Life coming at me

Wow, it's been an eventful day.

Hurricane Katrina, which has now become the second strongest and the most expensive hurricane in my lifetime, ripped up the Gulf Coast today and has been carving out destructive paths all the way through Mississippi and West Alabama.

I'm really glad Katrina didn't hit New Orleans in the way they thought it would. It would have been amazingly catastrophic for all the 1.3 million people of that city to lose their homes, their jobs and pretty much everything material they hold dear. And it's such a neat city and a historical place. Would have been a shame for all that to be destroyed.

Not to downplay the horrible destruction of the storm in any way. It has done incredible damage to New Orleans, Gulf Port, Biloxi, Mobile, and the folks in these towns are going to be picking up the pieces for months. My prayers are definitely with these people.

As for how we've fared in Tuscaloosa, it hasn't been too terrible. We lost electricity for a few hours, and for a while there the EMA had put us under a tornado warning "until further notice" because the winds were so strong and so many tornado cells were popping up on the RADAR. This made for an interesting night. Rebecca, Josh, Jessica, Dianne and I all chilled at the house, ate the junk food I stocked up on, played some cards and watched a little TV while the power was on. The wind's still howling around outside, but it should stop in the next couple of hours. No major damage has been done, just some downed trees and maybe a few power lines.

Now if they would just cancel school again tomorrow...