Before and After Spanish Town Parade

Before::















AFTER:

Mardis Gras

Hi guys... Have had an internet outage among other issues so no blogging lately. This is the weekend that the major portion of the Fat Tuesday celebration begins and ends on Tuesday late. The BEFORE and AFTER pics of me are on another posting.. it was rainy and cold for the Spanish Town parade, the biggest one in Baton Rouge. Just decided it was not worth going to New Orleans for this. It is still pretty nasty down there and it was raining all weekend, just cleared up this afternoon along with my internet.



The parade had a very anti FEMA theme, and was indeed titled... "FEMA-ture Evacuation" and filled with themes of FEMA trailers, blue tops, beaurocracy and other negative images. Every politician was lambasted from the mayor to the governor up through washington DC.









It was a fun two hours tell the truth but I am pretty sure it is not a party I would come down here for. The Streets of Spanish Town were so badly littered and nasty that you could not imagine it. Everyone kept their clothes on while I was there but the weather was mostly the culprit, it certainly was a festive atmosphere.



Anyway.. the "AFTER" pic of me is below.. it was a interesting to be buried in so many beads... I have on the order of 50 lbs of them in the apartment now following the last two weeks of parades around here... They are kinda neat and I am going to take a bag to work tomorrow.. FEMA is not letting people off work for Mardis Gras, (those slave driving bastards!!!) so I am going to take beads to work to .. ummm.. dispense... :-D..

JFO blues::::::::::::;;

JFO blues::::::::::::;;

Ok.. back to the JFO again. You gotta love this place. Prim donnas, divas, drama masters… and morons. Oh My!! In a way the JFO is a place where people that are not able to be out on their own for some reason do tasks for FEMA. The secretary for the Travel group (either the 5th or 6th one I remember) cannot be bothered to hang up her perpetual cell phone conversation to answer the FEMA phone that is ringing off the hook four inches from her elbow………… This would be a local hire that is not long for FEMA land.. :-D There are confusing signs.. one says “Please do not Touch” and is taped to a glass window of the escalator well to the second floor. Now this sign is 6 or 8 feet away from a very nice 3D table model of New Orleans ….. and I am wondering if the sign means that model… or the glass wall it is mounted on… hmmmmm In November coffee was $0.25 a cup in the cafeteria (you could bring your own cup too) with free refills.. today it is a buck a cup regardless and no outside cups allowed. Almost no one eats there these days and leaves campus to eat which creates these gigantic traffic jams at noon and one. I will also tell of one style trend that I have found amazing……..:::::: Lets call them extremely large women….. wearing tiny little strapped shoes on four inch heels….this looks SO precarious.. SO precarious… I have no idea how they walk anywhere much less from the parking lot to our work area…. I keep expecting a wreck someday.. something just HAS to give there but no.. they make those heels tough…and I am thinking these women are very athletic to be able to do that trick.

FEMA made available these shell jackets with reflective armbands and the word FEMA in reflective strips on the back of the jacket for work in the field… hundreds of them. They have become known as “Target Jackets” after a few incidents in places outside the JFO and few people will now wear them in public……..

All the DAE’s like me that are not converting to this “CORE” designation (full time with benefits for 3-5 years) are plotting our departure. Most of us are running out of gas for this particular adventure as most of the charm has worn off after all this time. I am still having fun and have found lots to make my days happy here but spent part of the morning looking for houses to live in Colorado Springs. (Rents have gone down!! Yay!!)

Louisiana Drivers::::::::::::;;;

Louisiana Drivers::::::::::::;;;

I hate this state for the traffic and drivers among other things. In Baton Rouge the city is over crowded by a flood of Katrina refugees as well as standard traffic, bad planning and a vast assortment of bad habits that drivers have. I have found that they tend to drive insanely fast where there is no room to do so… treating slower cars like gates on a giant slalom OR drive insanely slow…. Two lane highway, modern car going 40 mph in a 55 mph zone … creating long lines of impatient drivers behind them that try to pass 15 or 20 cars at a time ( I head for the shoulder). Within Baton Rouge, and within 3 or 4 miles of any interstate, it is grid lock or thereabout for 8 am to 6 pm. It is common to wait 6 or 7 or more light cycles to get through ever intersection. Drivers tend to pull out into intersections blocking traffic…. Crating longer lines which in turn block the intersection… No wonder my blood pressure spiked down here. My other favorite is lane crossing near intersections.. so imagine if you will… an intersection with ten lanes of traffic going 5 each both ways and no center median. It seems to be popular sport to try to cross all ten of those lanes 50 or 60 feet from the intersection when this traffic is totally stalled. These drivers universally seem to think if they catch my eye.. and POINT where they want to go that somehow it is ok to do that and even possible. Why do these people think it is ok to even try to do those things.. is a left hand turn in this exact spot SO important that you will interrupt the traffic flow of hundreds of other people? If I can just survive this place with no accidents in this FEMA paid for rental car I will be a very happy boy.

