Hurricane Gustav

I have been in Louisiana for a year and I guess the experience would be incomplete without a hurricane, so enter Hurricane Gustav. We are currently being battered with the outer bands which has basically showed us strong winds and some rain.

A very pleasant surprise has been the arrival of what I refer to as "the refugees". My roommate Jerome had gone to Florida with his friends Todd and Melanie, along with Todd's mother (Miss Ella), Todd's sister (Denise), and Todd's nephew (Solomon). They were going to Pensacola, FL, beach and planned to stay through through the entire Labor Day weekend.



With Hurricane Gustov in the Gulf, however, they made plans to return to Baton Rouge. Todd's family lives in Southern Louisiana, south of Lafayette and are directly in the path of where the eye of the hurricane is supposed to pass.

They dropped by, but I wouldn't have it any other way. First of all, they are hurricane professionals, and as a neophyte to this type of weather, it's great to have a group of pros around. Second, Miss Ella is a FABULOUS cook. Last night, she cooked some chicken stew with rice that was delicious.

The stew wasn't a normal stew, at least, what I'm used to, but it had a dark roux base and was more like a thin gravy over the rice. It had the consistency that my mom's chicken soup has when she pours it over mashed potatoes. It was soooooo good though. In addition, they brought all the food that they had with them including, homemade biscuits, blueberry muffins, cookies, and desserts.

Right now, thankfully, we have electricity, although other friends in the city have stated they are out of power. Hopefully, we keep power through out the day.

The wind gusts are getting progressively stronger and we are expected to get the worst of it between 2pm and 4pm.


(This is a picture from my room of our mailbox that blew over on some guys truck.)

My new sofa came in handy as we are all camped out on it right now.

Right now, we also have boudin in the oven. Boudin is a cajun sausage and I've never had homemade boudin, but everything else has been delicious, so I"m looking forward to this as well.

As I look out the window, I see gusts just blowing the trees outside around, and the pool outisde the complex has lots of ripples and water blowing out the end in a mist, due to the wind.



Will update later on as I am just babbling at this point.