The Storm King

A lot of people have their eyes on Hurricane Katrina tonight. Josh and I have been following it on the news, off and on. I'm hoping that the buildup the media is giving this storm isn't completely true, but the trouble is, not that many Category 5 storms have hit the U.S. all that recently. And none have certainly hit New Orleans almost directly. My thoughts and prayers go out to all of those caught in the path of this storm, including all of those in the Superdome-turned-emergency shelter. This situation is brought all the more closer home to me since my friends and I just visited N.O. about seven months ago. Seeing the places where we walked and toured and watched football now facing real danger is, to put it mildly, disconcerting. Stay safe, everyone.

To put a bit of a lighter spin on this evening's weather, at least Jim Cantore is there in Gulfport, MS (one of Team Sugar Bowl's stops, incidentally). Although we didn't see him on the Weather Channel coverage for a few hours this evening, we only expected Jim to maybe be going out to face the storm bare-chested in a boat. The man is the Zeus of severe weather forecasting and reporting. To tell the truth, if I were in New Orleans right now, the first thing I'd want to do is find out where Jim Cantore is and go wherever he goes. Once he appeared on the screen tonight with his baseball cap and blue raincoat, we knew we could at least rest easy.

... A belated weekend report: I joined Gerritt on his boat last night, and along with Mel, we ventured out into the rainy streets of southwest DC. We managed to go up into the Old Post Office Tower before it closed. The Post Office is a nice holdover from DC's early days, and it offers the best panoramic of the district's highlights, even while it's raining. We ate dinner at Gordon Biersch, a microbrewery/restaurant. It was delicious, espeically their home-brewed root beer, but I'd recommend staying away from the garlic fries. Later, we caught an IMAX movie at the Museum of Natural History, before heading back to G-Dock to watch "Mars Attacks" on the small screen. All in all, the evening was a nice re-introduction to DC for me, and it reinforced the still-not-quite-lucid idea that yes, I actually do live up here now.