The morgue at Carville has been officially named the VIC.. victims identification center…. For whatever reason.. the whole world knows it as DMORT at Carville so when you see that on the news here in the next few days that is us.

Have you seen the cartoons that have set the Islamic world to rioting? I decided I needed to go look for them to see these inflammatory images and see if I could generate a particle of empathy for the position they find themselves in. I have included a link for it below. I have looked at them, and while I am pretty sure I could not determine if any of them actually look like Muhammad I am just totally at a loss to understand what the clamor is about. I rarely make group judgments about behavior or countries, but it is clear to me that we as a country and society.. true western society with values of free speech and other personal freedoms are at risk from this entire population that is creating this degree of violence. So Europe, Australia and North America are finding themselves truly at odds with a population of about 1.6 billion people. Since demonstrably their first reaction seems to be violence instead of civilized debate, I am ready to pronounce my judgment on the entire population of the Middle East. These are dangerous children and ought not be allowed to roam freely about the planet. The world has tried in the past to eradicate populations (Jews, Serbs, and to some degree Christians and also Muslims at different times) and there are always survivors and the people that tried to eradicate them tended to be Nazis or worse. So the world has to learn to live with a stone age culture that has money thanks to our Saudi, Iraqi and Iranian friends and access to modern freedoms which they use against us. But from this point forward… let none of them count on my empathy regarding the treatment of an entire class of individuals.

http://www.zombietime.com/mohammed_image_archive/jyllands-posten_cartoons/

Thursday, New Things Happening!!

It is not smart to wait for specific things in a disaster to come clear before you write about them. Events overtake you and you are left without a story. The VIC and the DMORT facility is on a very short time frame by now. We had been waiting to find out if state and New Orleans officials were going to send DMORT in to search the 9th ward for additional victims. Turns out today is the day for that decision, but it is just a mission to recover bodies, they will not be coming to the VIC at all and our data mission is over. There is an orderly withdrawal of people and equipment, it has to be refurbished and restocked in preperation of the next disaster. This package goes to California, the one that was in Mississippi went back to Ohio.

I have been reassigned to the JFO again, and according to the network manager over there he wants me to be a floor manager.. I guess he is short handed with some of the people cycling out permanently. This should be an ok bridge back to unemployement in April and give me a chance to see the JFO in the midst of its transition to a different type of disaster employee. The demand for people has been so great, and the mission so long that the Feds are making a new kind of federal employee...... These guys are going to be 3-5 year "temporary" employees and will assume most of the responsibilities here for the duration of the disaster. Almost all the contractors are gone, or converted to local hires to help reduce costs (no rental cars or per-diem for them now). Presumably the last ones out this cycle are the DAE's like me and I believe they are trying to get our class of workers some rest before the next round of disasters this summer..... (none of you really think this will be a year without a disaster do you?)

Went to eat at Golden Corral the other evening and had quite a show. There was a brunette there, 20 something wearing a turquoise tube top and spray painted jeans... a classic beauty and she knew it. She was eating alone and every eye in the place was on her. Trena was laughing her ass off at the guys and teasing them for the jaw dropping displays they put on. This gal ate in about 20 min, chatting on the phone the whole time, completely above the fray and swayed out of that place with eye prints all over her smiling like a great big light bulb. Apparently exceptionally attractive people are rare here... :-D.......

For those of you that might want to live as I do, I might point out that tax time is a real headache. My mom has done a ton of work for me this year helping with my tax preparation but it has been a nightmare. one of my 1099's is 9 pages long.... close spaced small print and 9 pages... holy cow.... At least it is going to be done this weekend.. and likely am not going to owe very much.

Spring is fully here, trees are out, flowers are too... it is nice!!!

Wednesday… Happy February:::::::::::::

I have been omitting a feature of most of my days that I will share for now. I left it out cause at first I thought it was kinda corny and then kind of private until today think it needs to be talked about. Every day the DMORT team has a meeting. It is a quick huddle that starts usually at 7 am and then more recently at 8 am. Every single morning they all stand, turn and face the flag and speak the pledge of allegiance. Then they all bow their heads and have about 90 seconds of silence “For the Victims” as a way to start off their work days. At first I was seriously non-plussed about this little ritual but came to eventually enjoy it. Seems to reinforce that we are here to serve our country and make respectful peace with the dead. It is kind of the feelings I signed up for… the opportunity to do something meaningful and give back something to a life that has been so good to me.

First of the month is always a pain. Time to putz with the Rental car .. I usually try to do timesheets, rental car and expenses in the same day so it is not three days of having to be out of place to get my stuff done. My current car is kinda muddy and says it needs an oil change so I will try to trade it for a cleaner full size car if they will do so. Maybe a pickup.