I am... not doing too great with the uncertainty of the Isaac's projected path and the conflicting advice on staying or going. I'm actually incredibly tense and also scared. People are now saying to start evacuating tomorrow... I'm nervous about being able to get out of here if we decide to... I would prefer to stay but I know Tom wants to evacuate... and, in conclusion, ugh.

I can't wrap my head around that, Kat.

Who advises not to evacuate, Nora?

That's amazing, Kat. I don't cook that much meat in a year.

Nora, aren't they recommending evacuation in low lying areas?

Look what I missed by not working this weekend! [link] I don't know if this was for a movie or a TV show. Chicago Fire and some Bollywood movie have both been filming in the loop recently.

Can you prepare to evacuate, but then not evacuate until later when you feel like you should?

Wow, aurelia. That would have been interesting to watch.

Went to R's to retrieve a cat carrier, and ended up hanging with her and KR for a long time. Stayed to help and support while she got emotionally charged stuff down from the attic to take with her. KR and I are going to help each other get ready tomorrow to hunker down. I'm looking at all my stuff, pondering what I would take.

It is surreal for me to be going through this (though I knew I'd have to some day), with all the rebuilding and listening to stories and watching documentaries and reading books about Katrina. I'm trying to prepare myself mentally for either staying and evacuating. I'm nowhere near as ready as I should be for either option.

Mayor Landrieu, during his afternoon press conference today, recommended stay and shelter. Nora, as far as I saw the projected path hasn't changed, nor has time of landfall. Did I miss something, or is it just people's nervousness growing as it gets closer?

I cannot imagine how either of you are handling this, smonster and nora. We go through earthquake preparedness, but it's an instantaneous thing and then it's dealing with it. The slow crawl of a hurricane would be maddening for me.

aurelia, it's a lot of meat, but this is at least a month's worth of cooking. The whole thing came from us trying to have things prepped and ready to go. I did two months of Dream Dinners, which I liked most of the meals, but it was expensive.

So I got a cookbook and figured out what we could eat next month and then went to the grocery store this morning and bought all the basic ingredients and then began preparing stuff. Essentially, it's mixing a marinade or a rub and putting it on the meat then freezing it in a bag with instructions for what to do next. In all cases, it's basically thaw and cook. Then you add whatever veggies to go with it on the day of.

Grace helped me (and did a good job for the most part) which was super nice. Noah flitted in and out but he did prepare the garlic/parsley chicken. Grace, though, stood with me for 2 hours of the prep. Essentially it took from 11:30-3:00 not including grocery shopping time. But if this means we have easy-to-the-table stuff at home in the freezer, then I'm thrilled.

And doing it at home cut the cost by probably a third. At Dream Dinners, the meat comes all pre-trimmed and tenderized etc. At home, it was a lot of cursing our lack of decent knives, hitting chicken breasts with a mallet and clean up!

That is never an easy time, Nora, deciding whether to stay or go. Think about where you will feel safe if you stay - is there somewhere in your house with no windows (or can you cover your windows before the storm hits?) - and how you can keep your cats safe. If you decide to go, leave as early as you can and be prepared to be stuck in slow traffic, and arrange for a hotel room or other place to stay before you leave.

I stayed through many storms - the only one I actually evacuated for was Katrina - and was fine, fwtw. Isaac is not a Category 5.

That's pretty awesome, Kat.