I'm a dreamer but my heart's of gold

Oh, Lord, but it's good to be in my own home. I think the endorphins ran out Saturday; I don't think a bus ride is supposed to make me as sore as it did.

.....

After 4 days of looking at spraypainted messages from the LASPCA documenting animals found, not found, or found dead, I'm really happy to be home with my cats. Which doesn't even begin to compare to how glad I am to be back in Herself's safe and loving and proud arms.

.....

On Friday, I saw the Ninth Ward, where the structural damage from the flood was the worst. Even after 3 days, I was shocked to see genuinely destroyed houses, knocked off their foundations, roofs and porches collapsed and some completely burned out. A lot more obvious rental properties in that area... and I wonder what resources the renters are drawing on. I wonder what I would've done when I was renting.

.....

Thanks for the comments; they brought me a big smile when Herself read them over the phone to me.

Hugh: thanks for the brooms. They were the tools we needed most. (We brought plenty of hardware and not nearly enough to clean up with. The other thing we really could've used was a wheelbarrow or three.)

Tom: No crawfish, but a great muffaletta and some fabulous homemade gumbo.

TRP: As you know, we have a philosophical difference about "us" and "them", but we share the ethical belief that we need to keep working to enlarge our definition of "us". That was my point, although I'm not sure it came through in that post.

Matt and everyone else: thank you for your prayers. We arrived home with all the people, fingers, toes, and eyes we left with, and only a few extra minor scratches, and I thank you for asking for our protection.

.....

If you're reading this through Bloglines or Firefox Smart Bookmarks (or maybe some other RSS readers), you may've missed some audio posts. I think those posts are the things I've written which are most like journalism, and it's a much harder format to write in than I'd realized. I've got so many notes; distilling them down to the core message, on a tight deadline, was a big challenge. So here's my shoutout to great journalists.

On the other extreme, my brother gave me a copy of A Confederacy of Dunces for Christmas, and I figured it'd be good reading for this trip. I haven't finished it yet, but it's been terrific. And writing less like Ignatius J. Reilly has become a major goal...