So in the wake of all of this hurricane mess, I’m assuming that the folks over at Catoptric are safe and sound, albeit without electricity. That seems to be the case with my parents, anyway. Jackson is about 200 miles or so inland, so they weren’t affected by the mass devastation the way that towns like New Orleans, Biloxi & Gulfport were. But 75 mph winds in a town full of trees makes for lots of downed power lines, so that’s what they’re dealing with. Plus my great aunt, her daughter (my mom’s cousin), the daughter’s friend/boyfriend/not-really-sure-of-his-status, and their dog all evacuated New Orleans and are staying at my parents’ house. They did this last year during Hurricane Ivan as well. Oh, and my great aunt? Is 90 years old, almost completely deaf, and paranoidly senile. She’s in the phase of dementia where she repeats everything she says approximately every 30 seconds, plus she gets easily agitated and becomes verbally abusive (mostly toward her daughter, but god help you if you accidentally say the wrong thing), so you know they’ve gotta be having a big ol’ laugh riot over at my folks’ house. Plus it’s 90 degrees and they have no air-conditioning because the power is out. I am SO glad I’m not there.

And then we have my poor dad, who is what one might call a routine-based person. You throw in the extra visitors in the house, which stresses him out under normal circumstances, then take away his regular golf game (because the streets are covered with debris so no one can drive anywhere), plus no TV or Internet access, and he is just on the verge of losing his mind. Poor guy. And there’s no telling when my aunt and her family can go back home to New Orleans, but it looks like it’ll be at least a week, if not longer. It’s entirely possible that her house is safe, because she lived in a different parish than the ones that have been severely impacted, but there’s no way of finding out for sure, since news from that area is spotty at best. My uncle’s house may not have been so lucky – they were all in Houston at the time the hurricane hit, so they’re safe, but they have a house in St. Bernard parish, which was pretty badly flooded. Again, no way of knowing for sure, but my cousin found this picture, which is an aerial view of the area – if this is any indication, it looks like their house could be under several feet of water. This is all very, very bad.

As for life here in the Northwest, I have a few potential job leads at the moment, but I won’t know anything for a while, and I don’t want to jinx anything by talking about it too soon. We’ll just have to wait & see.