that it was flying so low. You guys should have seen how low this thing was. It couldn't have been more than 30 yards above my house. It was one of the most surreal experiences of my life. Imagine sitting cozily in your living room with helicopters and Army planes flying directly over your house. It's odd. I took a picture of it, but I left my USB cable in Lafayette so I can't post any pictures.

Also when I came home yesterday afternoon, the refridgerator that we left on the sidewalk, which was still there on Tuesday morning when I left for work, was gone. All that was left of it was the nasty rotting food that had been in it. Thankfully, whoever took it was nice enough to put most of the food in a garbage bag, so I didn't have too much to clean up. I'm glad it's gone. I really didn't want to try to save it, and getting rid of it was going to be a pain in the ass. I'm not sure it was even saveable. Rotting chicken juices running all over it, and up under the cracks and stuff. Nasty. Someone came along and saved me a bunch of trouble.

Finally, I did get the stove to work yesterday. My gas had been shut off with the electricity (I think for safety reasons) and when the electricity came back on, so did the gas. I didn't end up using the stove however, because now I can heat up soup in the microwave. I'm eating soup for lunch and dinner now. I don't eat breakfast.

Oh, yeah...today is my birthday.