KATRINA

I am a refugee. On the road all day, fleeing the hurricane, I've used nothing but public restrooms. I haven't even washed my face; we left right after I ate my last bite of raisin bran. Without a shower and dressed in yesterday's laundry, I finally arrived at my sis's house in B'ham about an hour ago. I say finally because we'd been in town a while. Sa and her family got a later start leaving Mom & Dad's house than Jen and I did, so they arrived hours after us. While waiting for them to unlock the house, Jenny and I were left to wander around the Summit, taking in a movie and listening to music at Barnes & Noble. Doesn't sound too bad, until you consider how we looked and how we smelled. Ha ha. All the well-dressed couples on dates gave us funny looks. It wasn't just my imagination, was it? Wish I had taken a few more clothes in my rush to evacuate. Wearing the same 2 t shirts and shorts may get old. Looks like the storm is headed right this way, so I'm left wondering when we can return south. It was hard to take the storm seriously after the last one was a false alarm, for us, anyway. So I left my electronics and clothes and pictures and... Oh, well. I've heard Katrina compared to Camile about a hundred times today, so I'm imagining catastrophy waiting for us with open arms. Hearing horror stories about category 5 hurricanes obviously planted some deadly seeds in my brain. I was impressed with the number of friends who called to make sure I was getting out of harm's way. And just like the last storm, Inoticed how friendly people became when they heard about the hurricane. We were greeted by countless friendly, loud voices at every restaurant and gas station where we stopped. Most were from the New Orleans area - judging from accents and license plates. Even lots of H'Burg residents left (Jen included), letting me know that the storm really is serious, but we couldn't convince Mom and Dad to evacuate with us. What is it with older people and their houses? It's just a rental, for Pete's sake. It was certainly a strange end to Dad's birthday celebration this weekend. One minute we were cutting cake and the next we were throwing clothes into travel bags and filling jugs with drinking water. If you pray, please ask God to protect the people in the path of this storm. I'm sure most were as surprised by the category rating as we were. Wish they all could have driven out of harm's way.