Hurricane Whatberto?

Damn, I almost fell off my chair yesterday evening when I saw on CNN.com that there was a tropical storm off ther coast of Texas! WTF? Where did that come from?

Now, today,it's a Cat 1! It formed, spun up to hurricane strength and made landfall, all in 24 hours. Glad it didn't come over this way, we would have been caught completely flat-footed.

It is heading this way, but over land now. It is pitch-black and raning right now in Mid-City already. One of our patrons just talked to her cousin in Lafayette, where it is torrentially raining and street-flooding.

"OK, stop," I told her. "You're scaring me now."

It's not just pets and little kids who freak out around here when the weather gets bad. Everyone does it. Flashing back.

9/11 again

Yesterday was the sixth anniversary of 9/11. Six years. 9/11 was so huge and shocking, so terrible, that in the weeks and months after I used to wonder what it would feel like to mark the anniversary in the future, five years out, ten years out. I yearmed for the balm of time to heal all wounds. But I couldn't imagine not feeling enraged and terrified on that day.

Well, that was then. When I was thinking about the future then I never dreamed that by the sixth anniversary I would have had my own epochal disaster to suffer and recover from. Katrina has pretty much eclipsed Ground Zero in my personal hellscape. How could it not?

Also when I think of 9/11 now, it just reminds me of the tragic road to ruin in Iraq, and the indelible blight upon the United States' name and honor. The pure sorrow is tainted with anger and bitterness.

So, 9/11 + 6. Somehow, I'm just not feeling it.