Hello from New Orleans

Well, here I am in New Orleans. I've already taken a bit of a tour around the city to see some of the damage. My first impression is that there is just trash everywhere. In the pretty-good areas, it is just as if there has been a lot of littering. In the bad areas, there are big piles of it. I'm going to mete out the photos slowly, so there isn't this overload of them. Today I'll feature photos I took yesterday.

This first photo is from a bank drive-through. I took this because you can pretty clearly see the water lines on the pillars. Note that the pavement is clear. This part of the lot has been cleaned of all the sludge and silt.

This photo is the same parking lot, just from a different angle. You can see the difference with the sludge. Note again the water lines on the building.

Finally, I took the following photo because of the lawn. That big brown portion once was a lawn. It was submerged long enough (and probably the water was fairly toxic) to really kill all the grass.

I'll be posting more photos soon.

On a personal level, I'm relaxing quite a bit. I did many hours of work today for the state (I wanted to get my stuff for them done in the next day or two), but in spite of that I've read two books plus made a good start on a third. I also plan on finishing a sweater, one project for the city (my boss there says I need to relax and is not giving me more work until I get back), I have some volunteer work for SAFE and my case note revision to do, as well. A nice relaxing break, without classes.