Hurricane Gustav '08...very belated pictures!

So I have a pretty boring running week on schedule this week, and nothing too exciting to write about on that front. Last night I was messing around with our pictures, trying to finally get some very old stuff off the camera and on the computer. I wrote about Gustav back in September, and I credit that storm with my complete near 2 week fall off the running/healthy eating wagon, but never really wrote much about what we did.

Basically, warnings around here were severe....up until about 2 am (of course the last time we checked the news) they were predicting a huge storm surge possibly putting much of southeastern Louisiana (including our neighborhood) under water. They thought (at that time) that Gustav had the potential to be worse than Katrina. We had planned on sticking around, and it wasn't until that night that there was a mandatory evacuation for the area we lived. I still probably would have stayed, but our house isn't elevated and the thought of a week plus in LA summer heat and humidity with no electricity was unappealing to say the least. My parents were going to be in Nashville on business, which is about 8 hours, so we thought why not? We headed out the next morning without listening to the news (which would have told us the storm had shifted slightly and predictions weren't nearly as bad, but whatevs), but WITH our four cats. Yep- I am that crazy cat lady. Who only has one pet carrier. It was so embarrassing! At every gas station we tried to go as far away from other cars as possible...I didn't want them seeing all our cats climbing all over the car...fur flying... But anyway....

here is our 'last' picture of our little house...had it swept away in the storm...please ignore the overgrown lawn.. :)

and here is Pagan 'navigating' for Will (the hubby). I adopted this cat from a shelter in Salem, MA in October of 2000 (hence his name), and he has driven cross country to CA (I have pics of him on Beale St. in Memphis, in the Ozarks of Arkansas, in New Mexico, at the Hoover Dam, and on the strip in Las Vegas!). He lived happily there for four years, from 2002-2006 (with the unpleasant interruption of a hip replacement...damn cars!) before I ripped him from his happy life to drag him once again cross country to Louisiana (this time he visited Vegas again, hung out in Fort Collins, Colorado, Kansas City, Missouri, and back to the Ozarks again before arriving at his new home with his younger brother, Pocho). So Pagan is an experienced traveller and he knows where he likes to sit. Right between us always. The cats are always loose while travelling because I can't stand the yowling. I know- a horrible safety risk, but if it stops me from driving off a bridge it's a chance I have to take. This trip he was joined by Pocho and his newer brothers Leo and Milo:

So it was an adventure to say the least! Not to mention that we then had to sneak four cats into the Holiday Inn! But we had a ton of fun, hanging out with my parents in Nashville, visiting the Jack Daniels distillery in Lynchburg (a dry county...can you believe it? You do the tour but get no taste!), and going out downtown with my sister who flew down for her birthday (the low cost vacation option..anywhere with mom and dad!).
So a good time was had by all...the Gaylord Hotel (where mom and dad were staying) was beautiful. The weather was great and it actually didn't rain! (We never get through a summer day here without rain). So yeah. There are my two month old pictures. I think over November and December I am going to try to recap a couple of our other trips from 2008 too. So you may see some CA and Jamaica pics at some point. Who knows- I may even go back to 2007 and throw in some Peru and Japan pictures also....my husband's advice is 'more pictures'. He says my blog is too boring...all words ;)