Time to break out the new calendars. I actually had to go buy a calendar at Office Depot - normally I'd receive more than I need from various organizations or vendors but this year received zip. Not even as a Christmas present! The post office still isn't delivering bulk mail though one catalog did manage to sneak through.

Greg and I celebrated the end of 2005 with Scott, Kristen and Ian. Dinner at Nirvana (Scott sweated profusely thanks to the vindaloo), drinks at Dos Jeffe Cigar Bar then over to King Pin for more drinks and to ring in the new year. The crowd at both bars was surprisingly thin. Just before midnight the bartender handed out noisemakers and champagne. After midnight he switched off the jukebox we had loaded up with songs and played disco. Not sure why but we sang along and danced. Scott was so impressed with my disco moves he asked if I'd be in his band's video. We headed back to our house. Greg pooped out so we hung out on the side porch, greeting the neighbors as they made their way home.

We had breakfast at Slim Goodie's - the diner Greg and I had breakfast the day we came into New Orleans in September to get a load of stuff to move to Houston. We then took Scott and Kristen on a driving tour of the "disaster zones" the areas of town that had flood. Even now, 4 month later, these areas still look like a nuclear bomb went off - no people, gutted houses with trash piles out front, a fine layer of white on everything, dead trees and yards. We went to areas I hadn't seen yet - the infamous 17th street canal levee breach. The destruction was unimaginable. Cars had floated when the water rose and were lodged on fences, on trees. One house the couch had floated then smashed through the front picture window, and sat there, stuck and moldy. Houses had been pushed off their foundations. You could tell many houses no one has been back to do anything. They may have perished in the flood so there isn't anyone to came back. By the levee breach, there was a tour bus and a bunch of people climbing around the huge pile of dirt, taking photos. We had the windows down and I heard a man ask "Is this the only levee that broke?" I yelled "NO!" and kept driving. We were all speechless. It was pointless to take photos, you couldn't convey the destruction with a few photos. You have to be in it, seeing first hand how it stretched block after block. I tried to find the house of someone I teach with at Delgado, I had been to his house once, but couldn't tell which one it was. In this part of town, you can still smell the mold as you drove down the street. We passed by the trash staging area on West End Blvd. with the huge mountains of debris. There's a huge median on West End, six times as wide as Canal or St. Charles Ave., and this is where all the trash is brought before being sent to landfills. Trash is still picked up and kept separate - yard waste, household stuff, building materials, environmentally hazardous materials and appliances. Wish I had a dollar for every time one of us said "look at that..."

One can argue when New Years Eve passes nothing really changes. It's symbolic. Well... I received an e-mail from my service provider that my DSL high-speed connection had been reestablished - one-day early! Two television stations returned to the air today (yeah PBS!). So things really do change. All of this was really uplifting after today's sobering drive. Too bad the Saints didn't win today (and I'm not even a fan. LSU stomping UofM was nice.)
I think mentally, a lot of people are glad to have 2005 behind us. The number of people back has increased, and things will get stretched tight when the college students come back. Stores and restaurants are packed already. Hopefully more will open soon. Trailers are started to show up. The park behind us has the trailers in place and they are hooking up the services. They had to take down our neighbor's chain link fence but replaced it with a nice new wood fence. Little more privacy. Today the workers have off. They've had crews back there working 7 am until 9 pm.

If you didn't see our holiday card, you can see it here: http://creativefatcat.com/ecard/cardart.html Greg's cousin, Lyle, took the photo. Here's to 2006! I leave you with Chris Rose’s last column of the year "Cry me a New Year." http://www.nola.com/living/t-p/index.ssf?/base/living-5/1136101137176420.xml