Two week notice

It's been an interesting couple of weeks lately. I started my graduate assistantship, where I am scheduled to work all day Monday/Wednesday and half a day Friday. The first week the mayor gave us Friday off. Then Monday was Labor Day. Classes and the office were closed Tuesday and Wednesday due to Gustav. Thursday and Friday I was out of town for a wedding in Florida. So I was basically on a week, off a week. We got sent home early today because of Ike. I walked in at 1 and they told me to go home.

Going to the beach we stayed north for a while and went through Natchez, MS, then on down to Hattiesburg before hitting the coast. On the way back we came through Slidell (north of Lake Pontchartrain, for those of you not familiar with Louisiana geography), over to Baton Rouge, and then on up. For fifty miles outside of Baton Rouge, we saw downed power lines, telephone poles hanging over the highway, collapsed or damaged buildings, and flooding on either side of the road. And this was with Gustav not being as bad as feared. If Ike had taken the same path, he would have been serious trouble for a part of the state that had already been hit hard.

Scotty Williams Health Update: The Monday after we got back from the beach, a voodoo queen exacted a measure of revenge on behalf of some old enemy of mine. I don't know which one. Sitting down to dinner, my back started to itch from should blade to shoulder blade. Not the kind of itch that you can scratch and it goes away. But a deep, intense, mind-numbing itch that consumes 100% of your attention and mocks any attempt at relief. It was likely an allergic reaction to something at the beach, but I don't know what. Other people complained of some sort of reaction. I don't think they had it as bad as I did, though.

As I was lying in bed facedown, trying to relax and get to sleep, the Marie Laveau wannabe went to work, and my right shoulder would jerk back suddenly. Then my left. On and on till 4 in the morning. If we were living in a different age, they'd have called an exorcist. Living as we do now, we went to Walgreens. But as John Astin used to say on Night Court, "I'm feeling much better now."

One of the ladies I work with used to live in Alexandria, VA. So did yours truly. She asked me if I ever hung out in Adams Morgan. "Nah, I mostly hung out at a place on M Street called Sign of the Whale." "Oh yeah, I've been there a lot!" she said. So I moved back to Louisiana to find someone who used to live in the same city and hung out at the same place. It's a crazy world.

I went to the Texas A&M Commerce/NSU game last weekend and had a great time. It had been a while since I'd sat in Turpin Stadium and yelled at the people on the field. Mostly griping about NSU coach Scott Stoker's decision to punt on 4 and 1 inside the opponent's territory in the first quarter. Fortune favors the bold, coach.

In the second half I felt like getting nachos, so I went to the concession stand. The item list said "Nachos: $3.00". THREE DOLLARS!! I almost started to cry. I can't get spat on at RFK or the Verizon Center for three dollars. I thought about getting four orders of nachos just because I could.

There's a story on ESPN about three Saints starters who will miss the game this week against the Washington Redskins. Roman Harper has a pulled right hamstring, and Randall Gay has a pulled left hamstring. Can't they just strap the two injured legs together and compete as a single player, sort of like a three-legged race in the secondary?