(no subject)

Doug and I have been talking about going to New Orleans together so yesterday I did copious research on inexpensive trips. When my friend Madeleine (born and raised in NO) got married in '98, some of us stayed at a B&B there so I was trying to contact her to get the name. We finally connected in the afternoon and she gave me the name--St. Vincent's in the Garden District. Krista and I stayed there and we had a lovely time--they serve a full Southern breakfast with biscuits and everything, in this lovely tearoom. I remember sitting with Krista outside and talking forever on a staircase there. I made the reservation today and discovered that the rate quoted was per room, not per person, so we were paying much less than I thought which was even better!

Then I did some more research on flights and found a direct flight itinerary for $154 per person which is quite good. I'm not sure we can do better than that. So I ran all this past Doug and he agreed and then I booked it. New Orleans for less than $300! I'm so psyched! I really need a vacation--I haven't taken one in over two years, other than trips out of town for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and weekend getaways to visit my mother. This will be an actual vacation and I truly need it. Doug will love it as well--New Orleans takes its liquor and coffee as seriously as he does!

New Orleans is so beautiful. I cannot wait.

80,000

80,000 dead right now from the earthquake/tidal wave. I can't even react to this crisis yet because I'm still in information-gathering mode--the numbers keep changing. 80,000. On Monday, when the numbers were still at 20,000, I told Doug I had a hard time with even that--my "disaster" frame of reference was around 3,000 (the approximate number of 9/11 victims)--that I can sort of comprehend. 20,000 is almost three times as many victims as we had on 9/11. But 80,000? That's...four times 20,000. I can't comprehend it.

There's an article on CNN saying how the quake literally shook the planet. That's like when the Long Island Express (an extremely fast-moving category 3 hurricane that hit Long Island in 1938) made landfall--it registered on seismographs across the country. The storm literally shook the continent.