How do you spell R-E-L-I-E-F?

Rita is still swirling around, but it looks like we've escaped the worst of her wrath, which has been inflicted on the eastern part of the state and Louisiana. As far as we can tell, there's been no serious damage or flooding in the city, and no deaths reported. Obviously, we still have power and phone service, though around 500,000 to 800,000 people in the city are without electricity; no word on where those outages have occurred.

Right now, there are dark clouds above still moving in the counter-clockwise rotation, some strong winds, but no rain. In fact, we get more rain during our daily afternoon thundershowers than we've gotten with Rita (I don't know what happened while I was asleep, though). The afternoon Gulf showers are also more violent than Rita has been.

I haven't decided when I'm going to return home. There's some damage to downtown, falling glass, that kind of thing, but nothing more serious than that. I don't know if there is power in my area or not -- I will call a friend who lives in the area and didn't evacuate. Either way, given the glancing blow we received, I assume it will be business as usual on Monday and people will start swarming back beginning today. I'm hoping the lack of gasoline will keep people 'stranded' where they are for the time being. But I'll be watching the traffic and the minute it looks like I'll be on I-10 for any length of time, I'll be heading home. Of course, I will wait for the winds to calm down; they are still tropical storm force.

So, so very lucky. It's as if Mother Nature has been taunting us for the last week, and then at the very last minute -- literally -- decided to change her mind and veer off to the east. Only six more weeks left in hurricane season, but man, I'll be so glad when it's over. It's been stressful -- I can't even tell you -- and the uncertainty of it all has been difficult. I think coming so soon after Katrina made the whole thing worse and then the evacuation, with several of my friends stuck in traffic for insane amounts of time... no need to run through this excercise any time soon!