Katrina Update #38Katrina Update #38Add plastic hangers to the list of things you want to do to prepare for a hurricane. Here's what I mean:
If you have clothes on wire hangers, and there is any chance at all that you will be forced away from your home for 5 weeks while those clothes sit for a considerable time in water, rust stains will appear on the clothing. Rust stains are almost impossible to get out of clothing. Plastic doesn't rust.
We are going through the process of washing the clothes recovered from Cary's closet. So far, we think we will be able to recover most of them. First, we are soaking the clothes for six hours in clean, cold water with a couple of cups of Oxi-clean thrown in. Then we wash the clothes with the normal amount of Tide with Febreeze, adding a 1/2 cup of Borax and a cup of 1/10 solution Simple Green. Seems to work very well. Almost as good as new, and quite wearable.
We went out for some more supplies today. Found a couple of gas stations open in Uptown. Also went into the Winn-Dixie on Tchoupitoulas. When we walked in we immediately encountered this smell that can only be described as a heavily masked smell of rotting food. In any "normal" supermarket, you would have immediately walked out, questioning that store's supplies. But these are not normal times. Don't get me wrong. There was nothing to be afraid of here, and the smell was not so powerful as to make one ill. This is just what is left after they have been trying to get the smell out. Imagine you are in a park and catch a whiff that unique "rotten egg" smell exuded by a sulfer spring. It was something like that. You don't leave the park, but you don't like the smell, either.
We also shopped for a new refrigerator. Found exactly what I would like, but they couldn't sell it because their stock was on hold for insurance purposes. We stopped by a couple of places, and the soonest we can get one is (surprise) around November 1st. If anyone has a pickup truck and wants a free trip to New Orleans, the models I am partial to are Maytag #MFD2561H or #MFF2557H. Actually, any bottom drawer Freezer would be fine, including these. So if anyone out there has a pickup truck and wants a free trip to New Orleans (I will pay for the gas AND the fridge!)...
Speaking of refrigerators, our old one (and those of our neighbors) are still on the curb. Quite an interesting smell going on out there. I dumped some more bleach on the ones by our house today. On the City of New Orleans web site, they seem to indicate that trash would be picked up normally in the "open" zip codes. Not so in our area. Today was trash day, and we still have trash.
It has been in the upper 80's and humid — above normal for even New Orleans' standards. The average high temperature for this time of year is about 83. There is a cold front coming down that is actually supposed to make it to us tonight. Temperatures tomorrow are supposed to be in the mid 70's with low humidity. That will make things a lot more comfortable around here.
- It looks like Tom Taylor will be staying in Atlanta for the forseeable future. He text-messaged me his new Atlanta-based cell phone while he was sitting in the centerfield stands at the Brave's game.
The water tests came in. As I suspected, the water in New Orleans is safe to drink, cook, bathe, and wash clothes and dishes in. I think I'll stick to bottled water for drinking for awhile, but I am not worried about the water at all (other than it still comes out of the tap warm, and probably has more chemicals in it than I want to drink right now).
LSU is lobbying to demolish its Charity and University Hospitals, which were built in the 30's and 60's respectively. They say both are 60% unusable. Charity was the second largest in the US when it was built, with 2,700 beds, almost always filled to capacity. They want to build just one modern hospital with fewer beds. Of course, there will also be fewer people in New Orleans for some time to come. They estimate it will cost up to 750 million dollars and take 3-4 years to build.
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