This is Colombo, not Zack, because I'm too lazy to create my own user name.
Yesterday around 2pm we split for the friendly confines of my folks' compound in Covington. 2 adults, 2 babies, 2 dogs and 25 lbs of frozen brown St. Bernard swimps (no way I wanted to clean that shit out of the freezer later) packed into a Jeep. My parents moved to this part of the north shore from N.O. in direct response to 8/29/05 and I have to say that the location and home design were smoothe moves. We've been living with some of my cousins in River Ridge, an elevated part of Jefferson Parish for the past 6 months while our new house in Lakeview is completed. The land here is 27 ft above sea level, seemingly mountainous for this part of the country, and is about 2 miles from I-12. After C-Ray's scare-the-living-shit-out-of-you speech last night, we considered moving further north, but dad, ever the voice of reason (and obsessiveness) reminded us of why he built this new place. This is the reason. They cleared all of the potential home smashing trees, installed a natural gas generator powerful enough to continue to run air conditioning, all the appliances and then some, and even have an extra spot in the garage and extra bedrooms, oh yeah...and an artesian well in case we lose water pressure. It's all brick with hurricane windows and shutters. Evacuating for Katrina was a Cat 5 on the "major suckage scale," staying with extended family, not all of whom were compassionate to our situation. Dad knew he never wanted to go through that again. Wise man. Time for dinner.
