This has been a pretty good day, even though we had a stretch of nasty rain late in the morning.

I called my friend in Mobile to start getting an idea of when this year's "Gulf Coast Women's History Conference" will be. Since I don't plan on going somewhere this summer we have only her summer trip to work around. So we settled on July--dates to be established later. And I gave her the status of today's rainy front's progress toward Mobile.

We did some knocking of the response to Katrina, but that's pretty standard conversation for Gulf Coast residents. I told her about the current status of various parts of New Orleans.

We caught up on each other's news (or lack of same) and our respective families. And I just realized that I forgot to tell her about the total gutting (and closure) of the graduate/married students' apartment building at Tulane. She lived in that when she was doing graduate work back in the late 80s/early 90s. It got damaged by Katrina. They say they're going to turn it into (or tear down and build) a parking garage.

While we were talking I heard a noise outside and discovered one of the black feline visitors resting comfortably right next to my steps. I said "hello" out the window and he(?) turned to look at me, and then settled down again.

This afternoon I got caught up reading Charlaine Harris' Dead Until Dark--the first book in her Southern Vampire series. This one is set in northern Louisiana and is a pretty good read (except for one spot.) There are at least four more books in this series, based on flyleaf information. I have another one sitting around that was dropped off by YD. I need to get all my "mind candy" books together so I can sort of prioritize reading. I don't think I'm in the mood for another vampire book right away. Maybe an early Suzette Haden Elgin that I just got. Her Native Tongue trilogy was written significantly after the book that just arrived.

The weather-guessers think there may be some showers tomorrow afternoon. Therefore I need to get the shopping done early.