Much to my surprise, today the archivist brought me an envelope--with a check in it! I plan on using part of that for donations to places I didn't get around to last fall. That check also means that I have some earned income and therefore can take that amount from the required IRA withdrawal and put it into a Roth, where it can accumulate forever tax-free earnings.

As I drove in this morning I saw a big bunch of dump trucks lined up near one of the apartment complexes that has been deteriorating. There was a big scoop getting apartment guts off the road and into the dump trucks. This afternoon the apartment complex was all gone. There are probably several more that will disappear the same way during the next few days and weeks.

I've mentioned that there are tons of jobs available in this area and that the real minimum wage is at least $8.50/hr. The only problem is that many of the people who would have these jobs (other than teenagers working part time) don't have places to live. The apartments are disappearing, the houses in that section of Downman Road I was detouring down Monday (as well as many, many other places) are uninhabitable, and so on. Those people who do have a place to live often have no cars, and depend on public transportation to get to jobs. And the bus routes have been cut drastically. The street cars are running on Canal Street, but not on St. Charles.

The Corps of Engineers (pardon the bad language) has almost finished flood gates on a couple of the drainage canals. I think they are there to prevent a storm surge from flowing back out of Lake Pontchartrain into nearby areas, like it was almost doing after Katrina and Rita. Then the levees gave way and those areas flooded.

But today's Times-Picayune has maps showing what will happen if we have a heavy rain--more than about 8 - 12 inches, which is not all that uncommon. What happens if the flood gates are closed? The residential areas flood.

Thank you Corps of Engineers.

I'm glad I live on the North Shore and at a decent elevation (15 ft. above sea level) and distance from bodies of water.

And this afternoon's journey home was totally uneventful with no stupid drivers and only a little bit of rain.