Made it back....only to leave again??

Got in safe and sound last night, saw Lily from a couple houses down and one roommate was home, the Americorps Red Cross volunteer. She's been running shelters for the last week, and she's not about to shut any of them down it seems. She's had only a few hours of sleep each night having to attend to everyone, so she was lucky to have had an entire night here. Poor thing has been sleeping on a 2" bed roll for months so I hooked her up with my double layer queen size air mattress. Drove to the store this morning to replenish my fridge contents which had to be thrown out - but I only got a very few things in small sizes since Mr. Ike don't look all that friendly.

Lots of tree damage, piles of limbs, etc. on the sides of roads but I haven't seen any large damage, even to homes under construction, as of yet. My next door neighbor has a HUGE tree in his backyard that provides lustrious shad in my yard, if anything happened to that one it would surely take out one or both houses. There's an elec plant a block or so by my house and I could have sworn they put up all these new large steel poles but a neighbor said Nope, they've been there since Katrina. They're really odd and I can't believe I didn't notice them before - most of the lines aren't even hooked up so it seems that effort was aborted at some point. Now I sure noticed the cel site in the yard, for obvious reasons. Quite a few businesses aren't open yet, even a the neon sign says they are (see pic), maybe about 50% but today IS Sunday.

I have a feeling not many people will evacuate again if another one comes calling, I've heard a lot of people say they wish they hadn't. However, if you have a place to stay that will let you bring your pets i.e. don't have to pay for a hotel, I don't know WHY you wouldn't. No power in the SUMMER, no water, no stores open...I mean what the hell? People that don't live here may not understand that if you leave windows open for the breeze and you don't have screens (which a surprising amount do not, including this house) you WILL be eaten up by skeeters. I mean eat-ten up.

So Monday it's back to work full throttle for at least a week.