Woo! Done gutting for a bit. Man my hands and back hurt. I swear when you bring a crowbar down on a sink, it hurts if the sink doesn't give. But yeah we finished up a house yesterday and it was very satisfying. It's amazing because on Tuesday we knocked the bejeezes out of that house. We were rolling, with our awesome respirators and all that jazz. Then on Wednesday, we peaked and it was slow rollings. We were tired. It took us like three hours to finish denailing and taking down the ceilings. It was slow rollings. After we finished that house, some of the group left and we proceeded to another house. Inside were three massive (read 3ft tall) piles of blown-in insulation. We bagged some of it, removed the hot water heater and the tubs and toilets and left. It was raining. The crazy part about this area was it was next to a natural swamp area. It looked like a disaster zone. All the trees were blown around and dead. The road was half grown over and you couldn't tell there were houses there, until we exited the interstate and drove in. The home owners told us that water stayed in the house for 9 weeks! You could tell, and we had to use the high tech masks because the mold was SO bad. The home owners were super nice and gladly talked about the situation.

Today started like most days in NO, cloudy and cooler. The only difference is that it was raining and had been raining for a long time. I walked outside and the pathway was under water. I went out front and a manhole cover had been knocked off the sewers by water gushing from it. It was insane. Water was at least a foot deep in most places. Meg and I drove to a lady's house and at one point pushed water with her truck. It was DEEP and also flowing pretty rapidly. The basement of the place we stayed was also taking on water. It is so wild in places under sea level, although I doubt that's the entire story.

That's really all I've got about NO for now and for a while. Not sure if I told you about the poor homeless guy pooping on the corner at an intersection we were stopped at. It was funny, but really sad more than anything. I feel for the people in NO even more if stuff like that is commonplace. The people seem to have lots of hope and that's encouraging, because it's the strong people who are going to have to help all the rest in the city. I believe those strong people can be found at Carrollton Church of Christ. The people are lively, encouraging and really nice. I don't agree with the rebuilding of a city under sea level, but I do agree that if people are going to try then we shouldn't take that away from thenm and we should encourage them because they are trying, and not giving up. So many people would just leave and not come back, but those people see more. They see a town that represents what they stand for and is their home.

Meg was pretty overloaded for the time I was there. She was somewhat snappy at times and it really bothered me, but we had a nice little pow-wow last night and settled the issues. It came down to a little bit of me being a jerk and a little bit of her being herself. She's trying, though, and that's all I can ask and she really wants to be the best girlfriend she can, it's just hard for her sometimes. I don't know what I'm going to do about her being gone next semester, but I do know I'm not going to make it with the relationship like it is. I don't want to go to an open relationship, but I know I can't handle another semester like this last one. I'm not sure what to do. We'll discuss it some more and see what comes of it. Anywho, I'm glad to be relaxing now.