Me and the Dreadnought Kid have been thinking constantly about the network of friends and fans we have come to know on this forum. Our thoughts and prayers are with all of you and your kin who may have been affected by the recent hurricane Katrina or who may be in the area of Rita, as she lashes the USA again. God Bless you and may he keep you safe. Us 2.xxxx

How about the people who don't post any more?

Thanks, we were pretty lucky...nothing from Katrina, that was all New Orleans, it was horrible how long the aid took to get there afterwards, not to mention the non-speakable terrors that happened in the Superdome and all as well.

Rita, though, was almost another story, as it looked like she was headed towards Houston, which, right after Katrina, was pretty damn unsettling, to say the least. However, due to the 2 million people trying to evacuate on that one day and it taking 20 HOURS to get out of Houston, we figured we couldn't get out (granted, the freeways were pretty wide open after that, though). Then she headed more towards Beaumont and all, so we didn't get much from her, to say the least: all we got were downed branches and we lost power for 15 hours (several of those hours we slept through, though ). Being 60-70+ miles inland, we don't have to deal with this sh*t very often, the last time this happened (when we got hit by a category 3 hurricane) was back in '83, which did a lot of damage to buildings downtown (only 15 miles away, which was pretty damn close), but the same stuff here: downed tree branches and no power, although the latter was for several days though.

A friend of mine called last night, saying he drove someone's sister home on the night the winds hit, and was suddenly having to dodge flying debris on the freeway; a flying stop sign almost hit his windshield. Again, lucky. Granted, ANOTHER storm is building up in the Gulf now; sheesh.