Can't sleep. Really wish I could stop looking at news sites.

I understand. Mucho -ma.

And still more horrors:

A large section of the vital 17th Street Canal levee, where it connects to the brand new ‘hurricane proof’ Old Hammond Highway bridge, gave way late Monday morning in Bucktown after Katrina’s fiercest winds were well north. The breach sent a churning sea of water coursing across Lakeview and into Mid-City, Carrollton, Gentilly, City Park and neighborhoods farther south and east.

This apparently explains why the water in NOLA was still rising this afternoon and evening. The hole in the levee is two blocks wide. The mayor says that some parts of the city are under 20 feet of water.

I can't sleep. If I lie in bed, I just imagine the worst.

Want to be distracted, helped in the search for details or just allowed to post?

I was fine all day today, sort of. I guess I had something to do, at least. I tried calling my parents tonight, but I guess the phone and power is out in Jackson.

Want to be distracted, helped in the search for details or just allowed to post?

Um, distracted, I guess. I've managed to upset myself pretty well.

I'm watching the mayor on TV from earlier tonight.

Slidell is under water. Metairie is mostly under water. There's basically no way in or out of the city. There's no potable water except in the CBD and Algiers. There's no elecricity, and it'll take at least 4-6 weeks to get it back up.

Now CNN is reporting a two-foot breach in a levee somewhere.

Now CNN is reporting a two-foot breach in a levee somewhere.

That's the two-block breach the mayor was talking about. By the 17th St Canal.

And I'm hearing conflicting reports on the Twin Spans. One transportation department guy said that the damage was severe but fixable and that it looks like a stairstep all the way up. The mayor is talking like it's gone.

Peak storm surge at Biloxi is now being reported as reaching 33 feet, which would equal or exceed Camille's surge.

Sections of the I-10 twin bridges linking St. Tammany and Orleans parishes over Lake Pontchartrain have been “severely damaged’’ in both directions, some knocked out, Louisiana highway officials said.

Let me find something distracting. I just realized that my current shiny thing is not really for everyone and the you've seen my backup shiny thing.

About an hour ago, I thought I was ready to go to bed and then sleeplessness just bodyslammed me.

Also Jon Stewart was a repeat. It has nothing to do with NOLA, it just that I was hoping for something new on my tv.

The problem is, if you have sex with an older woman and then, you compare that experience with your first amateur gropings with a girl your own age. The problem occurs that the sex with the older woman was better. Even if it was a crime. - John Irving

This is my neighborhood:

Dozens of residents evacuated to the dry land of the Filmore Street bridge over the Marconi Canal were stranded between the flooded neighborhood on their right, and the flooded City Park on their left, hours after they had been plucked from rooftops or second-story windows.

Firefighters who saved them tried to request an RTA bus to come for the refugees, but said there was no working communications to do so.

Ed Gruber, who lives in the 6300 block of Canal Boulevard, said he became desperate when the rising water chased he, his wife, Helen, and their neighbor Mildred K. Harrison to the second floor of their home. When Gruber saw a boat pass by, he flagged it down with a light, and the three of them escaped from a second-story window.

On the lakefront, pleasure boats were stacked on top of each other like cordwood in the municipal marina and yacht harbor. The Robert E. Lee shopping center was under 7 feet of water. Plantation Coffeehouse on Canal Boulevard was the same. Hines Elementary School had 8 feet of water inside.

Indeed, the entire business district along Harrison Avenue had water to the rooflines in many places.

My grade school is on Harrison.