oyster50: Blog

As many of you have deduced from my stories, I'm a denizen of Southwest Louisiana.

Harvey missed me. Tried twice, but the second try doesn't count. Tropical storm force winds? Feh...

Rain? eighteen inches in three days, but none of the road I travel locally, including the ones to and from work, were flooded.

Thousands are not so fortunate. Even here in my area, the amount of rain resulted in flash flooding - the water came down faster than it could run off. Houses flooded. Cars flooded.

I don't want to NOT mention my neighbors in Texas, from the Sabine River west. Folks, this isn't a case of dumbasses building on the creekbanks, these are people with homes outside the hundred-year floodplains, in some cases outside the 500-year plains. When you get four feet of rain (Dayton, TX got over 50 inches) in three days, the old rules about flood plains go out the door.

This is a weather disaster of almost Biblical proportion.

Fortunately for me and my employer, facilities, for the most part, didn't suffer damage, at least not MY facilities. Others, again, were not so fortunate.

The Houston area is perhaps the largest concentration of petrochemical industries in the US, and they suffered. 25% of oil refining capacity went off line. Expect gas prices to spike. Worse than that are the myriad other chemicals that come out of the area. Want a fright? We lost over 60% of the nation's ethylene production. EVERYTHING you do in daily life depends on ethylene.

I'm awfully proud of the way that ordinary people in the area, including my own Cajun Navy, stepped in to provide help. It's a great country that produces that manner of action.

But me? I'm good. Thanks for asking.

Since others are doing so, let me take a second from totally screwing up how things are posted and thank the guys who've edited my scratchings over the years - Jerry and Denny. I call both of these guys 'friend'. They make my horrible typing and my occasional spelling and grammar flubs into something that is readable. They're responsible when it looks good.

I also want to thank readers who ship me these snippets and ideas. You folks have given Dorable some ammunition, as in "SEE?!? If you were a REAL writer, YOU would come up with ideas like that."

So somewhere in the middle of the ordeal of peeling two and a half chapters of the story of Tommy and Mimi out of Community 3, Chapters 16 & 17 of Community 3 disappeared.

I reposted Chapter 16 today and Chapter 17 will post tomorrow and Chapter 18 is residing on my computer, partially finished. With Tropical Storm (aspiring to 'Hurricane') Harvey promising rain all weekend, I should finish a chapter of Bill & Haley and that chapter 18 of Community 3.

A million of you pointed out that Chapters 3 & 4 of Tommy were the same. I just posted the correct Chapter 3. I hope this gets us right.

Thanks for your patience.

One more set of tries with Tommy. I messed up and left out the second chapter, so now I just went back and inserted it where it's supposed to be and moved everything down one spot. There are FOUR chapters. All should be correct.

Thank you to the astute readers who pointed out my error.

Dorable is sitting over there laughing at me.