As I prepare for my trip to Biloxi, I am beginning to wonder if that is where we will end up…

From CNN:

Hurricane Rita's winds are at 175 mph today as it spins closer to the Texas coast -- where it is projected to make landfall early Saturday. Thousands of residents are moving inland. If the storm maintains its intensity, Rita "could be worse than Katrina," according to National Hurricane Center Director Max Mayfield. Forecasters expect the center of Rita to make landfall near Galveston.

I found out yesterday that most of the roofing work that we were prepping for in Biloxi is finishing up, so we will actually be participating in mudouts. What in the world is a mudout? I did some poking around on the Internet and found this excerpt taken from an account after a Mexican flood:

You go into a house that has been flooded with two feet of water," he explained. "There's water, mud and sewage in there. It is in a very unsanitary condition.

"So our volunteers would come in and take out the furniture, the carpets and the plasterboard off the walls. Then they took high-pressure washers and bleach and they cleaned the house. It would take several weeks to dry out and then they would come back and install insulation and put plasterboard up."

 

Bring face masks
• Bring rubber boots and rubber gloves (in addition to regular gloves)
• Bring sweat head bands or “do rags”
• Bring old work clothes—the mudouts are dirty work

For fun, I sent this picture to my brother-in-law, who will be going with me.

I am assuming that this snake is not native to Louisiana, but that it was a pet or zoo animal caught in the catastrophe. The original can be found here.