Natal felicitations in order, LeN?

yesterday. thanks. :-)

Completely randomly, Hec's mention of the A's reminds me roundaboutly of our main entertainment for the evening last night. We watched the extra innings of the A's/Angels game, with Hec getting unbelievably wound up and frantic as the A's cutiepie redhead hit a lovely home run and then the entire rest of the team seemed about to piss it all away by handing the Angels a bottom of the final inning grand slam on a platter. The A's closer squinted, bit his lip, put on his game face, and won the game, and with the universe now back on course we slounged about and watched a late-season Friends rerun, because we are dorks.

Also because we are dorks, we spent much time being extravagantly amused by the plotline -- Rachel adopts an evil hairless cat -- and the spectacular un-eviltude of the cat. Every single hiss and snarl and spitty noise, Foley'd in, while the cat itself sat placidly on its pillow and blinked at everything around it with interest and mild amusement. J. Aniston would poke it nervously with an oven mitt, and the cat would blink and shrug at the mitt, then roll over and curl up on its other side. When she talked with her hands, it stared alertly at her with an obvious "Hey, when are those hands gonna stop waving and start skritching me?" expression, and then the instant its head was turned the Foley people patched in the fakest angry-cat-hiss evar.

For God's sake, in one scene this supposed ravening beast was wearing a sweater. Most unconvincing feral beast in entertainment history.

Anyhow, we were dorkily amused.

t /completely non-sequitorial

Happy birthday, LeNubian!

Have you all seen the Trailer for Brokeback Mountain. Hello angsty boy-on-boy longings.

And, I know the slash bothers msbelle. But please. This picture of George Clooney, Matt Damon and Brad Pitt? SLAHSTASTIC. Esp. cause what is GC doing with his hand there?

This after we had one of our best games of the season last night beating the arch-rival Angels in an absolute nail biter.

Never mind that. Yanks vs. M's. Randy vs. Felix. Big Unit vs. The King. The Past vs. The Future. Tonight.

You can have your playoff hopes. We have King Felix. Two years from now, we'll have King Felix AND playoff hopes.

Also, Betsy, the news about Kepler's is incredibly sad for me. I just can't believe it.

Hey, I liked this tidbit about LSU:

4:07 P.M. - LSU offers UNO, Tulane and Loyola students chance to enroll for school at the Baton Rouge campus to continue their learning, waiving most fees for those who have already paid other universities.

5:08 P.M. - (AP): President Bush is warning Americans about the nation's gasoline supply, saying everyone must understand that Hurricane Katrina has had a significant effect.

about rebuilding (from WWL website). goes w/o saying: cereal.

An astonishing phenomenon -- the drowning of New Orleans -- leads to a mind-boggling question: How to rebuild a city? Some are already considering the challenge.

Officials from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers estimate it will be weeks before all the water that flowed into the city through breached levees can be pumped back out. After that, it will take several years -- and many billions of dollars -- to rebuild homes, offices, streets and highways.

It is the decisions people make as they go through that process that will determine what New Orleans eventually becomes, disaster recovery experts said. From the major political battles over how to spend public funds to each family's deliberation over whether to return to a city where there's not much to go back to, the choices people make in the weeks and months ahead will determine the Big Easy's fate.

"It will reveal a lot about the power structure of New Orleans," said Lawrence Vale, a professor of urban studies and planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Federal, state and city government will need to make big investments in infrastructure -- especially flood protection -- to entice businesses back to the city and reassure insurers that nothing like this is going to happen again any time soon. They will also have to convince people that the city is a safe place to live.

The owners of single-family homes are usually the first to rebuild after a hurricane, said Walter Peacock, director of the Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center at Texas A&M University. But because fewer than 50% of New Orleans homeowners have flood insurance, many of them probably won't have financial resources to rebuild at all.